A CBA agreement between WNBA players and the league has brought a moment of collective exhale. The weight of uncertainty has been lifted, and there is a sense of forward motion in the world of women’s basketball.

For the first time, the league’s best players can make over $1 million stateside, while minimum salaries have risen to a respectable $270,000.

Fans can return to the luxury of lighthearted musing about the upcoming season: Can the Aces defend their dynasty? Will the Wings draft Azzi Fudd and create a Dallas power couple?

These questions are a privilege following an offseason dominated by existential dread: Will there even be a season? Will players ever get their fair share?

Throughout a tense negotiating cycle, the players’ stance was rooted firmly in economics. “It’s just business,” they said, arguing for their share of the success they built. The league’s popularity surged, and leaked figures suggest the league now generates at least half a billion dollars in annual revenue.

Still, the labor fight was swept up in larger social and political currents. Women are persistently asked to accept less than their male counterparts, and union power in America has eroded.

So does the WNBA’s new agreement represent justice or incremental progress?

It’s hard to tell. Players will now participate in a far more progressive revenue-sharing model, but their 20% share of league revenue remains a fraction of the 50% standard in major men’s leagues.

What we know for sure is that the players are proud. Union Vice President Alysha Clark was moved to tears when describing the deal.

“What we just accomplished,” she said, “is going to change the lives of so many players.”

The new deal delivers palpable wins to the women’s basketball world, both immediate and enduring. Everyone can relax knowing the league’s 30th season will start on time. (May 8th, mark your calendars). The deal also raises expectations for the standard in women’s professional sports.

That’s remarkable when you consider the low expectations originally placed on the WNBA by its own parent company, the NBA.

Four-time champion Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve named it plainly during the 2025 All-Star weekend: “There’s been this long undertone [from the NBA] that yeah, the WNBA is nice and everything, but it’ll never become mainstream. I was told that 10 years ago… Some of those same people are going ‘Oh! There’s money in it now!’ That’s the nature of women in business, women in sport, women in politics.”

Decades of underinvestment meant the WNBA “product” was defined by hardship: exhausted athletes hooping in understaffed organizations, taking ice baths in garbage cans, and heading straight overseas to make ends meet instead of getting the rest NBA players take for granted.

Despite these conditions, women’s basketball turned the corner in 2024. A broader audience joined the die-hard fans. Viewership exploded. Billionaires began tripping over themselves to invest.

The league leaned into its momentum. It will expand to 18 teams by the end of the decade, and a 52-game schedule is reportedly on the horizon.

But leadership should be thinking even bigger. Imagine what professional women’s basketball could become with an extended season unafraid to conflict with the traditional sports calendar. Imagine a creative, symbiotic partnership with Unrivaled or other emerging platforms.

Is the league finally ready to take such radical risks? The CBA negotiation process flashed some warning signs.

In January, union vice president Napheesa Collier told ESPN the league’s tone was “dismissive” and “disrespectful,” saying players were repeatedly told they didn’t understand the business. “I don’t feel like there’s any cultivation of a culture of trust,” union President Nneka Ogwumike told The Athletic in December.

These specific quotes may be forgotten amidst the champagne toasts, but neither players nor fans will forget the dismissive undertones.

And a paternalistic attitude toward players will continue to limit the product’s potential.