Unrivaled’s ‘summer camp’ vibes should pay dividends in WNBA season

A few days after Napheesa Collier won Unrivaled’s inaugural one-on-one tournament, which came with a $200,000 prize, she was greeted in one of the league’s hallways by a curious fan who wanted a piece of her winnings.

The fan recently turned 8, and her mom, Vinyl Basketball Club forward Dearica Hamby, is one of Collier’s chief competitors in both Unrivaled and the WNBA. But that didn’t stop Amaya, Hamby’s daughter, from asking Collier if she had $20 she could spare.

Collier, Unrivaled’s co-founder, could do better than that. She gave Amaya two $50 bills instead.

“Then,” Hamby recalled, “Amaya was like, ‘Can Napheesa adopt me?'”

The interaction is quintessentially Unrivaled. It involves players from competing teams, a family member, and one of the league’s large payouts. It’s no surprise it happened in a hallway either, as the six locker rooms and training rooms are a short walking distance from each other in Unrivaled’s Wayfair Arena.

Part of what makes Unrivaled unique is that it gathered around three dozen top players in one place for an extended period. Since January, they’ve competed against one another and shared numerous spaces like the facility’s sauna, glam room and weight room. Players have socialized — the training room is one of the hubs for gossip — and picked up on the habits of peers.

“It’s like summer camp,” Hamby said.

Only this one features elite athletes getting paid an average of more than $200,000 to train and play professionally.

“It’s not just work here,” Vinyl wing Rhyne Howard said. “There’s a joy and entertainment with it as well.”

Entering Unrivaled’s inaugural season, some players compared the setup to the WNBA bubble from the summer of 2020. Amid the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, that league held a 22-game season entirely within the boundaries of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla.

This league is also being played in Florida, but much has changed in the world. Unrivaled’s vibe is different, Phantom guard Sabrina Ionescu said. “It’s not as sad,” Hamby said.

The proximity has created playful moments among peers who might not otherwise spend time together. Phantom players competed against each other at TopGolf, where Satou Sabally once hit a shot so poorly it ricocheted off their golf ball dispenser. Howard has regularly enlisted her teammates for TikToks. She said her Vinyl teammate Rae Burrell, Lunar Owls guard Courtney Williams, and Mist forward Rickea Jackson have been some of Unrivaled’s social butterflies.

Notre Dame alums Marina Mabrey, Jackie Young and Arike Ogunbowale, all of whom are on different Unrivaled and WNBA teams, have taken advantage of being in the same place at the same time. They gathered in an apartment to watch the Irish play Stanford, and later saw Notre Dame defeat Miami in nearby Coral Gables.

“We’re really happy to be back together, to have times like we had in college,” Mabrey said.

A calf injury has kept Mabrey from playing this winter, but she’s still around the Unrivaled facility. Players from various teams have taught her dance moves in the weight room. On multiple occasions, Mabrey has also filmed herself cooking for her peers, later sharing videos on social media of her process and their reactions.

Early in the season, Mist wing DiJonai Carrington provided Mabrey, who plays for Phantom, with a box of spices (Mabrey, up to that point, said she only had salt and pepper). Under Armour, one of Mabrey’s brand partners, sent the guard cooking utensils, an apron, a chef’s hat and even some Ayesha Curry cookbooks. A young fan also gifted her utensils and a matching apron, too.

Unrivaled brought together old friends and sparked new relationships. But the proximity has also pushed players to perform better.

Hamby said: “I think it’s keeping everybody a little bit inspired to work hard. You see what other people are doing so you’re like, ‘Oh, I gotta be on top of my s—.'”

“(It’s an) iron sharpens iron mentality,” Lunar Owls guard Skylar Diggins-Smith added. “We’re passing by each other in the weight room, seeing each other on the floor, getting to play with players you don’t normally get to play with.”

Of course, there are drawbacks. The six locker rooms either share walls or are across the hall from each other.

“It sucks to lose and then you have to go see or hear people in the other locker room,” Rose forward Azurá Stevens said. “Nobody would like that.”

Breaks from basketball have been important. Howard and her Atlanta Dream teammates at Unrivaled took a boat trip for a few hours in late January. They caught a fish, and the outing also served as the setting for Brittney Griner to film her announcement about joining the Dream.

Earlier this week, some Unrivaled players, coaches and staffers visited Disney World. Mist guard Courtney Vandersloot has been a roller coaster fan since childhood and enjoyed riding Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at Epcot. Lunar Owls guard Courtney Williams had fun, too, but provided a different report back about a WNBA teammate’s experience. “(Natisha Hiedeman) do not like rides,” Williams said. “She got on and we had to beg her the whole way through and keep her uplifted.”

On March 17, Unrivaled will hold its first championship. Afterward, some players won’t see each other again until WNBA training camps in late April. Others won’t see each other until they cross paths in WNBA games.

But it will be another year until the Unrivaled’s second season begins. That’s when the main hallway, which has become the site for players to retell Diana Taurasi stories, to dance, and even for Mist forward Aaliyah Edwards to do a one-handed cartwheel, will come to life again.

“Just enjoying the moment,” Vinyl center Aliyah Boston said. “Because you don’t get to play with (many of) these women during the season. For now, it’s just embracing them, making the TikToks and having fun off the court.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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