In her seven years with the Minnesota Lynx, Napheesa "Phee" Collier has established herself as one of the best basketball players in the world: defensive player of the year, multiple WNBA first team player, two-time Olympic gold medalist. But at the Lynx end-of-season news conference, she read a statement that made it clear that as a leader of the players union, she intends to lead her entire sport as it enters a crucial labor showdown at the apex of the league’s boom in popularity. “We have the best players in the world, we have the best fans in the world,” she calmly read, “but right now we have the worst leadership in the world.” Her statement was passionate and media savvy—spilling tea from a private conversation with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert who had minimized the value of star player Caitlin Clark. That Collier could so calmly eviscerate her league’s boss in such a huge moment isn’t a surprise to anybody familiar with her backstory (her grandfather, Gershon Collier, was Sierra Leone’s first representative to the U.N.), her résumé (she’s the co-founder of Unrivaled, the off-season women’s 3x3 league, which will provide leverage in the WNBA labor negotiation), or her playing style.