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Basketball Legend Diana Taurasi Doesn’t Hold Back On WNBA Salaries originally appeared on The Spun.
‘The janitor made more than me.’
Diana Taurasi may go down as arguably the most accomplished player in the history of women’s basketball, but she certainly wasn’t paid like it over the course of her 20 WNBA seasons.
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Taurasi officially retired this February after a two-decade long run with the Phoenix Mercury where she left the game a three-time champion, a league MVP, a five-time scoring champ and the WNBA’s all-time leader in points (10,646) and three-pointers made (1,447).
Now as the star of a three-episode docuseries recounting her incredible hoops career, Taurasi was very upfront about the compensation she saw (or didn’t see, really) along her professional journey.
“The f—ing janitor at the arena made more than me,” Diana said in a teaser released by Amazon Prime on Wednesday.
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“I’m the best player in the world and I have to go to a communist country to get paid like a capitalist,” she added. “We weren’t making that much money, so generational wealth was coming from going to Russia every year. Now we have to come back home and get paid nothing, to play in a harder league, in worse conditions, against the best competition in the world.”
If that wasn’t enough, the two-time Finals MVP also talked about the emotional toll it took being away from her family for that many months out of the year.
“One time I came back and I was like, ‘Man, my parents have just gotten older and I’ve missed a big part of it,'” Taurasi revealed.
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Diana said that she quit spending her offseasons overseas back in 2017, but knows that much of the league’s players still do what they have to do to get by. Taurasi made roughly $235,000 in her final WNBA season and hopes that the league’s salaries only go up amid the current CBA negotiations.
PHOENIX, AZ – JUNE 30: Caitlin Clark #22 of the Indiana Fever and Diana Taurasi #3 of the Phoenix Mercury smile during the game on June 30, 2024 at Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Kate Frese/NBAE via Getty Images)Kate Frese/Getty Images
At this year’s All-Star Game, the participating ladies wore shirts that said “Pay Us What You Owe Us” which received quite a bit of attention online.
The revenue share in the WNBA is nowhere near as even as other major sports leagues, but given the hot streak its currently on right now it’s hard to imagine that number won’t go up fairly significantly once a deal gets struck.
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Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell is currently the highest-paid player in the league by annual salary at $249,244 per year — just ahead of Vegas’ Jewell Loyd, Dallas’ Arike Ogunbowale and Phoenix’s Kahleah Copper.
Basketball Legend Diana Taurasi Doesn’t Hold Back On WNBA Salaries first appeared on The Spun on Aug 6, 2025
This story was originally reported by The Spun on Aug 6, 2025, where it first appeared.
