Kareem Copeland<\/a> reported Friday players saw an average increase in pay of 366 percent with their first contracts this season and then relayed what some of them said they bought with their new money.<\/p>\nIndiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham purchased a VRBO in Arizona and explained she plans on expanding that business plan.<\/p>\n
“I’m about to probably buy one in Nashville and Florida, and so I’m just starting to make a business outside of the court,” Cunningham said. “It’s good, it’s fun. I’m trying to buy places that I want to go visit, so when I’m there, I don’t have to pay for it.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s a long time coming, but now you have to be smart with that money. You can’t just go out and blow it all or not invest. I think it allows all of us to kind of grow and be businesswomen.”<\/p>\n
Others took a different approach, including Minnesota Lynx guard Courtney Williams.<\/p>\n
“I went to the strip club and blew a bag,” Williams said. “No, I’m being dead serious. Like, that particular strip club will never see me for the rest of my life. Like, I did too much in there.<\/p>\n
“Man, they probably know me by my name.”<\/p>\n
Williams and Seattle Storm guard Natisha Hiedeman are collectively known as “StudBudz,” and the latter bought Williams a customized, seven-foot statue of the anime character Goku for her birthday.<\/p>\n
“I ain’t gonna lie, I spent a little bit on that,” Hiedeman said. “They had to make it, ship it, do everything.<\/p>\n
“She been saying she wanted one … and she’s putting her little crib together. But we said we’re done buying each other expensive gifts now. So, that was her last gift from me.”<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Washington Mystics forward Kiki Iriafen bought a black Porsche Cayenne coupe, Indiana Fever guard Lexie Hull bought a Tesla and Atlanta Dream forward Rhyne Howard bought a new Louis Vuitton bag.<\/p>\n
“I definitely saved a lot of my money, invested a lot of money,” Iriafen said. “I finally did my 401[k] this year. I did not do that last year, so I was really proud of myself for doing that.<\/p>\n
“But I just bought myself a car.”<\/p>\n
That seemed to be a theme with many of the players investing but also enjoying a splurge, which is not surprising after they worked so hard during negotiations for the new CBA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WNBA players are enjoying more financial freedom after agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement in March, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-866572","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\/866572","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=866572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}