Stars don’t owe WNBA a thing
Sopron, Hungary, nestled on the Austrian border, is one of the prettiest small cities in Europe. Having visited there on my honeymoon, I remember it as The Faithful, named because Sopron voted in a 1921 referendum to remain part of Hungary rather than be incorporated by Austria.
It was in beautiful Sopron that one of the ugliest injuries in women’s basketball was suffered last weekend in the EuroLeague championship, when Breanna Stewart landed on the foot of Brittney Griner and ruptured her right Achilles tendon. She underwent surgery Thursday in Los Angeles for an injury that can take six to 12 months of recovery.
In the following hours and days, there was no shortage of prayers and well-wishes for Stewie. There can’t be enough of those. At age 24, Stewart already is the greatest of champions. In those same hours and days, her injury also gave way to no shortage of opinion pieces underscoring the sore need for better WNBA salaries so players won’t need to supplement their incomes overseas and risk injury from a year-long grind.
The reaction from The Faithful — American women’s basketball fans and interested American media — was predictable. The WNBA was continually labeled by far the best league in the world. After all, the U.S. has by far the greatest number of elite players and the WNBA is their golden opportunity to jam their talents into four warm-weather months for American audiences. And, oh yes, The Faithful insisted, the WNBA must start paying its players better than a rookie minimum of $41,265 and a veteran base maximum of $120,000.
Of course, women’s professional basketball players are underpaid by the WNBA and, as a result, are seriously overworked within any 12-month period. The constant grind of practice, travel and time away from loved ones is unrelenting on the body, the mind and the soul. There was good financial reason why seven top WNBA players were in that EuroLeague final where Stewie got hurt. A good financial reason why the WNBA players opted out of their collective bargaining agreement and a new one must be in place by 2020.
What has come to bother me regarding this hotbutton topic is the notion the WNBA is the center of the women’s professional basketball universe.
What agitates me is the notion that the greatest American women’s professional players owe something to a summer league masquerading as a be-all and end-all. At this point, 20 years into the WNBA, I’d even argue the top veteran players don’t owe anything to American audiences.
Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, so many others, have given decades to growing and selling the sport within our borders. The greatest players have done more than enough. When Taurasi told me last summer that she made 9 percent of her total career earnings playing in the WNBA, I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.
Whether it’s because of basketball-crazy oligarchs or state-sponsored initiatives, the best players can make 10 times the money in Russia, in Turkey and in China.
Overseas play doesn’t supplement the WNBA for them. The WNBA supplements their day job. Sorry if that sounds unpatriotic and sorry if my lead to this column reads more like a Fodor’s Travel Guide than ESPN.com. Patriotism may be the clarion call for the FIBA World Cup and Olympic Games, but when it comes to professional basketball the necessary truth is that straight-bouncing capitalism is what we must respect most of these adult working women.
It’s a pity Stewie, the reigning WNBA MVP, won’t be able to play for the Seattle Storm this season.
The much greater pity would be if she can’t play next season for Dynamo Kursk in Russia or Shanghai Baoshan Dahua in China. That’s where Stewie makes her serious money.
As parents, we raise our daughters to be firm in their belief they deserve equal pay, better than 80 cents on the dollar. Well, if they’re getting 10 cents or 30 cents or 50 cents on the dollar in the WNBA, players owe no allegiance. This is about career decisions and putting food on the table. You want role models? A great player standing up for herself is every bit as important for a 14year-old girl to see as a sweet 3-point jumper.
There’s a sound reason why about 90 of the 144 WNBA players played the previous winter overseas. What’s insane is the way these college players finish the NCAA Tournament, throw on dresses for the WNBA draft, quickly start training camp for a WNBA schedule that’ll pay them $45,000 and then go play overseas. Only to re-start their second WNBA season.
The average WNBA player makes about $75,000. The average NBA player makes around $6.4 million. The median NBA salary is around $2.5 million. Let those numbers sink in. NBA players get 50 percent of the revenue. WNBA players get 25 percent. According to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, the WNBA will lose about $12 million this year, and some will argue that with more ownership risk comes a bigger, deserved slice of the entrepreneurial pie.
No, WNBA players shouldn’t make as much, or nearly as much as NBA players. The revenue isn’t there. But does the average salary have to be 85 times more?
If that answer is, yes, more elite women’s pro players are nuts if they don’t take more WNBA seasons off like Taurasi did in 2015 and Maya Moore is doing this season. Even multiple seasons. Protect your body. Protect your being. Stretch out a career to make as much money as possible and leave as intact as possible.
There has to be some way to get a number of veteran players up to $200,000 a season. The New York Times reported that the league and union are looking at supplemental things like coaching or administrative opportunities with NBA franchises or with the WNBA during the offseason.
Yet no matter how the bargaining goes, it’s impossible to imagine the top salary will triple or quadruple. And that’s why I ask: If American basketball, the NBA, the WNBA, USA Basketball, the powerful figures in the college game, really want to take care of the best two dozen American women players in the sport, what are they going to do?
These are the players who win Olympic gold medals. They are the players who fans want to watch on TV and pay for at the game. (This is where I urge more women to support the WNBA.)
A players’ union is going to try to take care of the rank and file. That’s its job. And if you’ve ever been around women’s team athletes, you understand how unselfish they are. But now is the great ones’ time to be greedy.
Why can’t the multibillion-dollar NBA industry help? Why can’t $500,000 to $1 million be scraped together for one designated spot per team per season to get a top player to commit not to go overseas that year? Why can’t that spot be rotated annually through the top two dozen to three dozen players among 12 teams? That might buy three long breaks over a career.
In those years, maybe NBA teams employ those high-profile women for public relations and media, for All-Star weekends, for NBA staff and coaching development. Maybe specific sponsors will step up. Maybe the NBA promotes the heck out of them.
If not, if it’s a garbage idea — well, I just don’t see offering a top player $200,000 and expect her not to go overseas to make $1 million. And with the rising resentment among WNBA players, you can expect more and more of them to take off their summers.
Take care of the stars.