Diana Taurasi Rips WNBA Pay in Extremely Blunt Way

One of the hottest-button topics in the women’s basketball world right now is the ongoing discussion about how much WNBA players are getting paid by the league.

While this has always been a point of contention, it has now become a major point of discussion because the league’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) is expiring after the 2025 season.

And current players have been extremely outspoken about their desire for vastly increased salaries, and seemingly aren’t willing to budge before getting what they’re owed. There are several instances of comments like these going viral, especially ones that came around the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game last month.

Not to mention that the ‘Pay Us What You Owe Us’ shirts that All-Stars wore pregame creating mainstream discussion.

Diana Taurasi Puts WNBA Pay on Blast With Overseas Salary Comparison

Not every women’s basketball league in the world struggles to pay its players. In fact, several overseas leagues offer multitudes more in terms of salary to top WNBA players during the offseason. While this was no secret, WNBA legend Diana Taurasi highlighted it notoriously during a three-part docu-series about her that’s titled “Taurasi,” which will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on August 7.

“I’m the best player in the world, and I have to go to a communist country to get paid like a capitalist,” Taurasi said of playing in Russia during the WNBA offseason, per an August 6 X post from Sports on Prime.

She later added, “One time, I came back [to the United States] and I was like, ‘Man, my parents have just gotten older, and I’ve missed a big part of it. 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?

“The f****** janitor at the arena made more than me,” she added.

One can’t fault Taurasi, who will go down as one of the greatest players to ever play women’s basketball, for her frustration about how much money she made from playing in the WNBA across her career.

While she won’t get to benefit from the new WNBA CBA, Taurasi has, does, and will continue to get her flowers from current players for how much she helped grow the sport of women’s basketball, which is undoubtedly a reason why the players will receive vastly increased salaries once they ultimately reach a new deal with the league office.

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