Roster Crunch
From salary cap to experience, a look at the many factors that come into play when assembling rosters
UNCASVILLE — Olivia Nelson-Ododa sat upright in the bed of her hotel room and reached for her phone as it rang with an incoming call.
She immediately got nervous hearing then-Los Angeles Sparks head coach Derek Fisher on the other end of the phone.
The Sparks drafted the former UConn women's basketball standout in the second round of the 2022 WNBA Draft. NelsonOdoda had impressed during training camp, but suffered a groin injury during the last day and was unable to travel with the team to its season opener in Chicago. Because of the injury, Nelson-Ododa found herself alone in a hotel hours before the league's final roster deadline.
She'd been waiting on Fisher's call. Had she shown enough in camp to deserve a roster spot? Or did Los Angeles no longer want her now that she was injured?
With four words, Fisher put her at ease. “You made the team,” he said. Nelson-Ododa let out a sigh.
“This has been a dream of mine since I was a young girl,” the former Husky said Thursday reflecting on the moment last spring when she learned she'd made her first WNBA roster. “To be able to, especially in those circumstances too, to be able to get the call and make it official. That was huge for me. That was super huge.”
Nelson-Ododa's accomplishment is no small feat in a league with limited opportunities. While the WNBA has grown immensely in terms of viewership, media coverage and fans, actually making a roster in the league has become increasingly difficult.
Each year 36 rookies enter the league through the three-round draft, however; fewer and fewer are seeing their dream of playing in WNBA come true.
The WNBA's salary cap restriction complicates roster construction for general managers and coaches looking to find the right mix of a maximum 12 players. Many teams are forced to only carry 11, making it challenging for first-year play
ers to earn spots.
The Connecticut Sun surprised many in the preseason by cutting the team’s only two draft picks in 2023 and their remaining pick from the 2022 Draft. Every year across the league, players with strong college resumes are let go ahead of the regular season — including Charli Collier, the No. 1 pick in the 2021 draft.
So, what’s the solution?
NUMBERS GAME
Twelve teams make up the WNBA. Each has the limit of signing just 12 active players to their roster each season. Theoretically, that’s 144 roster spots.
However, most teams only sign 11 due to salary cap restrictions in an effort to pay top players accordingly.
According to HerHoopStats, the league’s 2023 salary cap — the maximum amount each team can spend on the total salary of all its players — is $1,420,500. That number goes fast when balancing veteran contracts (14-year veteran DeWanna Bonner is making $234,350 this year with the Sun) with top rookie contracts (2023 Draft picks No. 1 through No. 4 will make $74,305 this season).
Knowing that open roster space is already limited, coaches often treat training camp as a tryout to see which incoming players can fit their teams’ on-court and financial needs.
Team rosters often swell up to 20 players for camp. The 36 freshly drafted rookies are spread across the league, plus each team invites various undrafted players to participate in camp and compete for a spot.
Few players enter camp with an understanding that they’re not on the team just yet, while for others that reality check is harsh. Bonner said when she was drafted by Phoenix in in the first round of the 2009 Draft, she assumed she was on the team since there wasn’t much visibility around the process of making a WNBA roster back then.
“You get drafted and you kind of expect to make the team, you know, not saying that in like an arrogant way, you just don’t know,” she said. “Like, you think, ‘OK, well, I got drafted so I’m on this team.’ So then when you get cut — it didn’t happen to me, fortunately, thank God — it’s like a reality check. Like, wow, I really didn’t make this team.’’
Nelson-Ododa, with longer odds as a secondround pick, said knowing what was at stake during training camp motivated her to work that much harder.
“It doesn’t matter who you are, or, you know, kind of what’s happened in the past, every training camp is like a new tryout,” she said. “I think I was fully aware of that. I think it also kind of adds more of a competitive edge to the training camps too. As a fresh rookie coming in it just really allowed me to lock in.”
MAKING THE ROSTER
Training camp lasts about three weeks, as new players are thrown into a team’s system and tasked with learning as much as they can, as fast as they can.
Coaches teach players their offensive and defensive schemes, while also pushing them through WNBA-level conditioning. Preseason games help to demonstrate what a
player looks like against live opponents.
As they’re leading camp, however, coaches and general managers must figure out the right roster alignment. They compare players’ skill sets and adaptability to where/ if their salary fits in the team’s cap size.
“For me, there’s a real fine balance between developing potential in people who are ready to play in the league with everything that entails on the floor and off the floor versus players who have a chance, but they have so many different areas that they got to catch up, right?” Sun head coach Stephanie White said.
“Like somebody who knows how to play, who can adjust to the multiple actions, who defensively is ready, who can rebound the basketball, and who just needs experience; that’s a player that you want to keep if you can, right? But somebody who is just overwhelmed. It’s just going over their head, and you don’t really have the time that it takes to teach them how to play the game at this level. That’s where they got to go overseas and get experience.”
Training camp competition is something all veterans have gone through. It’s the first introduction to the reality of being a professional athlete.
Because of this, it’s often where we see draft picks’ dreams get cut short. Not because they don’t have the talent, but because there’s simply not enough room or time to develop them to become pro-ready.
Connecticut drafted LSU guard and 2023 national champion Alexis Morris in the second round and Stanford forward Ashten Prechtel in
the third round of this year’s draft. The team waived both players before the end of the training camp.
The team also waived 2022 first-round pick Nia Clouden just before the start of the season. Clouden averaged 8.9 minutes in 28 games for the Sun last season.
But as many players have shown throughout the league’s history, dreams don’t always end as a rookie. Many players find success playing overseas, developing their skills at the pro level while also still earning a paycheck. WNBA teams are always looking for new talent and invite new players to camp every year.
Yvonne Anderson made her first openingday WNBA roster at age 32 last season. Threetime All-Star and 2021 WNBA Champion Allie Quigley was drafted in the second round in 2008 by Seattle but was waived before the start of the regular season. She bounced around the league until finding her home in Chicago in 2013.
“I think the biggest thing is, like, it is a reality check. This is a job now,” White said. “You’re drafted, not recruited. You got to produce and then you’ve got to be willing and hungry to understand that it’s a grind, right? And it’s not handed out easily and you have to continue to develop and grow your game. There are plenty of players out here who just because they didn’t make it the first year or the second year or the third year it doesn’t mean that we’re not keeping an eye on you. … There are plenty of journeymen in this league, who have been rejected multiple times who have found their way.”
MORE JOBS?
The salary cap has increased from $996,100 in 2019 to $1.3 million in 2020 to this year’s level, according to Boardroom. But maximum salaries have also increased from $117,500 in 2019 to $234,936 this year, eating away at the cap money.
Former UConn great Breanna Stewart said last year that the league should expand roster size or create a “soft” salary cap that gives teams more roster flexibility. There have also been proposals to allow teams to carry designated practice players, allowing teams to develop young players without losing a roster spot. Talks of the league expanding to new markets for additional teams also remains a possibility.
So expansion, whether through roster size or the number of franchises, is the likely solution.
“I know it’s really hard to make a roster in the WNBA,” commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in the preseason. “I think that’s been true for quite some time. There’s a lot of things to think about, like having an expansion draft and a lot of other things. Our GMs, our players are being signed to longerterm contracts. They’re making more money in our league and more opportunities not only lead marketing agreements, team marketing agreements but also endorsements.”
Adding teams will likely happen, as the league has explored new markets such as Toronto, Portland, and the Bay Area.
The league will also need to make room for the next wave of talent. There’s deep, talented draft classes quickly approaching (the 2024 WNBA Draft could see the likes of Caitlin Clark,
Angel Reese and UConn stars Paige Bueckers, Aaliyah Edwards and Nika Mühl) with fewer roster spots available.
This forces young players to begin their pro careers overseas or in smaller leagues, such as Athletes Unlimited, instead of in the WNBA.
“I think it impacts the future of our product by not allowing or not having, I should say, opportunities for young players to figure it out quickly,” White said. “They’ve got to do it on their own.”
White and Bonner agree a first step in league expansion should be expanding existing roster sizes before introducing new teams.
“I think that there are so many players who may not be ready as rookies, but you see, they go overseas, and in two, three, four years, they’re ready, right?” White said. “If we could do that, in camp, if we could do that throughout the season, and be able to develop that next level of player or that next wave of players, you know, I think it’d be huge.”
Adding more spots for some of the college game’s best players will help grow the league even more.
“I don’t know if the WNBA is ready for another team,” Bonner said. “I think right now we’re on the rise, like as far as just being talked about with the teams that we have. … I think (bigger rosters) just opens up the league a little bit more. It gives you room to play. It gives you more eyes, you know, we had Alexis Morris here and it was just like a lot of eyes on us. So maybe if we had an extra roster spot for her being here maybe it just keeps more eyes on the WNBA.”