{"id":554331,"date":"2026-03-23T01:25:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/554331\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T01:25:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T01:25:39","slug":"womens-march-madness-kicks-off-with-historic-wnba-cba-in-the-backdrop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/554331\/","title":{"rendered":"Women\u2019s March Madness Kicks Off With Historic WNBA CBA in the Backdrop"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Carolina senior Raven Johnson has spoken at length about what it meant for her to return for one last college season with the Gamecocks. By deciding not to enter the WNBA last year, she gave herself time to develop her game and boost her draft status<\/a>, and, of course, \u201cI\u2019m focused on winning this March Madness tournament,\u201d the point guard said on Friday.<\/p>\n

But Johnson also gave herself something far more literal. Entering the WNBA will look very, very different for players this year than it did for players last year, or any year prior. The collective bargaining agreement reached this week between the WNBA and its Players\u2019 Association<\/a> should reshape the financial landscape of the league.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cGood thing you came back, Raven,\u201d quipped Johnson\u2019s coach, Dawn Staley. \u201cReally. It\u2019s lucrative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staley was right. Had Johnson chosen to enter the draft last year, her rookie salary would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $70,000, depending on where exactly she was selected. This year? The rookie minimum will be $270,000, and top picks will make as much as $500,000. (WNBA players on existing rookie contracts will have their salaries boosted to meet the new minimums.) And the agreement determines more than just player salary. Teams will be required to meet new standards for their facilities\u2014the days of practicing at local community rec centers may be over. Teams will also have to increase their staffing for positions such as trainers, strength coaches, physical therapists and nutritionists.<\/p>\n

In short, the playing experience will be professionalized across the league. A major talking point for years had been that leaving Division I basketball for the WNBA meant adapting to fewer amenities and worse facilities. That had already begun to change for select teams and ownership groups. Now, many of those upgrades are codified in the new agreement, and they will soon have a chance to become standard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSuper grateful,\u201d Texas guard and WNBA draft prospect Rori Harmon said on Thursday. \u201cI\u2019m really glad that those players and everyone that was involved fought for what they wanted, and just made it easier for not only them, but for us players who do want to play in the league.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The changes are especially striking for a coach like Staley. When she graduated from Virginia in 1992, there were no women\u2019s professional leagues in the U.S., and she had to head overseas to build a basketball career. Staley eventually returned to play in the American Basketball League. When that folded, she hopped to the WNBA, but the league never provided her only paycheck. For six years, Staley held two jobs at once, playing in the WNBA for the Charlotte Sting and the Houston Comets and coaching in the NCAA by running the program at Temple. She could not afford to simply play. Her players now will never have to face those choices.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the officers in the Players\u2019 Association have really just beared down and fought for their worth, and the worth of their current players, as well as the future,\u201d Staley said during her press conference Friday. \u201cThere\u2019s not oftentimes that you get what you want. And I don\u2019t know if they got everything they want, but there were principal things that they wanted that are a lot more favorable to the players. And the fact that the WNBA negotiated such a historical deal means that they understand it too. They understand they have to be on this side of history to move our game forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enormity of the change is hard to fully explain to their players. But coaches are grateful for the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think my players understand how monumental that is,\u201d said Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin. \u201cTo see the women in the WNBA fight for their value and their worth and get it\u2026 It\u2019s going to go down in history, and my children will talk about it later and benefit from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

More March Madness from Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Carolina senior Raven Johnson has spoken at length about what it meant for her to return for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-554331","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\/554331","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=554331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}