Napheesa Collier Honored to Be Inspiration for Icy Hot's $10K Unrivaled Staff Bonus

Women's Fastbreak on SI spoke with Unrivaled co-founder and Lynx star Napheesa Collier about the league's most recent partnership.

Oct 18, 2024; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier (24) celebrates her teams win after game four of the 2024 WNBA Finals against the New York Liberty at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Matt Krohn-Imagn Images | Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Last week, news came out that the Unrivaled 3x3 women's basketball league partnered with Icy Hot to surprise Unrivaled's training staff with $10,000 bonuses on International Women's Day, as a way to honor the great work they've done during Unrivaled's first season.

Not only does this partnership convey Icy Hot's commitment to supporting women in sports, but it also takes inspiration from Unrivaled co-founder and Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier's decision to donate half of her $100,000 prize from winning the Unrivaled 1-on-1 tournament to her Lunar Owls BC team's assistant coaches, training staff, and behind-the-scenes team. 

Women's Fastbreak on SI spoke with Collier on March 11 to discuss this Icy Hot partnership, Unrivaled's first season, and a bit about her alma mater UConn Huskies.

When the Icy Hot announcement came out, we learned that their decision to give the $10,000 bonuses to the female trainers was inspired by you giving half of your Unraveled one-on-one tournament winnings to your Lunar Owls training staff. What does it mean to you that your decision inspired this?

NC: Really good, honestly, because they just deserve it so much. I mean, the work that they're putting in here has just been unbelievable. They're the people that you don't see that often, but they're the ones that make it possible for us to play. Just, you know, making sure that our bodies feel good, making sure that we're recovered correctly, doing treatment.

And they're here all hours. Especially on game days, they're here from morning to midnight. They've been unbelievable, and I just wanted to say thank you to them, and I'm really happy that I inspired Icy Hot to do this too, because they deserve it.

It came out today that Steph Curry was announced as one of the Unrivaled investors. You've played such a big part in securing this financial security and backing for your peers, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on doing that, along with Steph being a part of the Unrivaled investment team? 

NC: It feels great. I mean, especially because you're just seeing the buy-in for women's basketball and just, the power of the players. We really wanted to revolutionize what it meant to be a women's basketball player and for us to offer the highest average team salary and to give equity in the league, hopefully creating generational wealth down the line for players is something that was always a goal of ours. 

And to see people buying in in the way they are, other athletes from different sports, other people not even in sports. And then this recent one with Steph Curry, just seeing the buy-in and seeing the value in what we're doing has been really awesome. 

Speaking of basketball legends, Lisa Leslie has been part of Unrivaled this season. She’s part of the broadcast team and we've also seen her on the court, working with players. A video of you, Angel [Reese], and Lisa working out together went viral last month. Was there anything specifically that you worked on or wanted to pick her brain about during that? 

NC: Yeah, we did a lot of post work because that's Lisa's like bread and butter. And it was cool to see the way that she breaks down the game.

So to have someone who's a GOAT in the league and one of the best post players ever to play the game to see how she breaks it down and the way that she reads defenses and if someone's guarding her this way, what she would do. And if she did that, the counter move that she would do from that, it was just really interesting to learn that from her. 

And then just seeing her do her moves that like you've seen on TV so many times and you've seen clips of, to see her doing it real time and see the way that she's able to read the game was really cool. It was just like a privilege to be able to work with her.

I love that. She's still got it, clearly. 

NC: Yeah, she does. 

Yesterday was Unrivaled's last regular season games. With one regular season in the rearview mirror now, has there been anything that you might want to change for Unrivaled's 2026 season? 

NC: I think there's some little things. It's our first year, so I feel like we're working out the kinks. For example, in preseason games, the target score is 15, but we saw that that's taking way too long. So we played around with ‘Should we make the quarters shorter? Should it be six minute quarters in a 15 point target? Should it be seven minutes?’  

So I feel like it's little stuff like that. Overall, the feedback has been so positive. But we're having our end of year exit interviews with the players, so we'll see what everyone else says. I'm really interested to see what the players did and didn't like and what they think should be better for next year. 

Your UConn Huskies won the Big East Tournament again last night. With March Madness coming up, do you have a message that you want to send to the UConn team? 

NC: I don't know what I could tell them. They have all the tools that they need. Obviously, I'm going to be rooting for them, watching all the games. I'll just say go Huskies!