Phoenix Mercury’s Cloud joins teammate Copper in Unrivaled women’s pro basketball league

The Phoenix Mercury‘s starting point guard Natasha Cloud has joined the new Unrivaled 3-on-3 pro women’s basketball league set to begin in January.

Unrivaled announced Cloud’s addition on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 27.

The new 3-on-3 league has also signed Cloud’s Mercury teammate Kahleah Copper, Chicago Sky’s rookie sensation Angel Reese, Dallas Wings’ 2024 Phoenix All-Star Game MVP Arike Ogunbowale, and several other top WNBA players in Las Vegas Aces’ Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, Chelsea Gray, Seattle Storm’s Jewell Loyd, and Atlanta Dream’s Rhyne Howard.

Cloud has the WNBA’s third-best assist average this season (6.8 per game), Copper is the second-best scorer (22.6).

The Unrivaled league was launched by the New York Liberty’s 2023 MVP Breanna Stewart and Minnesota Lynx’s top player Napheesa Collier in May.

Their objective is to lure WNBA players by signing for six-figure salaries to continue playing domestically during the off-season in the winter through early spring. Since the WNBA’s launch in 1997, the league’s players have opted for lucrative offers to play overseas because their WNBA wages were significantly lower.

Unrivaled is looking to capitalize on the meteoric rise in popularity for women’s basketball and the WNBA over the past two years.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mercury’s Cloud joins Unrivaled 3-on-3 women’s pro basketball league