WNBA tightens calls on physical play, league reacts to enforcement

The WNBA is tightening its standards around the number of fouls committed in games. A new Front Office Sports report notes that starting with the 2026 season , the league is revising its fine structure for technical fouls, flagrants and flopping. The new structure, agreed upon in the league's CBA, raises fine amounts to 2.

5 times more than the cost in 2025 but at a lower rate than the salaries for players. On Tuesday, during a national availability session with the media, Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve , who had been particularly critical of officiating and the league's physicality in the past, shared her thoughts on the new fines. "What I'm excited about is that there is an understanding that how our game has looked the last two years is not how we want it going forward.

While they were hard at work on the collective bargaining agreement, we were hard at work on the state of the game," Reeve said "It may take us a little while to really calibrate and get where we want to be. We've seen a lot of fouls being called. What we've committed to as sort of the stewards of the game (is) that we know that players are smart, and they'll adjust.

"We're working really hard because we don't want the level of physicality that we've seen in our game, and so I'm confident that the game is gonna, therefore, be more fluid, (with) freedom of movement. We play beautiful basketball in the WNBA. We gotta make sure that it's not marred with unnecessary physical contact.