Seattle Storm and Team France superstar Gabby Willams has been among the most outspoken critics of the WNBA’s current pay structure.
During her end-of-season exit interview on Thursday, Williams called out the WNBA and its commissioner Cathy Engelbert for not living up to various financial promises they have made players.
“The W[NBA} thinks that they don’t have to pay us more in order for us to be here. And I think I didn’t express that when I first talked about prioritization,” Williams said. “Our commissioner talked about us being able to make $700,000. That’s actually not true at all. There’s not one player who makes that.
“We were promised team marketing agreements and league marketing agreements, but they’ve fallen quite short,” she continued.
Some fans apparently don’t believe Williams’ comments, because she posted a TikTok on Friday that further clarified her critique and directly addressed one fan’s comments about the amount of money that Indiana Fever superstar Caitlin Clark makes.
“And then to the point of this comment,” Williams said in the video while a screenshot of a fan who commented ‘Clark does 😂’ (presumably in response to what Williams said Thursday about no WNBA player making $700,000). “Clark makes $70,000 in the WNBA.”
Clark’s base WNBA salary this season $76,535.
“So I know all these, you know, Caitlin Clark fans, whatever, like ‘Caitlin Clark makes $700,000’. That’s off of endorsements. I’m not talking about endorsements,” Williams said. “I’m talking about the WNBA. And no, there is not one player in the entire WNBA that makes the money that the commissioner likes to brag about. And that was the point of that clip as well.”
Gabby with the ‘Okay so there’s some education that needs to be done, I can see that’😌😭😭 pic.twitter.com/1oogUXTUrv
— A’JA M’VP❀A’ZI DPOY❀NIKA MIP 2025 (@kamila_wbb) September 28, 2024
The player with the highest annual WNBA salary is Las Vegas Aces guard Jackie Young, who earns $252,450. In other words, Williams is speaking the complete truth.
