The WNBA is more popular than ever, setting attendance and viewership records all across the board. Fans are supporting women\u2019s basketball\u2014and women\u2019s sports in general\u2014like never before. And yet, there are still some people who view the WNBA as a \u201clesser\u201d version of the NBA and don\u2019t give its players the credit they deserve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Candace Parker believes that higher salaries could change the way WNBA players are viewed by some people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople respect people with zeros at the end of their checks,\u201d Parker said when she appeared on All The Smoke.<\/a> \u201cLet\u2019s just be honest. There\u2019s a respect element of things when you walk into a room if you have zeros behind your check. And so I feel like in order for the WNBA to be reputable and to be respected, you have to have zeros behind your check. And with that being said, a number of zeros behind your checks. That has crossed the WNBA off the list for a number of years. That\u2019s been the running joke in comments and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Parker played in the WNBA between 2008 and 2023\u2014mostly prior to the massive boom the league experienced in recent years. She knows what it\u2019s like to be undervalued and discredited despite being one of the brightest talents in the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n Higher salaries are a key issue in the CBA negotiations\u00a0<\/p>\n The current CBA was set to expire on October 31. The league and the WNBPA agreed to a 30-day extension. That deadline arrived quickly, but no new deal was agreed upon, so the two sides agreed to another extension to continue negotiations through January.\u00a0<\/p>\n The WNBA reportedly made the players\u2019 association an offer that would raise the average salary to $500,000 and the maximum salary to $1 million. However, the two sides aren\u2019t quite aligned on other issues. For one, players want more than what The Athletic reported to be less than 15% of league revenue. On top of that, the WNBA\u2019s proposal included a new schedule that would conflict with overseas seasons and the NCAA tournament<\/a> as well as a mandatory draft combine and halved salaries for players who don\u2019t attend. The WNBA also reportedly proposed to cut team housing, which would be detrimental to players on non-guaranteed or temporary contracts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n WNBPA President Nneka Ogwumike also noted a while ago that players wanted streamlined standards for practice facilities and better family planning and retirement benefits. Not much has been reported about those issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n Increasing players\u2019 salaries seems like the least contentious issue in the CBA negotiations. While the league and the players\u2019 association differ when it comes to revenue shares, both sides obviously agree that the players deserve higher salaries. After all, the players and their talent are what drives the league\u2019s success.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA is more popular than ever, setting attendance and viewership records all across the board. Fans are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-325995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}