{"id":318414,"date":"2025-12-01T12:59:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/318414\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T12:59:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T12:59:16","slug":"the-wnbpas-leap-of-faith-in-wnba-cba-negotiations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/318414\/","title":{"rendered":"The WNBPA’s leap of faith in WNBA CBA negotiations"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than a year after it opted out of the collective bargaining agreement, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association are not significantly closer to signing off on a new CBA.<\/p>\n

Negotiations with the WNBA have not proven fruitful to this point, and both sides faced an inflection point on Sunday: the imminent expiration of the CBA, following a mutually-agreed 30-day extension<\/a>\u00a0of the 2020 CBA.<\/p>\n

The sticking point continues to be the WNBPA’s demand for player salaries — and, by proxy, the salary cap — to grow in tandem with the WNBA as a business. It is a model that for years has been used in the NBA — whose commissioner, Adam Silver, is WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s boss.<\/p>\n

Will an agreement happen in the next 40 days?<\/p>\n

Shortly before the midnight deadline on Sunday, the WNBA and the WNBPA announced another extension<\/a> amid their CBA talks.<\/p>\n

The sides have agreed to extend the window through the rest of 2025 and into the second week of January — a 40-day period ending Jan. 9.<\/p>\n

The WNBPA’s statement prior to the extension confirmation laid bare its efforts to gain leverage and the upper hand in negotiations.<\/p>\n

“We expect substantive movement from the league within this window,” the WNBPA’s official statement read, as it initially proposed a six-week extension of the CBA.<\/p>\n

The WNBPA tells ESPN in a statement that <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have proposed a six-week extension. We expect substantive movement from the league within this window.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) December 1, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

The WNBA’s most recent reported offer made headlines with a supermax salary north of $1.1 million. But the players’ union was unmoved by the offer as it did not contain a large enough revenue-sharing component.<\/p>\n

With the 2026 league calendar already affected — the expansion draft and free agency start dates remain unknown — the new 40-day extension could prove decisive not only in these labor negotiations, but in the future of the WNBA on the whole.<\/p>\n

More WNBA news:<\/p>\n