When Lexie Brown received the 2021 WNBA championship with the Chicago Sky, she didn’t have a lot time to have fun. That’s as a result of lower than every week later, the Duke standout needed to go abroad to play skilled basketball in France.
“It was sort of a bummer as a result of that’s a second that’s uncommon,” Brown informed SB Nation. “I don’t know if I’ll ever win a championship once more, and I barely bear in mind profitable it and with the ability to actually let that second sink in.”
Brown’s fast turnaround after the conclusion of the WNBA playoffs was common — traditionally, most WNBA gamers have headed abroad to play skilled basketball within the offseason, each for supplementary earnings and basketball expertise.
Brown, whose one-year contract with the Sky amounted to simply over $47,000, was no exception.
She had been waived by the Minnesota Lynx earlier that season and was properly conscious of the fact that her future within the WNBA was unsure, so she hoped {that a} standout season with the Charnay Basket Bourgogne Sud basketball club in France would open the door to future alternatives within the W.
That didn’t find yourself being the case. Regardless of averaging greater than 20 factors within the EuroLeague, Brown didn’t hear from any WNBA groups. She missed her household and regretted leaving cash on the desk from off-court alternatives.
“I used to be simply sort of like, ‘What am I nonetheless even doing over right here?’” she stated.
One thing wanted to vary — and a brand new basketball league simply getting established within the US occurred to be the reply.
Athletes Limitless (AU) is a month-long one-month girls’s skilled basketball league that launched in 2022, permitting WNBA gamers to remain within the US and develop as basketball gamers. (It’s utterly completely different from Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 basketball league getting began subsequent month in Miami).
Athletes Limitless, which makes use of a posh level system to crown a person champion on the finish of every season (extra on that later), reached out to Brown forward of its inaugural season to gauge her curiosity in taking part. Nonetheless, her agent strongly suggested her to go abroad.
The next yr, Brown fired her agent and adopted her intestine, enjoying in Athletes Limitless’s 2023 season in Dallas fairly than going to Europe.
It’s a call she views as life-changing.
“It actually modified the trajectory of my profession,” Brown stated. “I actually was feeling misplaced as a professional, probably not realizing the place my confidence went, the place my position was going to be on this league.”
At the moment, she serves because the chairperson of the league’s Participant Government Committee, the place she works to recruit different WNBA gamers to the league she views as so personally revitalizing.
How Athletes Limitless crowns a person champion
Athletes Limitless options 40 girls’s basketball gamers who compete in common 5-on-5 basketball video games thrice every week. However whereas the product on the ground would possibly look like common workforce basketball, the scoring system is sort of completely different out of your common basketball league.
Athletes Limitless maintains a operating leaderboard that tallies factors for every participant; gamers earn factors for workforce success (reminiscent of their workforce profitable a sport or 1 / 4) in addition to for particular person success (like scoring, aiding, or rebounding).
Gamers additionally acquire factors if followers and different gamers vote them as one of many MVPs of a selected sport. Conversely, they lose factors for damaging performs, like missed pictures, turnovers, or fouls.
On the finish of every week, the highest 4 gamers with probably the most factors turn into captains, and captains draft new groups every week, so followers consistently get to see completely different combos of gamers collectively. And, whereas on the finish of the season, the participant with probably the most general factors is topped the AU champion, the scoring system is rigorously crafted to incentivize workforce basketball, fairly than ball-hogging.
“We have now formulation in place that ensure that the person factors, and the workforce factors, are weighted in a means the place one individual can’t simply resolve to take the sport over, shoot up all of the pictures, pull all of the factors, and count on to be on the prime of the leaderboard,” Brown stated.
Along with the distinctive level system, AU is completely different from different basketball leagues in that it’s player-led, with none coaches or front-office members. And, as a result of gamers consistently change teammates, the league fosters a way of camaraderie.
“All the things may be very intimate and really family-oriented,” Brown stated. “That’s the primary factor that I personally promote — you’re by no means going to have an surroundings like this, anyplace else on the skilled degree. You must come and expertise it to imagine me. One thing about not having a entrance workplace, not having a coach, not having a training employees, not having the bizarre politics that go on in skilled sports activities, makes this a really free-flowing, enjoyable, high-energy style of basketball. And I feel that’s one thing that the ladies’s sport wants.”
This yr, the season will run from Feb. 5 to March 2 and have WNBA gamers like Kierstan Bell (Las Vegas Aces), Alysha Clark (Aces), Sydney Colson (Aces), Isabelle Harrison (Chicago Sky), Elizabeth Williams (Sky), Jordan Horston (Seattle Storm), Kia Nurse (Sparks), Alissa Pilli (Minnesota Lynx), and Maddy Siegrist (Dallas Wings). Collaborating athletes will earn a minimal of $20,000 for the five-week season, which may enhance to $50,000 with bonuses.
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“We’ve had gamers are available in AU and have All-Star seasons the subsequent yr,” Brown stated. “I don’t suppose that’s a coincidence. I feel that’s due to the vitality and confidence that they’ve gained whereas they play.”
Final yr, Atlanta Dream guard Allisha Gray was the Athletes Unlimited champion. Which means she accrued extra complete factors than some other participant within the league, and was awarded a medal and a commemorative portrait. Just some months later, she grew to become an All-Star for the primary time.
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Brown just lately completed her seventh yr within the WNBA, averaging 8.1 factors and three.3 assists per sport for the Los Angeles Sparks.
She attributes plenty of her continued success within the W to Athletes Limitless.
“It simply re-energized me,” Brown stated. “I regained the love for the sport once more.”
Athletes Limitless is complementary to Unmatched
For the primary time, two skilled girls’s basketball leagues will happen within the U.S. this winter.
Unmatched, a brand new 3-on-3 league co-founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, will launch subsequent month in Miami and have at the least 34 WNBA gamers. That league has generated monumental buzz, promising $150,000+ salaries and securing a media partnership with TNT.
Whereas each leagues will run concurrently, Brown doesn’t view them as competitors for each other. As an alternative, she views their collective success as interconnected.
“It advantages us in the event that they’re profitable, and it advantages them if we’re profitable,” Brown stated. “The extra girls’s basketball is profitable as an entire, that’s the purpose. That’s the final word purpose. It’s wonderful seeing so many alternatives for gamers to remain stateside, whether or not it’s with Athletes Limitless or Unmatched.”
A number of of Unmatched’s inaugural gamers — like Natasha Cloud, Lexie Hull, and Allisha Grey — beforehand performed for Athletes Limitless. Others, like Alyssa Thomas and Kayla McBride, are swapping their longtime abroad assignments for 3-on-3 basketball in Miami.
Brown is solely glad to see there are extra offseason alternatives for girls basketball gamers.
“There are some gamers enjoying in Unmatched that most likely weren’t going to come back enjoying Athletes Limitless anyway, however to have the ability to be making their mark, and them being as excited as they’re for this new girls’s league — that makes me glad, that makes me excited for them,” Brown stated.
Final yr, Athletes Limitless video games had been streamed on WNBA League Pass. This season’s broadcast plans haven’t but been launched, however Brown stated all video games can be very accessible.
Nashville is Athlete Limitless’s house in 2024
For the previous two seasons, Athletes Limitless befell in Dallas. However this season, the league may have a brand new house.
“We had been somewhat iffy about transferring areas,” Brown stated. “We constructed such a very good little neighborhood in Dallas the final two seasons.”
However, Nashville — a metropolis that’s reportedly serious about finally having its personal WNBA workforce — relentlessly recruited AU.
“They made it very, very clear, a number of occasions,” Brown stated. “They had been very persistent about how a lot they wished girls’s skilled basketball within the metropolis.”
The recruitment labored — and in flip, Athletes Limitless is headed to Tennessee.
Brown stated that her main purpose for the upcoming Athletes Limitless season is to extend the visibility of the league. That may result in greater salaries, which in flip, will assist attract extra gamers and create extra alternatives for current ones.
“I simply need extra folks to know what Athletes Limitless is,” Brown stated. “I really feel like not lots of people even know that it exists. My purpose, because the chairperson of the chief committee, is to ensure that we get as many eyeballs on us as potential this season, as a result of I feel that is going to be actually particular. We’re going to do it massive and it’s going to be nice basketball, and it’s going to be plenty of enjoyable to look at.”
This text is the third installment of SB Nation’s new “WNBA Explained” collection, a weekly column diving deep into completely different subjects associated to girls’s basketball. You possibly can learn final week’s column about Unmatched here.
