With just over a week remaining until the Jan. 9 deadline for a new WNBA collective bargaining agreement, the league and the Women\u2019s National Basketball Players Association are not close to a deal, \u200dESPN reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The report indicates that the league and players association are very far apart on a number of basic points including what the revenue-sharing system, which the league currently does not have, could look like, what could be considered revenue and the process of accounting for expenses.<\/p>\n
The league is reportedly claiming that the latest proposal \u200cfrom the WNBPA (30% of gross revenue for the players and \u200ca salary cap of around $10.5 million) would not be sustainable for the league to survive, costing the WNBA approximately $700 million over the length of the pact.<\/p>\n
The last reported proposal from the WNBA side offered 50-plus-percent of net revenue (revenue subtracting expenses), raising average \u200bsalaries from $120,000 to $530,000 and max salaries from $249,244 to $1.3 million immediately and close to $2 million over the course of the deal.<\/p>\n
The WNBA\u2019s proposed salary cap is $5 \u200dmillion with growth in line with revenue \u200bsharing over the deal.<\/p>\n
Just after Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier\u2019s \u200bteam was eliminated from the playoffs in September, Collier, the WNBPA vice president, called \u200da press conference and said WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert was providing the \u201cworst leadership in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor too long I have tried to have these conversations in private,\u201d Collier added. \u201cBut it\u2019s clear there\u2019s no intention of accepting there\u2019s a problem (with the league\u2019s officiating, in particular). The league has made it clear, it \u200disn\u2019t about innovation. It isn\u2019t about collaboration. It\u2019s about control and power.\u201d<\/p>\n
In mid-December, the WNBA\u2019s players voted to give WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike and the executive committee the \u200dauthority to potentially initiate \u200da strike.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players have spoken,\u201d the WNBPA said in \u200ba statement. \u201cThrough a decisive vote with historic participation, our membership \u200bhas \u2060authorized the WNBPA\u2019s Executive Committee to call a strike when \u200cnecessary. The players\u2019 decision is an unavoidable response to the state of negotiations with the WNBA and its teams.\u201d<\/p>\n
The WNBA is scheduled to introduce expansion teams in Portland and Toronto in 2026 to bring its number of teams to 15. A strike, if set into motion, could affect that timeline with the season scheduled to begin \u2060in May.<\/p>\n
\u2013Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just over a week remaining until the Jan. 9 deadline for a new WNBA collective bargaining agreement,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-382905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}