It is a rare occasion when the most notable part of an All-Star Game is the trophy presentation. The crowd at the WNBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis was lively all weekend long, showing no signs of disinterest in an exhibition that shared much in common with the NBA version in the same arena two years ago — a game so widely panned that the league was forced to change to a new format this year (also widely panned). The return of the four-point shot, introduced at All-Star 2022, reduced the game to an immediate chucking contest, and if that changed at any point during play, this writer did not notice.
But the game is often an afterthought at All-Star weekends. It certainly was at the WNBA festivities, where the main story was the league’s collective bargaining negotiations and the players’ desire to increase their share of league revenue — which in the current format they receive only after the league hits a certain threshold.
All weekend, the fans roared with approval at certain prompts. They roared for former Fever great Tamika Catchings, for Fever alum Erika Wheeler — who received a loud reaction every single time she was shown on Friday and Saturday — even for chief Caitlin Clark rival Angel Reese of the Sky. In the final minutes of the game, enough of the sellout crowd remained to sustain perhaps the loudest cheer of the night for injured Pacers G Tyrese Haliburton.
But the most notable cheers were for any sign advocating for the players to make more money. The first time the players were shown wearing their “Pay Us What You Owe Us” shirts, the fans roared. When a fan was shown in the stands with a “pay the players” sign, the fans roared. And at the end of the game, the fans delivered a message of their own with chants of “pay them” during the trophy presentation.
“People have to realize it takes time. At my age, and at this point in my career, I won’t be able to see the big money. But at least I know that I was a pioneer to help develop this program for younger generations.”
So said a Phoenix Mercury veteran over All-Star weekend — not Alyssa Thomas a few days ago, but Jennifer Gillom 26 years ago. Generations later, the ball has not moved much down the field.
When the WNBA launched, it was not the only pro women’s basketball league in existence. The first two seasons in league history, it competed against the rival American Basketball League (ABL). The ABL in its short history reached milestones the WNBA is only now approaching. It had a 44-game season, which the WNBA has reached for the first time this year. In its final season, it was paying an average salary of $90,000 per year, per AP writer Rob Gloster in 1999, nearly doubling the WNBA at the time and not far off from the league’s current average of just over $100,000. “The ABL lured top players with big salaries,” Gloster wrote, “but could not attract enough TV or sponsorship interest to survive.”
Perhaps the ABL could never have survived paying out those kinds of salaries, and perhaps one of the reasons why the WNBA has made it so far has been by keeping costs low. That logic has been one of the reasons why WNBA players have made so little and yet never missed a game due to strike or lockout. When the league was on the brink of a work stoppage in 2003, the risk was not lost games but that David Stern would shut the league down altogether.
“I don’t think it’s fair, but I’m not complaining either,” Gillom said in 1999. “I’m just glad there’s a league and that it’s progressing every year.”
Even before the Caitlin Clark-fueled boom in WNBA popularity the past two years, it had become increasingly clear that the players were no longer satisfied with the league merely existing.
There is a certain kind of Caitlin Clark fan on social media who views every hard foul against the Fever star as proof that the WNBA is undeserving of her presence and wishes she would abandon the league for her own venture. Normally, the idea of players starting their own leagues is met with scorn and derision, but it has been done — from baseball’s Players’ League of 1890 to a more pertinent example in this discussion, the Napheesa Collier-and Breanna Stewart-founded “Unrivaled.” (‘Player-run’ in both instances still means investor-funded.)
Unrivaled, which partially upstaged All-Star weekend in Indianapolis with its announced addition of several collegiate stars — including Juju Watkins — is not necessarily a threat to the WNBA, as players can easily participate in both leagues. But it pays more than the WNBA, as did the old ABL.
It is far too early to tell whether Unrivaled actually has any staying power, as startup leagues tend to come and go. The concern for the WNBA is that players were able to get an alternative league off the ground and operational without a ton of difficulty, and the players in question are not even part of the Clark-led generation of collegiate stars who have fueled historic growth in the popularity of the game.
Thus, unlike the first generation of WNBA players who were simply happy to have a league — and who believed they were making a sacrifice for a future far less distant than now — these WNBA players may feel they have options if the league runs aground.
When evaluating the state of the WNBA, some have pointed out that other leagues have faced difficulties at comparable points in their history. The league is currently in its 29th season. When the NBA was in its 29th season in 1974-75, it was in dire straits — facing competition from the ABA, a protracted lawsuit from Oscar Robertson, and revenge from Roone Arledge. Yes, the WNBA is doing better by that standard, but that is not saying much. In fact, that comparison should be at least somewhat chilling for the league, as the NBA was by no means on solid enough ground in season 29 that its long-term survival was assured. It would not have taken much for the whole thing to go under.
Is the WNBA similarly vulnerable? The nature of the threat has changed from 2003, when the prospect of the league going under meant the end of women’s pro basketball in the United States. If CBA negotiations go nowhere and part or all of next season is lost, it is impossible to imagine that Clark and company will simply spend the entire summer sitting on the sidelines.
The big question whenever players suggest they might push for a new league is whether they could actually do any better. Time after time, the answer has been no. It may still be. The fact that the WNBA is still in relatively unstable position is a reason to be bearish on the prospects of an alternative league.
An established league with all of the resources of the NBA still having to pay its players in such a fashion is not exactly a strong sign, and a new league would not be able to match the WNBA’s three decades worth of muscle memory, its 13 home markets with five more to come, or its affiliation with the NBA and inclusion in that league’s new 11-year media rights deal. It probably would not be able to maintain the recently-added creature comforts like charter flights and new practice facilities, at least not immediately.
But if the WNBA is still such a fledgling league that players must sacrifice to keep the lights on, it is not so hard to see a protracted collective bargaining negotiation making the risk of defecting easier to accept. If players are going to have to sacrifice either way, why should it be for the WNBA?
That is not a consideration players in other leagues have had to make. Any alternative to the NBA was going to either be an intolerable step down for the league’s stars or sufficiently expensive as to be impossible to get off the ground. WNBA players may feel not only like they have less to lose, but as with Gillom in 1999, like they are pioneers making a sacrifice for the next generation.
And there is potential. It used to be that college stars like Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker and Maya Moore would go from national prominence in college to anonymity in the WNBA. The league has grown enough that those days are over. But the present boom in women’s basketball viewership has seemed to be something that fell into the league’s lap rather than something it helped to cultivate.
It sometimes seems like the WNBA is caught a bit flat footed by its good fortune. Did the league ever expect a city to respond as well to All-Star weekend as Indianapolis did this year, not just at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, but throughout the city? If not, it might explain why All-Star is still two days and not three, as in the NBA. (Surely a rookie-sophomore game would be an obvious lay-up.) It is not so certain that the WNBA is necessarily equipped to best capitalize on the current moment.
Ultimately, the league finds itself facing some real adversity in collective bargaining. To begin with, the players are the aggressors, which has not been the case in most CBA negotiations since the 1970s — nearly all of which have seen the owners agitating for changes. The players have public opinion on their side, which is also a rarity (at best, most CBA negotiations in sports are ‘a pox on both their houses’ affairs). The most popular players, Clark in particular, are arguably bigger than the league. And it is not entirely clear that the WNBA has a business model that can accommodate the players’ needs even if the owners are so inclined. These are not the usual conditions a league faces in a collective bargaining negotiation.
At this point, perhaps the best-case scenario for the league is that the players are not willing to push this as far as it can go.
The players’ shirt gesture Saturday night recalled another All-Star Game moment in collective bargaining history. In 1964, ahead of a nationally televised, primetime NBA All-Star Game on ABC — a rare TV appearance for the league — NBA players refused to play unless the league agreed to institute a pension plan. After a tense standoff that delayed the start of the game, the owners agreed.
There was no way WNBA players would have done that Saturday, and it would have been a dramatic and unpopular escalation of tensions. But if we’re going to be praising the players for using their voices, let’s keep in mind that actions generally speak louder than words.
To that point, there needs to be a ‘reckoning’ — to use an overused word — with the tools of activism in sports. Athletes wearing shirts with bold, black and white messaging is by this point a well-worn tactic with limited record of success. It is certainly significant that the fans are on the players side, but fan chants also have a limited record of success (has a single owner ever sold the team after being told, in unison and en masse, to ‘sell the team’?).
The WNBA has never lost a game due to strike or lockout in its nearly 30-year history. Since the league launched in 1997, all of the “big four” leagues have lost games — from a single preseason game for the NFL to a full season in the case of the NHL. While the owners were the ones pushing for changes to the CBA in all of those instances, it was the players’ willingness to withstand lost paychecks that kept the owner-imposed work stoppages going as long as they did.
In the golden age of sports unions in the 1970s, it was lawsuits by Curt Flood, Oscar Robertson and John Mackey that wiped out reserve rules in baseball, basketball and football — and not without cost to careers.
Perhaps all it will take is just shirts and chants, but based on past history, at some point the players are going to need to put everything on the line.
