NEW YORK — Both the WNBA and players’ union feel progress is being made toward a new collective bargaining agreement, but they both say there’s still work to be done to get a deal to the finish line.In-person talks entered a seventh consecutive day Monday afternoon after the previous session ended around 3 a.m. in the morning.“We’re working as hard as we can to get it done as quickly as possible,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said after the early morning negotiations finished. “It’s complex. There’s a lot. There’s a lot of system elements. There’s a lot of structure elements. … This is a big, big league and we want to do everything we can for the players. So, we’re going to keep making progress.”It’s been a long week of discussions with the WNBA and union meeting face-to-face for more than 75 hours since the first in-person bargaining session on Tuesday. None of the sessions have ended before midnight.“We’re still working. We’re still fighting. There’s still some things that we have to — big issue things — that we have to get through,” union executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson said before Monday’s session. “So, we’re just going to stick with it and stay with it.”Jackson said there is agreement on some areas but there’s still work to get done on big items.Union counsel Deborah R. Willig was asked if she thought a deal could get done in the next day.”For myself, I thought we were going to get this done yesterday, and I thought the day before so I would hope, but this has been an extraordinarily unusual set of labor negotiations, and I’ve been doing this for over 50 years,” the managing partner of Willig, Williams and Davidson said. “I think the why, frankly, is because the league underestimated seriously the resolve of the players and what they sought to achieve.”The executive committee of players have been putting in the time alongside the union l …
