Starting a new professional sports league from scratch is a major undertaking that will come with some inevitable ups and downs, as Unrivaled has already found out. After an exciting build-up and thrilling debut last month, the league recently had to cancel a game between Laces BC and Vinyl BC due to injuries. Meanwhile, six matchups in the first round of the highly anticipated 1-on-1 tournament, which will begin Monday, have been scrapped for the same reason.
Ahead of that event, CBS Sports talked with Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell, who is married to one of the league’s co-founders, Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier, to discuss the recent cancellation and how the league is handling player health and safety.
Alex Bazzell: I think the biggest thing we’re trying to make sure we convey is we’re not trying to be vague here. We’re more so just trying to put the players’ health at the forefront and making sure they’re not carrying on through some lingering little injuries that happen throughout the course of any season, but making sure that they’re fully healthy as they move forward throughout the course of the remaining season.
We’re just putting them at the forefront of everything knowing that they’re partners in the business and there’s a larger mission that we’re working to accomplish — not just this year, but as we move forward with the league. It was more from that standpoint of, ‘How are we working with our athletes? What sort of feedback are they giving us?’ And making sure we’re putting our best foot forward from a product perspective each night and not putting anyone at risk for injury during that process.
CBS Sports: Going into the season, was there any official guideline on how many players needed to be healthy to go ahead with a game? For example, in the NBA a team needs to have eight healthy players or the game cannot be played.
Bazzell: Yes. We originally went from five players to six players [on each roster], if you recall. Part of that was being proactive. We know in sports you’re just gonna have times where players may miss a game, whether they’re sick or tweak an ankle, so making sure players are not having to push through injuries because of not having enough roster spots. That was the first thing we did.
Secondly, was establishing our relief player pool of who’s available. Just the same way you have hardship contracts in the WNBA, in case you need an extra player or two for a game or a couple of games. Our vision was to never get below four players, of course. You never want to go below four players available. Ideally for us we always stay above five players available. We are proactive with making sure, even if there’s a few players out, like you’ve seen with the Laces, we at least have five healthy able bodies going into that game night.
Specifically for the Laces game, we had brought in a relief player [Kiki Jefferson was signed prior to the game being cancelled], had a second relief player that was ready to go and then there was something that came up last second where one of the players — we were at five — just felt like, ‘Ah, I don’t know if I’m fully ready to push through it.’ That was the decision we made as a group between the team and the league to say, ‘The risk isn’t worth the reward here, let’s cancel the game and then move on and make sure we get these players completely healthy.’ Not just physically, but mentally. As an athlete you don’t want to ever be feeling like you’re having to reserve yourself to keep yourself from an injury either.
There’s a lot of that that we’re doing a little bit differently to try to put them at the forefront knowing that these players not only play in our league, but they play in the WNBA. We want to make sure we’re maintaining health being at the forefront. For us, we’re always making sure we have additional bodies ready to play if there are last-second injuries. This was just a perfect storm of what’s going on with [Alyssa Thomas] being out, [Tiffany Hayes] being in concussion protocol. Those are things that happen in sports and you go from there and tackle the challenges as they come in.
CBS Sports: You mentioned the WNBA. Are you in contact with players’ WNBA teams and those medical staffs?
Bazzell: Yes we are. Our recovery and training staff of PTs and ATs — some of which are from WNBA teams, No. 1. We have three or four women in our training staff that work for the WNBA teams during the W season. And secondly, we have a touch point with all the training staffs in the league. For the Lynx, it’s making sure they’re communicating when the players arrive, knowing if they’re arriving with anything lingering from the W season that we should know about. There’s a lot of that that takes place. Ultimately, you want the players to feel comfortable and know that they’re getting the necessary care that’s tailored to them. The only way you do that is communicate with the staffs that are working on these players for six months of the year along with our 10 weeks out of the year.
CBS Sports: What is your official injury reporting process?
Tish Carmona, Unrivaled director of communications: In our game notes we send out before every game, we have a section that lists what players are out and for what reason. It’s not a separate communication that comes out, but it is communicated. We have our standard reporting process because of our work with Draft Kings.
CBS Sports: Did you have a pool of replacement players set up before the season, or are you trying to figure that aspect out on the fly?
Bazzell: We’ve had a process from a business perspective of what happens when [an injury] takes place. We signed Natisha Hiedeman, who came in originally for the Phantom and then she went into the player pool. She stays on sight, she trains, she’s paid to be here and now she’s with the Laces as a relief player. When we sign these players, and you’re gonna see a few more signed in the next week or two, they stay on site. Unlike the W, where you fly them in, fly them out. Because we have a compressed season, from a logistics stand point we don’t want to get into that habit. That’s how it was set up originally and you don’t have to mess with it until it becomes a thing. Even the [Lunar] Owls, who’ve always had five players, we’ve asked them, ‘Hey, we want to sign another player,’ and they’ve been pretty adamantly against adding another player to their team even though they have five. So that’s where it’s a case-by-case basis, but we do have protocols that were set up before the season.
CBS Sports: Has this experience with the Laces made you consider adding extra roster spots to each team next season?
Bazzell: Yeah, that’s something we’re in ongoing conversations with with players. Making sure that they feel like we have enough players per team, but at the same time you have some of the best players in the world who all want to play and get their touches, so there’s a balance there. But as we move forward, you’re gonna see us probably introduce a few more players to maybe not even roster spots, but the active player pool that are here training, developing, maybe not fitting the threshold of some of the other players we have, but players who would benefit by being here, getting paid, learning and building their games during the offseason. That’s something that’s an ongoing conversation with our players.
CBS Sports: Is there going to be a make-up date for the cancelled game between Laces and Vinyl?
Bazzell: This is gonna be a cancellation. It’s gonna be a forfeit. It’s gonna be a win for Vinyl and a loss for the Laces. This was more of a team thing and not a league decision. We worked with the team on if they could play, if they couldn’t. Ultimately, it came down to we aren’t gonna make up the game. It’s not a postponement, it’s a cancellation with the Vinyl getting a win.
CBS Sports: Is there a concern that this could happen with the Laces’ next game?
Bazzell: No. They’re gonna be healthy. Both of the players that were out, that were on the fence, are both gonna be active and playing. And there’s even a lot of optimism toward another player being active. They should be up to full strength coming out of the 1 v. 1 weekend.
CBS Sports: My last question is somewhat related to the cancellation issue, as well as Sabrina Ionescu missing two games earlier this season to be at Paris Fashion Week. When you look at things like that, as well as what appears to be some waning interest from fans, how do you balance putting the players first with building the league as a business?
Note: On opening night on Friday, Jan. 17, Unrivaled’s first ever games drew 290,000 and 280,00 viewers on TNT. Two weeks later on Friday, Jan. 31 the two games that night drew 190,000 and 140,000 viewers. Even if you account for that being New Year’s Eve, the two TNT games on Monday, Feb. 3 drew 190,000 and 150,000 viewers.
Bazzell: Our players want to be out there competing because of pride purposes alone. But what separates us is there’s an ownership perspective. It’s not like you’re just showing up and collecting a paycheck, which by the way, the majority of our players are making more in this league. There’s a true business hat that these players are wearing to understand you have to deliver a great product, which I think is what you’re getting to. This can’t be looked at as the ‘offseason’ league because if the players don’t care, then the fans won’t care.
But I think what you’re seeing from the competition is people are shocked by how hard the players are playing. It’s not a matter of ‘do they care?’ or ‘are they putting their full weight behind it?’ Because they are. It’s just more of the fact that you have to deal with injuries like any other league, you have a shorter bench compared to any other league. There was an instance where unfortunately this came up and we had to deal with it. As a league, we’ll make adjustments to make sure this doesn’t happen again because we have to deliver for our partners and our fans to put out a great product every night. But the last thing we’re concerned about is ‘do the players care?’ or ‘do they want to be here?’
Most of these players make enough money off the court where they don’t have to play, but there’s a deep element of ownership and changing the game and moving it forward, which is why you’re getting the participation you’re getting. Quite honestly, we have a few players that we didn’t think were gonna play in 1 v. 1 that were very adamant that they wanted to play in 1 v. 1. I think it’s a balance. You have to meet players where they’re at, especially going into this first offseason.
Your question around Sabrina is we signed her so late because Kelsey Plum unfortunately couldn’t play. We support her in that, but we had to make an adjustment to make sure the league made up for that loss, both on the court and off the court. That’s where her schedule was already baked out and set and we’re working with her in Year 1, but Year 2 she’s gonna be here the whole time.
That’s where you have to build from scratch, and you have to make some concessions to meet the players where they’re at with commitments they’ve already made. But knowing as we move forward, this is a highly, highly competitive league, and we have to deliver for the fans and our brand partners.
