The WNBA commissioner’s New York-themed dress at Game 5 is the dumbest controversy

Cathy Engelbert has certainly had some bad moments in what has been a wild year for the WNBA in 2024.

This time? It’s not the worst controversy, but it could have been avoided.

The WNBA commissioner was there for the New York Liberty’s Game 5 WNBA Finals win over the Minnesota Lynx, and she was wearing a very New York dress that featured a depiction of the Empire State Building.

Now there are people around social media who are using that as proof that the Finals were rigged in favor of the Liberty.

That part is ridiculous. There’s no way that really happened, even if this is the franchise’s first title ever.

But Engelbert needs to know not to wear the dress to invite that kind of thinking in. It’s just a bad look! Why is it that Angel Reese’s outfit was more appropriate?

ignoring the conspiracy stuff it’s hilarious that angel reese dressed smarter and more neutral than the wnba commissioner for game 5 of the finals pic.twitter.com/sDpGbXQA2J
— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) October 21, 2024

Just wear a neutral dress! It’s that simple. Instead of the audience your league has built buzzing about how awesome that series and final game was — despite some bad officiating — all the focus is on you and the dress.

And now we’ve got a deleted tweet from the league that invokes the Streisand Effect and it’s a mess.

Often times the whole “the league wants Market X to win” is just a paranoid take from fans. But for the commissioner of the league to literally wear the NY skyline on her dress at Game 5, that’s not a great look. https://t.co/AjgXQ5QsQW
— Jon Krawczynski (@JonKrawczynski) October 21, 2024

The commissioner is wearing the NYC skyline on her hideous dress. Tell me this isn’t rigged? She should be fired immediately. https://t.co/V1o01k8lNv
— Marc Hartman (@MarcHartman1) October 21, 2024

The commissioner wearing a New York dress is still funny to me. She always seems to hit the wrong tone https://t.co/IPrA9Q8xOZ
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) October 21, 2024

This is all so dumb and could have been very easily avoided.