IN CASE YOU "MIST" IT, THIS "PAIGE" HAS GOT YOU COVERED

Let’s start with the multi-million-dollar elephant in the room – we still have no CBA for the WNBA and the upcoming season is now at risk. While we wait to see if the WNBA is going give the Players what they deserve (looking at you, Cathy Engelbert, and reserving a side-eye for you, Adam Silver), let’s give flowers to some of our favorite women who got big things done this month.

The MIST are your Unrivaled 2026 Season 2 Champions:

Last Wednesday (March 4, 2026) Breanna Stewart led the Mist, with 32 points, to their first Championship. The Mist edged out the Phantom to win 80-74. With this win, the Mist secured a $600,000 prize pool (in addition to their league salaries) – now here’s a league that knows how to pay the players.  In addition to dominating the court, Breanna Stewart took home the Unrivaled Championship MVP, adding another accolade to one of the most impressive professional women’s basketball resumes in history.

Breanna Stewart (known as “Stewie”) is truly in a league of her own. With this Unrivaled Championship, she has become the only player to win an NCAA Championship (4x), a WNBA Championship (3x) and an Unrivaled Championship.  Since day one, Stewie has been different.  In an interview with Sue Bird on Bird’s podcast Bird’s Eye View with Sue Bird, Stewie and Sue talk about Stewie’s upbringing and how her height made AAU coaches box her in to being a post-player, but her dad had other ideas and encouraged her to get out of the paint and shoot 3s. As a retired post-player myself, with AAU history, I appreciate a parent who saw something different, because getting out of the paint became critical the further along I got in my playing career. Stewie’s early work in ball handling, getting out of the paint, and shooting 3s, laid the groundwork for her to have the versatility of playing in the post while also being a formidable shooting guard. The podcast then discusses Stewie’s early days at the University of Connecticut (“UConn”), and my favorite Stewie story – where she became the first player (along with two of her UConn teammates) to win FOUR consecutive National Championships, after declaring at the beginning of her freshman year, “I want to win four National Championships in a row”. And then she did the damn thing, taking an already storied program and making it even better with one quote, a ton of passion, and an indescribable amount of hard work.

However, Stewie’s, dream big and do things her own way, mindset didn’t stop with winning those 4 National Championships at UConn. She went on to win a WNBA Championship with the Seattle Storm (with Sue Bird as her teammate) and then came back to her home state of New York to win another for the New York Liberty, but even with this she wasn’t done. She decided if the WNBA wasn’t going to give the Players what they deserved, she’d just start her own league, and that’s exactly what she and Napheesa Collier (of the Minnesota Lynx) did with starting Unrivaled.  Even starting an extremely lucrative, brand-new league, that saw the largest crowd ever to be seen at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia this year, was still not enough. Stewie then turned around and won the Unrivaled Championship, and the Unrivaled Championship MVP.

Paige & Daphne Against the World:

Like Stewie, Paige Desorbo entered the Bravo world determined to do things her own way. While entering the well-established Summer House cast, as a new, younger cast member in 2019, Paige did anything but try to “fit-in” with the group. She constantly challenged seasoned cast members like Kyle Cooke and Lindsay Hubbard, quickly standing out and becoming a fan favorite. While everyone else was focused on partying, she showcased her love for fashion, “bed-rotting”, and female friendship.

Paige quickly rose to stardom, but even the stardom and a wildly popular Bravo-relationship with Southern Charm star, Craig Conover, was not enough to shake Paige’s commitment to always being herself. While Craig pushed for marriage, children and a move to South Carolina, Paige stuck to her guns, not wanting to rush into a marriage, not feeling ready for children and certainly not wanting to give up her beloved New York City for South Carolina and a bee farm. This led to Paige having to make a tough to decision to break-up with Craig and deal with the fall out in the public eye, with fans picking “Team Paige” or “Team Craig”. And still, this did not shake Paige.

Paige pivoted – starting an extremely successful Podcast, Giggly Squad, with her best friend, Hannah Bernard and becoming a New York Times Best-Selling Author of How To Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously, co-written with Hannah, and becoming a pet mom to the second cutest cat in the world, Daphne (second only to my very own Daphne, who I named first by the way [with the help of a very dear colleague] and who is pictured below). Paige then left Bravo and Summer House (which shocked us all, again forging her own path) and used her love for her own Daphne and her love for relaxing in bed to inspire her sold-out lounge wear line Daphne which launched a brand-new collection March 3, 2026 (the day before Stewie became an Unrivaled Champion – it was all meant to be).

Always be a Stewie or a Paige:

The moral of Stewie’s and Paige’s story is that if there isn’t a lane for you to achieve your dreams, make one.  Stewie and Paige have done incredible things, without comprising who they are, and creating new paths for those coming up behind them. I can’t wait to continue to be front and center to see what else these two accomplish.

My Daphne: