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The WNNBA and WNBAPA are still in the midst of an intense negotiation over the league’s new labor deal with the players. The sides have gone back and forth, with the league characterizing the union’s latest counterproposal as “unrealistic” and saying that it “would cause hundreds of millions of dollars of losses for our teams.”
The WNBA then followed up by announcing to teams and the players’ union “that the sides would need to agree to a labor deal by March 10 or the season would be delayed.”
Ultimately, when a deal gets struck, whether that be now or in the eleventh hour, the WNBA will have its first-ever million-dollar-salaried player. However, this could have disastrous consequences for players further down the roster.
The league’s latest offer proposes a supermax base salary of roughly $1,130,000, which would be 20% of the proposed $5.65 million salary cap for Year 1 of the CBA. This offer would leave some players, as well as GMs, in quite a bind.
Front Office Sports provided the following example, which would make things tough for the Indiana Fever as they try to build a title contender around phenom Caitlin Clark.
“If the Fever paid Kelsey Mitchell the $1.13 million supermax and spent a combined $1.08 million on Boston and Caitlin Clark’s mandated rookie-scale salaries, that would leave the team with roughly $3.4 million to spend on nine more roster spots including newly drafted players.
“This equates to roughly $382,200, or 6.7% of the cap per player, and that’s if Indiana has only one max player on its roster. This is almost $100,000 less than the proposed average salary.”
It’ll be interesting to see if the union can strike a deal that will allow the league’s middle class a nicer payday, as well as give GMs some more flexibility.
