After months of speculation, Sabrina Ionescu officially signs on with Unrivaled

A source close to the situation told The Next that these “natural alignments” for Ionescu played a role in her finally committing to play in Unrivaled. Ionescu had been in talks with Unrivaled following capturing the WNBA title in late October.

And although she recently had surgery on a torn UCL in her right thumb that she sustained in Game 5 of the WNBA Finals, Ionescu is “estimated to return to on-court activity” by approximately the first week of January.

ESPN reported earlier on Monday that Ionescu’s deal with the league, which will provide her with an equity stake, is “unprecedented” and “historic”. ESPN‘s Kendra Andrews reported that Ionescu’s contract will put her “in a category of her own”.

While it has been reported that Unrivaled’s total salary pool is above $8 million and that the average Unrivaled salary is higher than the 2024 WNBA super max salary of $241,984, specifics of player contracts haven’t been revealed. However, John Skipper, one of Unrivaled’s investors, commented publicly on the podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out that the salaries of co-founders Breanna Stewart, of the New York Liberty, and Napheesa Collier, of the Minnesota Lynx, will be the highest. “Nobody will get a better deal than the co-founders,” he said.

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In the end, Ionescu joined Unrivaled because she believed that joining a league that would give her an equity stake and a historic deal was an important step for her career. According to the AP’s Doug Feinberg, part of saying yes to Unrivaled revolved around the fact that the league allowed for flexibility in her schedule during its season. If she needs to step away from Unrivaled’s location in Miami for a few days due to a commitment such as another NBA All-Star three point contest against Stephen Curry, Unrivaled has given her the blessing to do so. 

“I have certain dates that I have to be gone for,” Ionescu told Feinberg. “They were very accommodating with things I already accepted and have to be gone for before I committed to the league,” Ionescu said.

The plot to secure Ionescu

The campaign to lure New York Liberty guard Ionescu to join Unrivaled began publicly a bit over six months ago. On June 1, a day after Stewart and Collier announced that the league would officially tip-off in 2025, Ionescu was asked prior to the Liberty’s home game against the Washington Mystics if she was interested in joining the startup league.

While Ionescu lauded the idea of Unrivaled and its goal of keeping the WNBA’s most prominent stars stateside, she was hesitant to state her interest. “I don’t know,” she told a scrum of reporters. “I enjoy my time with my husband the few months that I get with him in the offseason. So as of now, I’m not really thinking about it too much, but who knows?”

Her Liberty teammate and Unrivaled co-founder Stewart responded to Ionescu’s dithering moments later with a smirk and a smile. “I’m going to just keep telling Sab to come, right?” Stewart said.

Stewart yelled “Sab” from the baseline at Barclays Center that evening to get her teammates attention and confirmation that she’d be down to join Unrivaled. She shook her head up in down in Ionescu’s direction and said “see” to the group of reporters. Stewart appeared to be joking, but now we know she wasn’t.

This exchange all took place a couple of months before Ionescu played for Team USA in the Paris Olympics. While Ionescu had met Collier at previous USA Basketball camps in the lead-up to the Olympics, the two bonded while in Paris. Ionescu didn’t just bond with Collier. She also got to know Collier’s daughter Mila and her husband Alex Bazzell, the President of Unrivaled. Mila gravitated toward Ionescu, as the New York Liberty star became the proverbial nanny for children with parents on Team USA.

After Game 4 of the WNBA finals, which the Liberty lost in Minneapolis, Ionescu and her husband Hroniss Grasu reunited with the two-year old Mila. The child hugged Ionescu’s legs and then ran and gave a bear hug to Grasu. Bazzell acknowledged the bond between Ionescu and his daughter once he saw the video of the interaction that went viral online. “Ever since the Olympics, she is always asking where Sab is,” he posted on X.

When The Athletic followed up with Ionescu about Unrivaled in September after Sabally and Liberty teammate Courtney Vandersloot signed on to play, she still was unsure. She explained how having a long off-season allowed her to focus in on her player development goals and she saw extreme growth in her game from year-to-year.

But that’s a feature of Unrivaled: a focus on player development. And that was made abundantly clear when the league announced its head coaches — the majority of them have player development backgrounds, including Harrington, who will be Ionescu’s coach.

Ionescu’s Unrivaled relationships helped shape her decision

Harrington and Ionescu go way back. In March, Harrington posted a video of himself trying on a pair of Ionescu’s signature shoes. In the video, he explained how he got to know the Liberty star. He met Ionescu after she endured a third degree ankle sprain during the 2020 bubble season.

At this time, Harrington was working out with Kevin Durant, and at the same time, Ionescu was working with Dr. Andy Barr, a specialist in physical therapy and athletic performance. Ionescu watched Durant work out with Harrington and the two became friends. Harrington met Ionescu’s family, and her relationship with her twin brother Eddy reminded Harrington of his relationship with his late sister. Ionescu made an appearance at a charity event for the foundation that Harrington set-up to honor his sister back in 2021. At the time, Harrington was also an assistant coach on the Brooklyn Nets bench.

Harrington remembered vividly when Ionescu reached out to seek his advice. “I remember as she was going in to a season, you know, she was just, she just reached out,” Harrington said. “And, you know, I was able to give her a different perspective, encourage her from a different angle.”

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That trust between the two has continued over the years. When Ionescu did some marketing engagements for the NBA in France this past January, she called Harrington to come work out with her while he was in France.

There’s trust between the two just like there’s trust between Ionescu and former Oregon teammate Sabally. On Saturday night, days before Ionescu was announced as part of Unrivaled, Sabally and Harrington’s team Phantom BC was involved in a trade that sent them the final wildcard spot and Natasha Cloud, who was subsequently traded for Courtney Williams, over in exchange for Jackie Young and Tiffany Hayes. While the two trades trade reunited WNBA teammates Cloud and Brittney Griner as well as Collier and Williams, the trades also made room on Phantom BC for the spot that would become Ionescu’s.

Sabally actually manifested the two playing 3×3 back in 2021. She posted an old photo from college on Instagram of the pair with their college teammates Ruthy Hebard and Minyon Moore. She captioned it with the text: “What if we’d play 3×3?” Ionescu commented underneath the photo: “We wouldn’t lose”. And then Sabally replied back: “Facts.”

Now both Ionescu and Sabally can put that idea to the test. And now that Ionescu has officially been recruited to Unrivaled after months of back-and-fourth and speculation, it might be Ionescu’s turn to recruit once again when she touches down in Miami next month.

Since Sabally will be an unrestricted free agent in the WNBA, could playing 3×3 in Unrivaled create a possible WNBA recruitment opportunity for Ionescu? Could the Liberty employ two Saballys instead of one? While Satou’s younger sister Nyara recently acknowledged the possibility of playing WNBA basketball with her sister, for now it all remains to be seen. For now, she’s just focusing on the inaugural Unrivaled season.

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