A'ja Wilson Reportedly Declined Caitlin Clark Like Offer to Join Unrivaled
The new Unrivaled 3x3 women's basketball league was dealt a tough blow on Thursday, when an ESPN report from Wednesday afternoon wrote, "[Caitlin] Clark will not play in the new 3-on-3 league Unrivaled in its upcoming inaugural season, a source with knowledge of the situation told ESPN."
Bringing Clark on board would have been a massive win for Unrivaled, given that she's made an unprecedented impact on women's basketball and would have attracted a ton of attention toward the new league.
While Unrivaled has plenty of superstars already, two other major names (A'ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu) also aren't partaking.
And according to a November 20 article from Sports Business Journal's Tom Friend, Wilson was offered something similar to Clark from Unrivaled but still declined to participate.
"While ESPN reported this afternoon that Clark has decided to pass on Unrivaled’s inaugural three-month season starting Jan. 17 -- with sources recently telling SBJ that Clark’s offer was about $1M plus equity in the business -- other sources are now telling SBJ that Wilson’s offer was for more money than Clark’s, but Wilson is still determined to take the winter off," Friend wrote.
"A’ja just, honestly, she likes to rest her body, she doesn't want to play year-round," said the source close to Wilson in the article. "And she's an outlier of where, just on pure basketball, it's a 3-on-3 league, it's not a 5-on-5 league. So that's one thing. But she's really busy in the offseason. It just was not a great fit for her.
“I believe they did offer more [than Clark], because I know what they offered A’ja. They have a lot of money, and they offered her a lot of money. And I was even just like, ‘Oh, you sure you don't want to do this?’ But I also understand she really values her offseason. And that's where she has risen her game. If you haven't noticed, she's come back with adding something in her game every season. And that's where it happens is in the off-season," this unnamed source added.
A'ja Wilson, Caitlin Clark turn down participating in Unrivaled. “I believe they did offer more [than Clark], because I know what they offered A’ja," a source close to Wilson said. "They have a lot of money, and they offered her a lot of money." https://t.co/7tkvPk4QX7 via @sbj
— Sports Business Journal (@SBJ) November 21, 2024
There's no way of knowing for sure whether Wilson was actually offered more money than Clark for Unrivaled.
And this would seem strange, given that Unrivaled investor and former ESPN President John Skipper admitted, "If you were starting a new league, which we are, in the first game, the most impactful thing that could happen would be that Caitlin Clark would be there and she would be playing," last week.
But the bottom line is that, like Clark, Wilson turned down whatever bag Unrivaled threw her way and instead elected to rest this offseason.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.