MINNEAPOLIS — A photograph hung in Napheesa Collier’s childhood home, serving as both inspiration and expectation. In it, President John F. Kennedy is sitting at the White House with her grandfather Gershon, one of the men responsible for negotiating Sierra Leone’s independence in 1961 after more than 150 years of British rule.
Collier’s father, Gamal, shared so much about his dad, the company he kept and the dignified manner with which he served as a U.N. diplomat. The stories helped Collier connect with her grandfather even though he died two years before she was born. Gamal Collier didn’t want his daughter to lose sight that their last name gave her a purpose, a standard to uphold.
“I told her, ‘You have an obligation to make your own stamp in the world,’” Gamal Collier said in a telephone interview.
Collier didn’t have a choice but to be a difference maker, whether she became a hooper or an accountant. That she chose basketball has worked out well for the Minnesota Lynx, the top seed in the WNBA playoffs and a favorite to win the championship, in no small part because of Collier’s MVP-caliber season. It already worked out for Connecticut, where as a freshman she helped Geno Auriemma win his 11th of 12 national titles.
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And it could soon work out for the betterment of the women’s game, given Collier’s status as not just one of the WNBA’s best players but an essential leader as well — a passionate advocate for player rights amid a looming labor struggle that has coincided with the sport’s popularity boom.
“Women’s sports is just exploding right now,” Collier said. “It feels like everyone’s making money off of that except for the women in the sports.”
Collier can’t afford to simply play ball and go home. In addition to being on the front lines of the dispute between the WNBA and its players over revenue and salaries, she helped create and maintain a separate basketball league to get more money in players’ pocketsand has served as a trusted voice on social issues of fairness and equality. She is balancing those duties with being a wife to Alex Bazzell, who is also her business partner, and a mother to their 3-year old daughter, Mila.
“The word that comes to mind for Phee in managing all that is grace,” said Cheryl Reeve, Collier’s coach for her entire WNBA career.
Prepared to meet this moment by the family she was born into, the college she chose and the franchise that chose her, Collier is committed to her calling. She lives by the mantra “Anyway Na Way” — a Sierra Leonean Krio phrase that means to never give up and reach your goals by any means.
“There’s nothing that surprises me about her. And there’s nothing that’s going to stop her from getting what she wants,” Auriemma said in a telephone interview. “She’s a mom. She’s really, really smart. She’s beautiful. She’s talented. She’s articulate. She’s graceful in her game. She’s passionate. So when you say, ‘What are all the qualities that you would want in someone to be an example, to be a role model, to be a leader?’ You’d be hard-pressed to find somebody better than Pheesa.”
‘You have a voice, you use it’
Collier grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri, the daughter of a White farm girl from tiny Eugene and a Black father from Sierra Leone who was the privileged son of that country’s former ambassador to the United States.
Raising a professional athlete wasn’t the plan. Sports were part of a package that developed a whole person. Collier’s parents encouraged her to say what was on her mind and to take advantage of the opportunities afforded her.
“With this gift, you have to give back,” Gamal Collier said he told his daughter. “That’s the price for being good at something. You have to do something with it. You have a voice, you use it. And you don’t do it for popularity, you don’t do it for clout.”
There was an example of where it could lead hanging on the wall. Gershon Collier served as the nation’s first permanent representative for the United Nations. and its U.S. ambassador. He opened the first Sierra Leonean Embassy in America and was one of the last dignitaries to meet with Kennedy before the president was assassinated in 1963.
“I don’t want to disappoint him,” Collier said of her grandfather. “I want to be able to be brave like that. If you can help get independence for a country, I feel like I can speak out against these things.”
Riding horses one day and in an African fashion show the next, Collier embraced both sides of her background. But she also had to navigate this country as a Black woman. While in high school, her family moved to St. Louis, where she earned an education in systemic racism when Michael Brown was killed by a police officer and ignited weeks of protest in nearby Ferguson.
“It kind of forced you to become aware,” said Collier, whose family attended one of the protest marches. “I just, honestly, had lived a sheltered life. I never saw some really harsh truths about the world.”
Collier developed a curiosity and empathy that has now made her a go-to person to provide perspective on pressing issues. On the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, which set off the so-called racial reckoning in this country, Collier took the microphone in May before a game against the Connecticut Sun to make a 40-second statement about how his death “exposed the holes that are still in our justice and criminal institutions.” She also encouraged people to continue to fight injustice.
Collier discovered that in these deeply divided times, even declaring that “every life deserves respect and dignity” can be considered controversial. What she thought were innocuous comments resulted in an unexpected backlash from some right-wing pundits.
“I believe in what I said,” said Collier, who spent time in the aftermath of Floyd’s death educating some of her White family members about racial dynamics. “I think we should honor and keep George’s name alive. We should stand up against injustices. I know that I’m always coming from a good place. You never want to be misunderstood and offend people, but for some things, you have to stand strong in what your morals are.”
‘She felt the empowerment’
The first time Auriemma watched Collier play, her motor stood out the most, he said. She played with the same energy at the opening tip as she did in the closing minutes. It gave her an edge that might not always be appreciated by the casual fan but definitely gets acknowledged by the box score.
“Her game is not loud,” Auriemma said. “Makes it all look like routine. Sometimes people overlook that.”
That is one explanation for why Collier slipped to the sixth pick of the 2019 WNBA draft after a stellar career at Connecticut that included the national title as a freshman and Final Four appearances all four seasons. But her slide resulted in a perfect fit for her in Minnesota, where a pair of Hall of Famers, Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus, showed her how to be a professional.
“She was a sponge,” said Augustus, who spent her final season in Minnesota watching Collier win rookie of the year honors. “Very observative of the things that we did as a culture, as a people, what we stood on.”
The Lynx organization, led by the WNBA’s longest-tenured coach in Reeve, was at the forefront of the social justice movement in sports that developed over the past decade. One of the lessons Collier learned upon her arrival was the importance of speaking out fearlessly for things you find meaningful.
“A lot of times … where you end up and what you have around you can either stunt your growth or accelerate your growth,” Reeve said, mentioning how Collier’s arrival on a talent-laden team helped her win immediately. “Syl and Seimone, they taught Phee. Phee was like, ‘I watched them put themselves in that space.’ And she felt the empowerment. And so that’s why you see Phee stepping into the spaces that she is. Boldly. Courageously.”
In the meantime, Collier’s game has made more people care what she has to say. Fans started calling her “Queen Phee” last year, when she started on the U.S. gold medal team at the Paris Olympics and had Minnesota positioned to win its first WNBA title since 2017 before, as Reeve said, it “was stolen.”
The Lynx lost in Game 5 of the Finals after a controversial late foul call allowed the New York Liberty to send it to overtime. Collier said she didn’t dwell on the painful defeat. She took a week off, then got back to training for the first season of Unrivaled, the three-on-three league she formed with Bazzell and Breanna Stewart, a two-time WNBA MVP.
“I guess it motivated me in the offseason where I want to win. I want to be the champion next time we’re in this situation,” said Collier, who was Unrivaled’s inaugural MVP. “I think the real shift is mentally just with the aggression that I try to come with every game and the mentality that I have that when I’m out there: I need to be the best player.”
Collier was the clear MVP front-runner this season before an ankle injury caused her to miss seven games, but she remains firmly in the mix after becoming the second player in WNBA history to finish a season shooting 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three-point range and 90 percent from the foul line. She led the Lynx to a tie for the most regular season wins in league history (34) and a first-round sweep of the Golden State Valkyries. They open their semifinal series against the Phoenix Mercury on Sunday in their quest to return to the Finals.
“All the years that [Collier] has been in the WNBA, they’ve been right there,” Auriemma said. “I think they may have what they need this year. If they’re healthy, I don’t know that anybody can beat them.”
‘There is no business without us’
Women have gone overseas for decades to receive more lucrative contracts. Collier played in France and Turkey, but that option became more challenging and less appealing after she gave birth to Mila in May 2022. That desire to collect decent money while staying home led to the creation of Unrivaled.
“We see the holes in the WNBA, in women’s basketball, and we wanted to create a place where players had more power, more money, more equity,” Collier said. “A lot of people don’t realize we make most of our money off the court through brand-building. So trying to make money with where your actual job is, we wanted to change that narrative.”
Collier is also a vice president in the WNBA players union, which is negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with the league. During the All-Star Game in Indianapolis, players wore shirts that read “Pay Us What You Owe Us,” delivering a message that in a time of booming interest and ratings, billion-dollar broadcasting rights deals and expansion franchises going for $250 million, the players are no longer willing to accept the status quo.
“For so long there are so many different narratives and barriers,” Collier said. “‘No one’s watching women’s sports. This is a losing business deal.’ … None of those are true anymore. There’s no more excuse. Players really know the power that they hold. There is no business without us. We are the product.”
Collier has been intentional about the moves she has made, understanding that her value will never be greater than while she’s playing. (“I’ve always told her that you don’t sell yourself short,” Gamal Collier said. “You’re the one with the talent; you should benefit first.”) But watch her play or interact with her Lynx teammates — postgame Electric Slide celebrations and all — and it’s clear her motivation in capturing that elusive WNBA title comes from the joy of being part of something greater than herself.
“It’s been super fun,” Collier said of this season. “Our bond is even tighter because we have that year of ups and downs and adversity under our belt. I really couldn’t ask to do it with a better group of people. Just so selfless and team-oriented, where we’re never pointing the finger if something goes wrong. You’re never taking the glory when something goes right. That’s, to me, what the purity of sports is.”
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