Hot seat

 I don't know if WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert is hearing footsteps yet, but if she isn't she's either not paying attention or she's in willful denial. Because the footsteps are shaking the ground all around her.

First it was WNBA star Napheesa Collier flame-broiling her leadership, or lack thereof, in a brutal but carefully crafted four-minute takedown.

Then it was ESPN blowhole Stephen A. Smith calling for Engelbert's resignation -- significant not because it differed much from a lot of Stephen A.'s spew, but because it was Stephen A. Who, let's face it, is on your TV screen more than a 1950s test pattern these days.

Then it was former WNBA player Stacey Dales lighting her up with a story about how Engelbert basically ignored the rollout of the WNBA's new Toronto franchise.

Then ...

Well. Point made.

That point being Engelbert is on an exceedingly hot seat these days, and it's not apt to get cooler in the days ahead. Among league players and coaches, for instance, there's all but a full-scale mutiny going on over the WBNA's glaring officiating issues, and no amount of fining or suspending can seem to slow it down.

Collier's ripped the officiating. Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham have. And when Engelbert suspended Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve for her profanity-laced rant about the officiating in the Lynx-Phoenix Mercury series?

Fever coach Stephanie White and Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon both publicly backed Reeve's play, essentially saying, well, hell, she's not wrong.

Engelbert's lost the locker room, in other words. This will happen when, according to Collier, the commissioner all but sneers at the league's most prominent seat-filler (Clark), and says the players should be on their knees thanking the commish for the chunky TV deal, she got for them.

That was part of Collier's four-minute manifesto the other day, and it tracks with the contempt the boardroom seems to have for its working stiffs here in the Oligarch America of 2025 -- i.e., you should be grateful you have a job, ya bunch of bellyachers. Now go away and let me count the pile I'm making off you.

I don't know if that's Engelbert's mindset, but she did come to the WNBA from the corporate world (Deloitte) and seems to have brought those above-the-little-people sensibilities with her.

This from Sports Business Journal: "She hasn't connected; she's not a relationship builder, which you have be in that job with the teams, with the players," a source familiar with league office dynamics said last month. "I think she's a wicked smart business person, and the success she gets a lot of credit for. But a commissioner has to have a personality element that can touch every constituent that they have. I think she's lacking in it."

Which makes her appallingly tone-deaf, not to say appallingly wrong. To say Clark owes the WNBA for her off-the-court endorsement haul (as Collier claims Engelbert did) is to ignore the fact Clark was making major endorsement coin before she ever stepped foot on a WNBA floor. And, of course, it ignores the fact the fan base and attention Clark brought to Engelbert's league gave the commish major leverage in negotiating that aforementioned TV deal.

In other words, Engelbert ought to be on her knees thanking Caitlin Clark. And doing something about the league's officiating instead of fining and suspending players and coaches for criticizing it.

Because they're right, and she's wrong. And the spotlight that's on her league now is glaringly exposing just how wrong.

And as those footsteps get louder and louder.