Time for another section where we talk about basketball, structurally. Only now, instead of blathering on about NBA ratings and anti-3-point-shot mudslinging, we’re going to point in the direction of something unambiguously good and encouraging: the new Unrivaled 3-on-3 league.

Professional women’s basketball in America is in many ways a solid analog to track and field. They share modest, but passionate, fan bases, a desire to expand, a pay structure that isn’t robust enough to prevent competition, and a crop of ascendant superstars that the mainstream sports media has finally started to—often clumsily—engage with.

It’s not a perfect one-to-one comparison by any stretch of the imagination, but if there’s one sport out there we can measure our growth and successes by, it’s women’s hoops. So the early success of Unrivaled can be taken as a good omen for other up-and-coming leagues in the track and field space.

Here’s what they’re doing right that the GSTs and Athloses of the world can take into consideration:

Start small but aim high.

Unrivaled isn’t trying to usurp the well-established WNBA. Its goal is to complement what exists and offer more basketball to cheer for. Besides, they’re giving a small but mighty group of players money-making opportunities during the long offseason. There are just six teams, each roster carrying only six players—that’s 36 athletes total, 22 of which are WNBA all-stars.

There are notable superstars absent from Unrivaled (no A’ja Wilson or Caitlin Clark). But the quality of basketball has been incredibly high, and the fan experience—both in-person and on-broadcast—has been stellar.

Athlos’s first foray into meet hosting seemed to take a page from the same playbook: get top talent, treat them like royalty, and present a premium product to fans at a quiet time in the yearly schedule.

Adapt the product to fit the package.

Unrivaled is a 3-on-3 basketball league, which is an increasingly popular format internationally. To go along with the smaller team sizes, the league has shrunk the court, as well as the stadium—games are currently all played in a custom-built, 850-person-capacity arena outside of Miami. The season is just 10 weeks long. These decisions were all deliberately made for one reason: distill basketball down to its most thrilling, fast-paced, competitive form. It’s meant to be novel—not a true replacement for conventional WNBA basketball.

There’s a clear parallel here for professional track – even though it’s often criticized for making similar choices. No field events? No long distance? It’s not ideal, but it’s necessary. Pro track, out of the Olympic context and when beholden to a full slate of events can feel a bit bloated, particularly by the standards of today’s viewer, who is accustomed to consuming entertainment in five-second doses.

Money talks, but it’s secondary to action.

Unrivaled claims to be the highest-paying women’s professional sports league in history. The average salary is over $200,000. This is possible thanks to a range of apparently lucrative sponsorships and a six-year, $100 million media rights deal. Man. How can you complain about that? Good for the players, a step in the right direction gender-parity-wise, and good news for the long term viability of the league.

But you can’t buy an identity – or a legacy. Obsessing over paydays and business dealings ultimately detracts from the real reason sports fans tune in: the competition, the players’ personalities, the rivalries, the beauty of the sport itself.

Unrivaled isn’t constantly reminding fans of how much money is exchanging hands, and hopefully, even after an influx of cash, track and field can do the same. It’s good to know the athletes are being well-compensated, but if the names are big enough, the money is self-evident. At the end of the day, people don’t love sports because they’re a business, and focusing on the behind-the-scenes machinations that prop up the spectacle is a losing concept.

Athlete buy-in is critical.

Founded by two of its players, Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, Unrivaled is also rolling out athlete ownership stakes in the league. It’s hard to think of a better way to ensure your league’s stars are invested in its success than to get them literally invested.

It’s also a big opportunity for athletes to grow personal brands and another avenue for sponsorships to get airtime. And again, here’s an area where track and field could stand to take notes. An out-of-season runner can only post so many #TBTs before recycled Olympic highlights in December start feeling stale, but their sponsors would delight at the chance for their logos to be splashed over televisions year-round.

The whole point of learning lessons from other sports (and writing about them in running newsletters) is that we don’t have to do our own beta testing. Track and field doesn’t have the luxury of burning a bunch of money, talent, and time to figure out what does and doesn’t work – we’ve gotta set our pride aside and cheat off the desk next to us. So as women’s basketball grows and changes, it benefits all the runners, jumpers, throwers, and meet directors with a dream to take notes.

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