agreed to a 40-day extension last month<\/a> as they have failed to find common ground on the biggest issue around salary structure and revenue sharing.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is the biggest moment the WNBA has ever seen, and it\u2019s not something that can be messed up,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to fight for everything that we deserve, but at the same time, we need to play basketball. That\u2019s what our fans crave and that\u2019s what all of you crave as well. You want the product on the floor. At the end of the day, that\u2019s how you make the money, that\u2019s how you\u2019re marketable, that\u2019s what the fans get excited about, that\u2019s what the fans want to show up for.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s business. It\u2019s a negotiation, and there has to be compromise on both sides. We\u2019re starting to get down to the wire a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark said she has not been in most meetings as part of the negotiations but stays informed through WNBPA reps. Negotiations have remained focused on players\u2019 salary structure and revenue sharing, with the union aiming to tie salaries to the growth of league revenue.<\/p>\n
Sources familiar with the WNBA\u2019s thinking also believe its proposals have been a clear concession to players \u2014 with revenue sharing now tied to the growth of the league and also what it considered \u201cmassive\u201d salary increases.<\/p>\n
The league\u2019s revenue has increased in recent years and been accelerated dramatically by some of the stars at the USA Basketball camp, including Clark, Sky F Angel Reese and Wings G Paige Bueckers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just learning more, asking more questions, understanding the two sides of the negotiation and how we have to come to terms with it and find a middle ground in what both sides want,\u201d Bueckers said. \u201cWe are to stand firm in what we believe we have earned and the people before us have earned, so it\u2019s continued negotiations but we\u2019re being firm on what we believe in and what we stand for.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senior team camp was the first since USA Basketball named Kara Lawson as head coach for the team going into LA28. It represented a changing of the guards, of sorts, with some of the biggest young stars in the WNBA making their senior national team camp debut.<\/p>\n
In addition to Clark and Bueckers — the 2024 and 2025 rookies of the year, respectively — the camp included Sparks C Cameron Brink, Mystics G Sonia Citron and F Kiki Iriafen and Reese. UCLA C Lauren Betts and USC G JuJu Watkins also made their debuts.<\/p>\n
USA Basketball in May named Sue Bird, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, its first managing director for the women\u2019s national team. In addition to building toward LA28, Bird is evaluating players to be named to the FIBA Women\u2019s World Cup next year where the USA will look for a fifth consecutive gold medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DURHAM, N.C. – The WNBA\u2019s collective bargaining negotiations have slightly less than a month until the next deadline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[461,49,48,82,630,56438],"class_list":{"0":"post-344360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-wnba","13":"tag-wnbpa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344360","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=344360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}