Kahleah Copper didn’t have a great season this year. Just a week before the 2025 WNBA season tipped off, the Phoenix Mercury revealed that Kahleah Copper would miss 4-6 weeks after undergoing a left knee arthroscopy. Copper had played in Unrivaled over the winter, but a right leg injury limited her to just seven of 16 games. In the 2025 season, she appeared in only 28 games and saw her production take a steep dive after coming off the best season of her career in 2024. So was it linked to Unrivaled?

Before joining Unrivaled, Copper had been relatively healthy in WNBA action, missing just five games across 2023 and 2024. Last year, she averaged 21.1 points per game and earned all-WNBA honors for the first time in her nine-year career. She also played a key role off the bench for Team USA in the gold medal game against France at the Paris Olympics last summer. This season, however, her scoring dropped to 15.6 points per game.

You’d think that after playing in Unrivaled and coming off a season below her own standards, Copper might sit out the second season to rest and focus on the next WNBA season. But that wasn’t the case. The league has confirmed that the Mercury star will indeed take part in the second season of the 3×3 basketball tournament. The 2021 WNBA champion explained her decision, saying, “I mean, it gives you an opportunity to stay home. It gives you an opportunity to show your talent, compete against the best, and then just be treated like a pro.”

Copper isn’t wrong. Unrivaled “was built by basketball people for basketball players,” as the league’s president of Basketball Operations, Luke Cooper, explained. The league gives players a chance to stay home instead of chasing opportunities overseas. Copper herself has played in Poland, Israel, Spain, and Turkey, among other countries. For players like her, this setup offers the chance to stay closer to home while still earning a significant paycheck.

In 2025, the WNBA’s salaries ranged from $66,079 for rookies to $250,000 for supermax players, while Unrivaled set a new benchmark with an $8 million salary pool and an average pay of $222,222. On top of that, founding members received equity, meaning players who had to go overseas to make a living could now earn more in just three months of basketball than they did playing a full WNBA season.

Sure, there’s always a risk of injury, as we saw with Copper herself, but the chance to go head-to-head against the best of the best has its own appeal. Why won’t you want to compete against the likes of Phee, Stewie, Paige, AT, and the rest? With the 3×3 format, players’ skills are on full display for the whole world to see.

Copper’s stats did drop this season, and while the injury played a role, she was also sharing the floor with Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally. Also, for the first time in more than two decades, the Phoenix Mercury were starting a season without Diana Taurasi or Brittney Griner. The kind of loss that would make any team tremble for a moment.

The 4-time All-Star and 2021 WNBA MVP is returning as the sole starter from last year. But basketball, as always, had a way of rewriting the script. With the numbers spread across the trio of Copper, Thomas, and Satou, the dip in production isn’t really an injury concern anymore, as many of us feared.

Speaking of Phoenix’s big three, they’re now on the verge of punching their ticket to the Finals.

On the Cusp: Kahleah Copper and Co. eye WNBA Finals

Nobody expected a team with 10 new faces to even sniff the semifinals when the season began. Critics said the Mercury were too top-heavy, sacrificing nearly all their depth, except Sami Whitcomb, to land Alyssa Thomas and Satou Sabally alongside Kahleah Copper. But that gamble has paid off.

Not only did the Mercury rack up their most wins in a season since 2014, but they also knocked out the defending champions in round 1 after dropping Game 1 in a best-of-three. Now, they’re just one victory away from the Finals. In their statement win over the Lynx, the Big 3 combined for 65 points, marking the sixth time the Mercury had three 20-point scorers in a playoff game. That’s not all!

It was the first time since the 2023 Finals (Wilson, Young, Plum) that a team pulled it off in regulation time! The entire Mercury Big 3 will also take the floor in Unrivaled, though it remains to be seen whether they’ll end up on the same team.

For now, though, their eyes are locked on the bigger prize, a WNBA championship. And with the way they’ve been playing, it’s fair to say Phoenix has earned the right to be called a title favorite. What about you? Do you see the Mercury going all the way? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!