{"id":575588,"date":"2026-04-01T17:30:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575588\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T17:30:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T17:30:21","slug":"the-simple-reason-why-80-of-wnba-players-are-free-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/575588\/","title":{"rendered":"The simple reason why 80% of WNBA players are free agents"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a new collective bargaining agreement in effect, the WNBA offseason can officially be considered underway \u2014 and technically, it could produce the largest wave of player movement in the league’s 30-year history.<\/p>\n

More than 100 players are scheduled to become free agents this month. That includes marquee players like Brittney Griner, Kelsey Mitchell<\/a>, two-time MVP Breanna Stewart, four-time MVP A’ja Wilson and many more.<\/p>\n

While Stewart has already confirmed her intention to sign a new deal with the Liberty, and the Aces are likely<\/a> to re-sign Wilson to the WNBA’s new supermax, there could be surprises elsewhere when teams can begin negotiations with players on April 9<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How have so many WNBA players hit free agency at once?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A total of 123 players<\/a>, out of the approximately 156 contracted to the 13 WNBA teams in 2025, will be available to sign as free agents beginning in the second week of April.<\/p>\n

That includes practically every player who is not on a rookie-scale contract. The only two exceptions are Lexie Brown and Kalani Brown, who are under contract for 2026 already.<\/p>\n

The aforementioned figure includes 77 unrestricted free agents, with many of the league’s stars eligible to change teams if they so choose.<\/p>\n

This is happening by design. In advance of the negotiations for a new CBA, many of the WNBA’s top players intentionally took short-term deals in preparation for a new economic reality in which they could make million-dollar salaries for the first time.<\/p>\n

The players’ gamble paid off. Salaries<\/a> across the board are going up, just in time for players to officially sign new contracts beginning April 12.<\/p>\n

More WNBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a new collective bargaining agreement in effect, the WNBA offseason can officially be considered underway \u2014 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-575588","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\/575588","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=575588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}