2024 has been an amazing year for Sabrina Ionescu, and she closes the year in style by joining the upstart league, Unrivaled!
It’s been an incredible 2024 for Sabrina Ionescu. In March, she married her fiancée, Hroniss Grasu. In August, she was instrumental in Team USA’s second half rally as they captured gold at the Olympics. In October, she capped off another great regular season by helping the New York Liberty win their first WNBA championship.
Now, as this year closes out, Sabrina is adding one more win to her personal record books. It’s unrivaled.
Unrivaled is a new 3×3 league started by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. It represents a great new opportunity for players to hoop during the W offseason while staying stateside. The games will air on TNT starting on Friday January 17, 2025. It has current stars like Phee, Stewie, and Angel Reese. In the future, rising stars like Paige Bueckers of UConn and USC’s Juju Watkins will be in the league. On Monday, the upstart added another big name to their star studded roster.
On December 23, the Phantom Basketball Club put this teaser out that had everyone buzzing
WILDCARD THREE ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/x3zA8Awd1c
— Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) December 23, 2024
And a little while later, they made it official
We may not see Ionescu immediately as she’s recovering from surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in her right thumb. Sab hurt it in game four of the WNBA Finals against the Minnesota Lynx, but she should be good to go not too long from now.
[Chris Pietsch/The Register-Guard] / USA TODAY NETWORK
When she does play, she’ll be teaming up with her good friend and former Oregon teammate, Satou Sabally. Britney Griner, Marina Mabrey, Katie Lou Samuelson and Natasha Cloud round out the roster and will be coached by former Brooklyn Nets assistant coach and head of player development, Adam Harrington. This is Ionescu’s first time playing competitive basketball in the off-season, and this opportunity was too special to pass up.
“I weighed out all my options and decided to do what’s best for me and my career,” she told Doug Feinberg of the Associated Press. “Being able to take part in a league that is the first of its kind with a historic deal and be on the ownership side of it is important for me.”
Players in the league all have equity and will split an over $8 million salary pool. Ionescu will reportedly be “in a category of her own” when it comes to salary, per ESPN’s Kendra Andrews. She also has flexibility to tend to other responsibilities around NBA All Star Weekend:
“I have certain dates that I have to be gone for. They were very accommodating with things I already accepted and have to be gone for before I committed to the league”
Will we see a rematch of her three point contest with the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry? And will Klay Thompson and Caitlin Clark join the party? Who knows, but we’re excited to see what’s in store this February!
Sabrina Ionescu has been through a lot to get to this moment. She’s experienced personal tragedy and injuries that had her questioning if she’d ever be the star she wanted to be in the league. But through it all, she’s stuck with it and grown to be one of the game’s very best players. She’s someone that inspires young fans here in New York and all around the world. This latest endeavor will help Ionescu on her upward swing and help the game of basketball reach even higher heights.