The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Sun’s Miller views labor deal as “historic agreement”
“A historic agreement.” Those were the first words uttered by Connecticut Sun head coach and general manager Curt Miller on a Friday afternoon conference call to discuss the recently negotiated collective bargaining agreement for the WNBA.
Increased salaries, more accommodating seating on flights and hotel arrangements as well as improvements in child care benefits are among the highlights of the CBA.
The agreement, which will run through the 2027 season, still needs to be ratified by the players and the league’s Board of Governors but the reaction around the league was universally positive.
“Very exciting times for the league and the future of the league,” Miller said. “Obviously a very focused player agreement, a lot of compliments and credit goes out to great negotiating on both sides but in particular the players union and players doing an unbelievable job in thinking outside the box on some issues that haven’t been a part of the CBA in the past.”
Ideally seeing a 53-percent jump in total cash compensation would
limit the number of players who choose to play overseas. Miller said it is too early to tell if the deal will result in fewer WNBA players heading overseas during the winter. Some star players have been forced to miss the WNBA season due to injuries suffered overseas or through the wear and tear of playing professional basketball yearround.
“It is a great first step in providing those discussions and opportunities, there is still money for some people overseas that would be hard to walk away from if they chose to continue to play year-round,” Miller said. “It is a great first step for allowing some of these choices now for our great athletes; can they, will they choose to stay in the States and have a more traditional offseason?”
Many of the pieces agreed to in the CBA lead to the, “what took so long?” question especially when it comes to child care benefits and separate hotel accommodations.
“It is just the progression of the league, if you look back at the progression of the NBA you can say the same thing,” Connecticut Sun Vice President Amber Cox said. “Their travel in their early years to what it is now, there were steps in between and some improvements were made with each deal, we can look at it now and say these make complete and total sense in this moment but there were reasons when the last CBA was negotiated, those things were negotiated the way they were then.”
The WNBA expanded from 34 to 36 games in the regular season. The Sun will begin the 2020 season with home games against New York which has a new coach in Walt Hopkins and the No. 1 overall pick
in the WNBA draft on May 16 and three days later will play host to Chicago.
“Each year the team will take on a different dynamic on and off the court, I am excited to get to work on our final roster heading into the 2020 season and see how it all plays out,” Miller said. “Being able to be in front of our fan base early with two home games is really important, the competitive side of me is it is not easy to play against a firsttime coach, you don’t know their tendencies. Players have tendencies but coaches also have tendencies so we have our work cut out for us figuring out the scouting of New York right out of the gate with the brand new coaching staff. We look forward to those challenges and look forward to those early home games.”