In No offseason, Athleticism follows the journeys of female basketball players after their WNBA the end of the seasons and the beginning of their journeys. From Turkey, Israel, Italy, the Czech Republic, Mexico and even here in the United States, our journalists tell the stories of these players as they chase their dreams and try to shape the country’s future . WNBA.
The subject is largely taboo. So taciturn that Erica McCall says she never heard any of her closest friends talk to her about it, nor did her sister, the Connecticut Sun All-Star wing. DeWanna Bonnerprovided him with exact details.
McCall, a five-year WNBA veteran, reflects on the lack of transparency regarding salaries overseas. “Like an unspoken rule,” she said. “You just don’t say what you’re doing.”
Although WNBA player contract information is often released annually, in a global market, the details of overseas contracts are largely shrouded in secrecy. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi, who holds an Italian passport, was paid nearly $1.5 million a year by Russian powerhouse UMMC Ekaterinburg. New York Liberty star Jonquel Jones, who has Bosnian nationality, told ESPN last year she did her annual WNBA salary in a month playing for Yekaterinburg. But these details are aberrant – in their public nature and their amount. Almost no one in the WNBA, or its periphery, comes close to earning that much overseas, where many WNBA players have historically competed during the offseason.
The most common explanation for why players move abroad often boils down to three words: getting rich. It’s true that players can significantly increase their W earnings, which range from rookie salaries of around $62,000 to supermax deals worth nearly $235,000, by playing overseas. Yet several WNBA agents, granted anonymity to openly discuss the details of overseas payments, estimate that only five to 10 players earn more than $500,000 in a given season overseas. , and that’s when top-paying countries like China and Russia are fully accessible to the WNBA. players. “It’s always been a very small, elite group that gets paid this way,” says one agent. “And everyone is paid well.”
Another agent agreed with that assessment, adding: “We’re in a different game than we were 10 years ago, or even five years ago.” »
Part of this change is due to the various recessions across Europe. The start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the detention of Brittney Griner removed China and Russia respectively as potential landing spots for the league’s biggest stars, at least for last season. How players actually choose which team to play for is often more complicated than just the final dollar amount, and what might keep players home in years to come also goes beyond just increasing team salaries. WNBA.
GO FURTHER
From pet-friendly homes to salary considerations, how WNBA players choose foreign teams
Chelsea Hopkins went undrafted in 2013, despite receiving All-America honors and helping San Diego State win a school-record 27 games. In September, the 5-foot-8 guard competed in four WNBA contests – all within a nine-day span – with the San Antonio Silver Stars. At the end of season W, she joined Bnot Herzliya in Israel. She earned $2,700 a month.
Hopkins has been playing professionally in Israel for a decade. Having won the Israeli league MVP in 2017 and a league championship in 2018, she says her salary has peaked at around $12,000 per month – a five-figure monthly contract is “pretty standard for a player in WNBA guy at this point.” She adds. Hopkins says that amount has “always been sustainable” to live on. But she also acknowledges that she has built a second home in one of the most expensive countries in the world. His money could have gone further elsewhere.
Like Turkey, for example. There, $100 is currently equivalent to more than 1,900 Turkish liras, with the recent series of earthquakes weakening an already struggling economy. When McCall left Stanford in 2017, she says she didn’t think much about salary conversions, different tax regulations, and global economic trends. Still, she learned the impact of different economic situations.
During the 2021-22 campaign, McCall played for Turkish club Beşiktaş. This season she started playing for Spanish club Perfumerías Avenida. “Before, I played in Istanbul and paid around $15 for a bunch of races, whereas when I went to Spain for the same batch of races, I paid around $60,” she says. “I definitely wish I had been more informed about it when I got out of college and got into professional basketball.”
McCall began his professional career at KSC Szekszard in Hungary, earning around $60,000. She spent the next three seasons with the club and claims her salary increased by around $10,000 each season. With Beşiktaş, she earned around six figures. This season with Avenida and Turkish club Botaş, his contracts are worth around $110,000.
During the WNBA’s last offseason, Turkey presented the strongest market for high-profile players looking to compete overseas, with clubs like future EuroLeague champions Fenerbahçe and Çukurova Mersin fielding players like the top WNBA stars. Breanna Stewart, Chelsea Gray, Jonquel Jones, Emma Meesseman. Yet the country’s top clubs are estimated to have paid only a fraction of what Yekaterinburg, which like all Russian teams was banned from competing in the EuroLeague this year, usually paid the sport’s stars . In recent years, China has been another country in which prominent international players have received salaries often between $150,000 and $500,000 per season. Part of the reason is that the WCBA is exclusive, allowing only two foreigners per team, which drives up the price for highly sought-after players. But China has remained closed to international players due to its zero COVID-19 policy, even though many agents expect the market to return for next year’s overseas campaign.
Even the Russian market is not as lucrative as some might think. In addition to its attractive salaries, Yekaterinburg, controlled by Andrei Kozitsyn and Iskander Makhmudov, the billionaire co-founders of a mining company, offered its players charter flights, individual translators and luxurious living conditions. “They pay you a lot of money. But they take care of you,” says Minnesota Lynx guard Kayla McBride, who played there from 2018 to 2019. Rival teams Nika Syktyvkar, Dynamo Kursk and Nadezhda Orenburg are also regularly among the biggest spenders. However, these teams “are not even in the same postal code (as Yekaterinburg)”, explains an agent.
At the start of this season, with a reduced foreign landscape, fewer teams were bidding on some of the world’s top talent, so the market generally shrank. A number of former or current WNBA All-Stars have stated Athleticism that their salaries, including bonuses, could have climbed up to six figures during the last season abroad. Some players said they were earning half as much as in the past. “It’s been a crazy time since I got into professional basketball,” says McCall, who made his professional debut in the summer of 2017.
Market realities thus prompt more answers to the question of what it would take for the WNBA to keep more players in the United States during the offseason. “This goes beyond just increasing salaries,” explains one of the agents. “There are so many other things that need to happen for people to stay. It’s not just a financial choice.
Potential CBA negotiations over the next 24 months will likely make these factors more evident, but some could range from the small, such as year-round housing provided by the team, to broader facets, such as opportunities that players have to develop. their games in the United States. Decisions about where to play abroad are also often deeply personal, and some enjoy the competition or the chance to travel abroad.
“I feel like I’ve always gotten better playing in the EuroLeague,” McBride says.
“I enjoy both things,” says Chicago Sky guard Marina Mabrey, who spent the winter playing for Famila Wuber Schio in Italy. “I know that one day I will be able to tell my children that your mother traveled the world.”
At a time of prioritization, where players on non-rookie contracts will be punished for missing days during training camp starting this spring, the league continues to try to create reasons for players to stay all year. Marketing opportunities are another factor that could lead more players to forgo playing overseas in the winter.
Ten players signed marketing deals during the offseason, and although no player can earn more than $250,000, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said that a player participating in the WNBA’s marketing deals league could earn up to $700,000 over a season. (Athleticism reported in December that no players had reached this level.)
GO FURTHER
Inside the deals that aim to keep the WNBA’s faces at home
Additional team marketing deals, in which individual teams can spend up to $100,000 per year and no less than half that, can provide more revenue streams for players, but this structure presents another pitfall. Several sources have said Athleticism that if a player changes teams in the middle of said agreement, whether via trade or free agency, the team marketing agreement ends.
McCall points to an entirely different factor when asked what, beyond money, might lead more players to stay in the United States. “I think another problem is that the league only lasts four months,” she said.
WNBA teams will play an all-time high 40 games this year, and one game. play may extend into mid-October, depending on playoff performance. But a W campaign still lasts less than half the year, and at that point, players whose WNBA seasons are over start boarding planes to other countries. Another paycheck awaits.
The “No Offseason” series is part of a partnership with Google Pixels. Athleticism maintains complete editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review articles before publication.
(Illustration: John Bradford / Athleticism; Photo by Emma Meesseman: Courtesy of FIBA.basketball)
