​USA TODAY Sports published a list of five potential successors to Cathy Engelbert on Friday, hours after the WNBA announced its commissioner will retire at the end of the year.Mitchell Northam’s five picks are Duke athletic director Nina King, Ally Financial chief marketing officer Andrea Brimmer, former WNBA players Taj McWilliams-Franklin and Swin Cash, and Recording Academy chief executive Harvey Mason Jr. The piece is USA TODAY’s speculation. None of the five has been reported as a candidate by the league or by anyone involved in the search.Northam also listed nine other names for consideration: NFL chief revenue officer Renie Anderson, Vanderbilt athletic director Candice Storey Lee, Las Vegas Raiders president Sandra Douglass Morgan, Virginia athletic director Carla Williams, Big South commissioner Sherika Montgomery, Boston Celtics vice president of team operations Allison Feaster, Unrivaled commissioner Micky Lawler, WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike, and former USA Gymnastics president Li Li Leung.Engelbert told The Associated Press on Friday that she has been working on a succession plan for several years and that the league is looking at both internal and external candidates. She did not name anyone. She said she will remain in the job past Dec. 31 if the league has not hired a replacement by then. ESPN reported, citing multiple sources, that the process opens later this month.Jeff Hunt, a crisis management consultant, told USA TODAY in July that Engelbert should have resigned at All-Star Weekend in Chicago. He said Friday the job will be hard to fill because there is no obvious successor.”It’s a tough job to fill for a lot of different reasons,” Hunt said, per USA TODAY. “They’re going to have to get somebody that can be a bridge builder, somebody that has a big vision for where the brand can go, and then how to monetize it and capture and take advantage of the popularity.”Other outlets ran their own lists Friday and Saturday. The Sporting News led with NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum, Ogwumike, and Lawler. Yardbarker and CBS Sports both included Bethany Donaphin, the league’s head of league operations since 2018. Cash and Ogwumike appear on more than one list.Ogwumike is in her 15th and final WNBA season and has been president of the players’ union for the length of Engelbert’s tenure. Tatum served as interim WNBA president between Lisa Borders’ resignation in October 2018 and Engelbert’s arrival on July 17, 2019.The league has never been led by a man or by a former player. Engelbert is the first to hold the commissioner title. The four leaders before her, Val Ackerman, Donna Orender, Laurel Richie, and Borders, were presidents.Engelbert reports to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who made Friday’s announcement. Her successor will inherit an 18-team map by 2030, media rights deals worth $3.1 billion, and a collective bargaining agreement, finalized this spring, that brought the first million-dollar player salaries.The league is on break