Summer Jobs.According to Oscar Dixon in USA Today, the WNBA and the players' union have a reached a meeting of the minds on a new 6-year Collective Bargaining Agreement. Among other things, the CBA spells out rookie salaries.
So Harp, Lang and (hopefully) Jade now have some idea how much they can plan to spend at the mall this summer. Laura and Crystal should be earning in the range of $41,000 to $44,000 (depending on whether they are drafted in the top 4 or drop to positions 5-8) from their summer jobs. The top-paid players in the league will make $95,000.
The new bargaining agreement raises the WNBA salary cap (to a max this season of $772,000), as well as addresses certain quality-of-life issues and free agency-related issues of concern to the players. Read Dixon's informative article for more details.
In case you're thinking that a salary in the $40s seems pretty low for a couple of basketball players as exceptional as Lang and Harp . . . just remember that the real $$$$ in women's pro ball is made during the "offseason" overseas. In Russia, in Israel (where Shay Doron is currently loving her job), and in other countries, the top players can earn six-figure salaries . . . which means they have a lot more to spend at the mall.
posted by BasketCases @ 6:58 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
That is sad. The MINIMUM salary in the NBA is 10 times the rookie salary in the WNBA.
http://www.insidehoops.com/minimum-nba-salary.shtml
The average salary in the NBA is probably more than the team cap for the WNBA. Top NBA rookies are getting over $4 million!
http://www.hoopshype.com/draft.htm
Which tells you that talented young female athletes should go into tennis where there is pay equity at most if not all the grand slams.
We agree that the WNBA salary level is unfortunate, but until the WNBA gains more support from paying fans and corporate sponsors, there's little that can be done.
Have you bought your Mystics season tickets yet? :-)
-- BC
Glad to see that you basketcases are thinking clearly. Until the public is willing to pay the "big bucks" to watch the WNBA, we should not expect the salaries to be equal to the men.
Also, to cut the NBA a little slack, their season is over twice as long; total pay ought to be more, or I'd be one steamed NBAer.
The women tennis players only play 3 sets in the majors vs. 5 sets for the men. Yet that didn't keep Bill Jean King and company from demanding equal compensation. Hopefully women's basketball will get more respect in the near future. It's all about the TV coverage and audience size, not so much the attendance figures.
Pro tennis players who happen to be women play the tournaments as they are structured, so why shouldn't Billy Jean King ask for equality - the players don't decide how many sets they play. And when I ask TV folks why they don't cover more women's games, they say it's about audience size and attendance figures. They claim that if more people attended, they would cover the games.
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