Kahleah Copper and Satou Sabally sat across from each other at a restaurant in Miami in late January, two blocks from their apartment complex at Unrivaled, for a midmorning breakfast before practice.
They had played basketball against each other for years but never on the same team. They made small talk -- how the inaugural season of the new 3-on-3 league would allow them to develop their games, how impressive the resources were at Unrivaled and how having 36 of the WNBA's top players together in one space would create a recruiting frenzy for upcoming free agents.
Only a few weeks earlier, Sabally had told the Dallas Wings she intended to find a new home, making her one of the league's top players on the market. And she had cheekily let her peers in Miami know she was open to bribes