WNBA legend Renee Montgomery discusses her hopes for the league's future

Renee Montgomery's journey to become the first former player to serve as vice president and co-owner of a WNBA team is featured in the new documentary, "A Radical Act: Renee Montgomery."

The feature documentary about her life and career is produced by basketball star LeBron James and sports personality Maverick Carter.

The Minnesota Lynx selected Montgomery as the No. 4 overall pick in the 2009 WNBA Draft. She won the WNBA Sixth Woman of the Year award in 2012 and helped the team secure two championships in 2015 and 2017. After playing, she became the co-owner and executive of the Atlanta Dream in 2021, becoming the first former WNBA player to hold both roles.

ABC News' Linsey Davis sat down with Montgomery as she discussed the future of the WNBA.

ABC NEWS: It has been a record-breaking season for the WNBA, with viewership at an all-time high. But according to two-time WNBA champion and Atlanta Dream co-owner Renee Montgomery, they are just getting started. I had the chance to sit down with Renee as she reflects on her one-of-a-kind journey from the court to the board room in a new documentary "A Radical Act: Renee Montgomery."

First time for a WNBA player to become an executive chair, co-owner. How do you feel about this transition that you've made?

MONTGOMERY: It's crazy to even still hear sometimes, but transition was always talked about being an athlete. You really are prepared for life because there wasn't a playbook that I had to become these positions and to excel at it. But I feel like in sports, you learn so many different things that I sports play my whole life and everybody that works in the Dream Office, they know that I just treat it like we're like literally a sports team.

So in the mornings it's like "What's up, squad? Good morning." And the email is, you know, I talk exactly how we talk in sports because there's just so many similarities between business and sports that I would have had no idea because I was in the sports world my whole entire life.

ABC NEWS: Tell me about the documentary that's coming up.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, so it was honestly a journey of change. The documentary watch me go from player to co-owner VP and what does that look like and what does that feel like? Our director, Sandrine [Orabona]. It was a one-person crew, so it didn't feel like there was a lot of cameras around, but there was a camera around. And so they have those three years of my life on top of all the footage that my Snook and Diddy, which is my parents, have been just collecting. Like they're collectors of all the things that happened in my life.

So there's footage that I haven't even seen because it was lost on a VHS tape or a DVD where there's no way to even view it. You know, they got all of that archival footage along with footage where my wife has followed me around the house on those big moments that happen. And it's just like a culmination of everything. And just to have that put into one hour and 44 minutes, it's just, it's uncomfortable because everybody's like looking into my life and world. But it's also is crazy to see your life in that lens where when you're living it, you really don't even know that that's how things are going.

So I think a lot of people are curious about the name "A Radical Act" and why would we call it that? And the real concept is it's radical to think that you can achieve these unachievable goals. It's radical to even say them out loud sometimes because you don't know what people are going to say. You don't know what people are going to think. You don't want to fail in front of the world. And so a radical act is just like believing that you can get that goal that you don't even want to say out loud. So that's kind of the whole, the whole concept of the documentary. And it's been a journey. So it's exciting.

ABC NEWS: You certainly made national headlines when you decided to sit out the 2020 season as a result of bringing attention to police brutality. What can you trace in your childhood that helped lead you to that decision?

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it's kind of crazy because when you look at your childhood from an adult point of view, things are so different. Even my parents keeping newspaper articles where my stats would have been printed not right, or even seeing pictures of myself holding up a sign that says like "Change has come." I don't remember those moments, but those moments are also ingrained in me.

And so I just think that life has a way of working itself out where I'm the daughter of two HBCU (historically black colleges and universities) students. So I understood like Black excellence and understood what that looks like from a firsthand account. So then when I see things happening, it's, it's a no brainer. What I'm saying to me is a no-brainer.

But then people are also calling me an activist, for saying these things that I just grew up learning. And so I think that just how how I was raised, I didn't even notice it at the time. But then when it came 2020, it was like, "Oh, I'm ready for this. I'm prepared for this."

ABC NEWS: Do you think that things have changed in any way for Black female athletes?

MONTGOMERY: I definitely do. I think awareness has changed. I don't necessarily know if things have completely changed because you have to look at the WNBA as a minority league. And so I don't know if the marketing matches the number in the sense of minorities is are they getting as much pub?

But I know that the awareness is there. So I get excitement knowing that like at least we're aware now of these things. And even women's sports as a whole was getting less than 5% of media attention and we know that's now risen to 15%. So if we keep being more aware and things happen, then I think it's changing.

ABC NEWS: Do you ever think about your legacy and what you'd like it to be?

MONTGOMERY: It's crazy because it's not like even as it's happening, I wasn't even thinking about it as a player. You know, a lot of people would talk about championship winning as a habit and somebody was talking about my career and it's like, okay, three championships in high school, one in college, two in the pros. And when people say it back to back like that, I'm like, okay, yeah, like that. That is exciting. But when you're in the fire, it's like, I wasn't thinking about the two I won. I'm thinking about the next two. I want to win.

I feel like I'm in that moment right now where I know there's a lot of barriers being broken. I know that there's a lot of change happening and I'm not really thinking about it. I'm still in the fire. I'm thinking about the Atlanta Dream and how can we turn up as as a squad and how can we turn up as a business.

I mean, I feel like we won a championship this year with the Atlanta Dream on the business side. We sold out all 20 of our home games, and when I was a player, it was ghost town. And so we would run out and we would have to be our own six-man where we get in the huddle and be like, All right, ask. I listen, the crowd's not here, but we're here. You know, our players don't have to worry about that. They're going to run out in front of fans. And so those are things that, like, I'm in the fire. Shouts to our front office because, like, that's a, that's a championship. That's a dub.

ABC NEWS: What's the next championship, so to speak, that you want to win?

MONTGOMERY: I think the next championship for us is getting big brands to buy in at the same pace that they buy in on other leagues. You know, like even us being in Atlanta, there's every sports team known to man in Atlanta.

Shouts to Atlanta's sports because we kind of, we kind of elevated right now. But we would love for all the brands in Atlanta to support the Atlanta Dream the same way they support the Atlanta Falcons, the Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta United, Atlanta Braves. There's some companies that they're all in on a lot of the men's pro sports teams. We want to get that all in feel from investments and brands where the deals that they offer show that they're all in. And so I think that's the next championship, just people understanding the value of women's sports.

ABC NEWS: Thank you so much for the conversation. We appreciate the time.

MONTGOMERY: Thank you for having me.

ABC NEWS:And you can catch "A Radical Act: Renee Montgomery" now streaming on Roku.