Tonight, @nnekaogwumike will play her final @WNBA game. Throughout her career, both on and off the court, she has been instrumental in changing the game for women’s basketball, including leading the charge in 2018 when @TheWNBPA opted out of their CBA. Her message was clear — bet on women: “This is not just about business. This is deeply personal. This is about the kind of world we want to live in. I am an elite athlete. I am an MVP. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a No. 1 draft pick. I am a WNBA player and I am the president of the WNBPA. And I want young female athletes to dream about playing in a vibrant and thriving WNBA. I want them to dream of having it all. I don’t want the best and the brightest female athletes in the world dreaming about playing in the NBA. I don’t want the best and the brightest young girls growing up thinking that men are the pinnacle. I want those girls dreaming about growing up into the best women they can be. And I want them to dream about the league that I know ours can become. A league that has a fair and consistent work environment. A league that treats its players as the world-class athletes they are. A league that invests in its future. A league that believes in us as much as we believe in it. And it’s not just me who wants this. I’m one of 144 WNBA players.... To me, opting out means not just believing in ourselves, but going one step further: betting on ourselves. It means being a group of empowered women, in the year 2018, not just feeling fed up with the status quo, but going one step further: rejecting the status quo. And it means taking a stand, not just for the greatest women’s basketball players of today, but going one step further: taking a stand for the greatest women’s basketball players of tomorrow. Does opting out mean that we have all of the answers right now, and that we’re about to propose a way to fix every problem in the W overnight? Of course not. Does it mean we’re saying this league is broken, and we need to start the whole thing over from scratch? Not even close. We love this league. We’ll always love this league. The WNBA means everything to us.... It’s believing in what you know……. and then being alright with what you don’t know. And while we don’t know what the future has in store for this league — we do know that there’s never been a better time to be a part of it. We believe in women, we believe in the WNBA, we believe in the WNBPA, and we believe that, wherever the finish line is for this movement that we’re a part of…… we’re just not there yet. We’re opting out because women’s basketball’s potential is infinite. We’re opting out because there’s still a lot more work to be done. And we’re betting on ourselves to do it.” playerstribu.ne/BetOnWomen