Both former Alabama basketball players in the WNBA will follow their rookie seasons by playing in Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball Season 5 this winter. The league has announced Los Angeles Sparks guard Sarah Ashlee Barker and Las Vegas Aces guard Aaliyah Nye have signed to play in its 2026 season.
Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball will play its 2026 season across four weeks at Nashville Municipal Auditorium starting on Feb. 4. Each week, four captains draft 10-player teams. The champion of the league is not a team, but a player. Players earn individual points through statistics, quarter wins, game wins and Game MVP selections. Last season’s champion was Maddy Siegrest, who plays in the WNBA for the Dallas Wings.
Nye started her WNBA career as the 13th pick in the 2025 draft, and she’s still playing. After beating the Phoenix Mercury 90-88 on Wednesday night, Las Vegas has a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven WNBA Finals. The Aces can win the championship on Friday night.
In 44 regular-season games, Nye averaged 3.8 points and 1.5 rebounds as a rookie.
The 2025 season is the 12th that Mark Inabinett has covered players with Alabama football roots in the NFL. Inabinett’s byline appeared in a newspaper for the first time in 1976. The intervening years have…
