After meeting face to face a week ago, it appears the WNBA and players are back in negotiations. It was reported that after players submitted a CBA proposal to the league in December, the WNBA still had not responded to it as of February. The parties met in person in New York last weekwith more than 40 players present in person or via Zoom. At that meeting, the league still did not have a response ready to give him, but submitted its final proposal later in the week, on Friday.
Even though the league hasn’t moved much on money issues — particularly revenue-sharing models — it has seemed to concede some things to players. After wanting to completely eliminate housing allowances in the league, this new proposal from the league now covers housing for players with less than three years of service in the WNBA. Players will be allowed a one-bedroom apartment for the first three years of their WNBA career, and new, developing players will be offered a studio apartment.
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Breanna Stewart told CBS Sports’ Jack Maloney At Unrivaled this week, the fact that the WNBA conceded on a few of these small points was important and that it “means the league heard us on things that matter to us,” she said.
Yet this proposal will ultimately not be accepted by the players, mainly because the league still does not offer enough deals when it comes to revenue sharing percentage. According to Maloney’s report, there is still a huge gap between the parties on this topic: Players want 30 percent of gross revenue returned to them, which translates to a team salary cap of more than $10 million per year and a maximum individual salary of about $2.5 million. The WNBA still only offers about half of that.
However, time is running out to reach an agreement. The WNBA season is set to begin in exactly three months. Training camp usually begins about 2-3 weeks prior, with the WNBA Draft taking place a week before camp begins. It’s been a month there. There are more than 100 free agents who must negotiate and sign new individual player contracts, preparing the league for an unprecedented free agency period in an extremely limited time.
Additionally, with the addition of two new expansion teams in Toronto and Portland to the league this year, an expansion draft must also take place. In the absence of a CBA, there are no rules on what the expansion draft will look like and, as a result, Toronto and Portland have not been able to fully prepare for this draft. Each time a new CBA is signed, existing WNBA teams will need to take the time to prepare their protected player lists under the new rules that will be in place, and then expansion teams will need to receive those lists and prepare accordingly. This is not something that can happen in just a few days.
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All this to say that we are starting to get there. The players can feel it, as Stewart expressed in the CBS interview. There is only limited time left to negotiate before the the start of the season will have to be postponed. There is no set date being discussed publicly at this time, but the overriding belief in my conversations with people around the league is that if something doesn’t happen before the end of February, the start of the season could be affected.
So far, there is no serious talk about players planning a strike. The union voted to authorize their executive committee to go on strike in December, with 98% of the union voting yes. For now, however, it appears that both sides are making at least token efforts in the hope that it doesn’t get to that point.
