The WNBA: Thread II
- Thread starter Phil Plantier
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We won’t be seeing JuJu Watkins in the W anytime soon. Shams reporting she just signed a shoe contract with Nike that will give her one of the richest shoe deals in women’s basketball. Happy for her but it’s tough for the W to compete when there’s not a real financial incentive to leave school.
https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/41684352/sources-usc-juju-watkins-nike-reach-lucrative-extension
https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/story/_/id/41684352/sources-usc-juju-watkins-nike-reach-lucrative-extension
WNBA requires domestic players to either have graduated or turn 22 in the same calendar year as the draft so the Nike deal won't change anything with her leaving. That could change with the new cba, but even then she'd still have 2 more years minimum at USC
Alyssa Thomas got absolutely abused on defense tonight, from what I saw. Moments where she wasn't giving the effort to bother contesting a shot, failed switches, a step slow on a drive. It wasn't just her, but she seemed to get picked on.
She's a power player. Really interesting but odd skill set. Incredibly strong but not quick, that's not odd. But poor shooter with great passing skills. A lot of her passing is her understanding and feel for the game. I really like her toughness. I thought she physically and mentally dominated the Fever forwards. I am partial to tough smart forwards so if I was a GM in the WNBA I would probably giver her too much money, despite the last game.
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I did not know that. Not sure the thinking there, although I’m sure the NCAA will fight changing the rule.
Thought folks might be interested in this article on the possibility of a Boston WNBA team - Boston.com Article
There's some really good stuff there about touching on why we don't already have one, how one might be "owned" and who might "own" a team, and more.
Huh. I assumed that the Sun arena's capacity would force the Sun to move to a bigger venue with the league's surge in popularity. I was surprised that it's actually 10k. I thought it was 6k or so. At least get them a real practice facility!
It wasn't about common sense...it was about $$. They ran the series schedule the way they did because it was more cost effective. Now that Clark has brought in tons of $$ to the W, they have the money, finally, to do it the correct way.
All-WNBA selections announced.
First Team:
Caitlin Clark (IND)
Napheesa Collier (MIN)
Alyssa Thomas (CON)
A'ja Wilson (LVA)
Breanna Stewart (NYL)
Clark is only the 5th rookie, and the first since Candace Parker in 2008, to be named to the all-league first team. Wilson and Collier were unanimous selections to the first team. Clark got 52 of 67 first-team votes and was on 66 of 67 ballots.
Second Team:
Sabrina Ionescu (NYL)
Arike Ogunbowale (DAL)
Nneka Ogwumike (SEA)
Kahleah Copper (PHX)
Jonquel Jones (NYL)
If you've got 3 of the 10 best players in a 12-team league, I guess you better win the title.
First Team:
Caitlin Clark (IND)
Napheesa Collier (MIN)
Alyssa Thomas (CON)
A'ja Wilson (LVA)
Breanna Stewart (NYL)
Clark is only the 5th rookie, and the first since Candace Parker in 2008, to be named to the all-league first team. Wilson and Collier were unanimous selections to the first team. Clark got 52 of 67 first-team votes and was on 66 of 67 ballots.
Second Team:
Sabrina Ionescu (NYL)
Arike Ogunbowale (DAL)
Nneka Ogwumike (SEA)
Kahleah Copper (PHX)
Jonquel Jones (NYL)
If you've got 3 of the 10 best players in a 12-team league, I guess you better win the title.
One of those five is not like the others. Clark, Collier, Wilson, and Stewart all are dominant scorers in addition to being good/great in other aspects of the game. Thomas isn't, and it's one reason why the Sun aren't a championship team.
A bit surprising since they played so well after the Olympics, But, in the playoffs they were not together. Maybe it is easier to get new coach than trade NaLyssa Smith. I expect a hard nosed coach to emphasize toughness because they played soft in the playoffs, and watched Clark get hammered on all year.
Rumours, from many source think Stephanie White is coming back to the Fever.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/27/sports/stephanie-white-could-become-caitlin-clarks-next-coach-after-christie-sides-firing/
Yup, she gone: https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/42057067/stephanie-white-sun-head-coach-two-seasons
That sucks, and based on Jen Rizzotti's comments I'm getting the vibe of a teardown and rebuild with a probably inexperienced or non-sought after coach who has the appetite to stick around through some losing seasons. It would be a bummer to have the first non-competitive team in around a decade next season, still without a title to show for their sustained run.
Always really, really good, just never quite good enough. Feels like the Jim Kelly era Buffalo Bills.
I'm definitely seeing a teardown and rebuild, but the issue is, they don't have the draft picks to do it. So it's going to be some real lean years here at first. I fully expect a last-place finish in 2025 unless they re-sign AT, Bonner, and Brionna.
AT will be 33 next season with some chronic and some nagging injuries, so I would not blame her for not sticking it out for a rebuild. I'll cheer her on to get a 'ship wherever she goes, though.
As expected, White returns to Indiana.
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/42131275/sources-wnba-fever-hire-stephanie-white-new-head-coach
https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/42131275/sources-wnba-fever-hire-stephanie-white-new-head-coach
It is like the Bulls hiring Chuck Daly.
I expect Fever players will do more than help Caitlin up when she gets a cheap shot next year.
The Wings win the draft lottery and gets to select #1 in April.
Paige Bueckers, welcome to Dallas!
Paige Bueckers, welcome to Dallas!
Baller move for Paige would be to announce that she’s staying another year because of the draconian laws in TX regarding women’s health care.
It’s close I would bet. She’s not going to get the big endorsement money immediately, like Caitlin did.
Yes, this will be interesting to see how it plays out. She's easy to support, love her game.
She could totally pull an Eli Manning, except while Eli's family wealth was good he wasn't personally wealthy (above board, at least). Paige knows she has a backstop the next season for sure. Of course if Dallas can't select Paige, do they just wind up missing the playoffs then getting the first pick again next year and we're in the same place.
This is interesting. I assume her idea would be, make it clear that if they draft her, she's not going to sign, so they'd be wasting it. Hope they pass on her as a result, and she goes to a different team. Los Angeles has the second pick, and I think she'd be great there.
Or, as a fallback, make that clear enough such that Dallas takes trade calls for her, and land some other assets in exchange for her post-draft - and she'd only sign if there were a promise to immediately trade her to a team she wants.
She definitely has more power here than a top draft pick in nearly any other sport. Baseball and gridiron football players can't make comparable money, so there's no real threat for a tip-top draft pick to go back to college. Basketball players in a position to get drafted top-5 can probably make decent money staying in college another year, but getting the clock ticking on their NBA rookie extensions is a massive opportunity cost if they defer it a year (plus injury risk, etc). Hockey, I don't know how it works, and there's really no meaningful draft for top prospects in soccer (including women's, as the NWSL got rid of theirs a few months ago). So Paige is in a pretty unique situation here where she has a credible BATNA, has real power and could use it.
Or, as a fallback, make that clear enough such that Dallas takes trade calls for her, and land some other assets in exchange for her post-draft - and she'd only sign if there were a promise to immediately trade her to a team she wants.
She definitely has more power here than a top draft pick in nearly any other sport. Baseball and gridiron football players can't make comparable money, so there's no real threat for a tip-top draft pick to go back to college. Basketball players in a position to get drafted top-5 can probably make decent money staying in college another year, but getting the clock ticking on their NBA rookie extensions is a massive opportunity cost if they defer it a year (plus injury risk, etc). Hockey, I don't know how it works, and there's really no meaningful draft for top prospects in soccer (including women's, as the NWSL got rid of theirs a few months ago). So Paige is in a pretty unique situation here where she has a credible BATNA, has real power and could use it.
A star player forcing themselves onto the LA team would mean the WNBA is really becoming the NBA!
Schedules for the upcoming season have been announced. Looks like another game at TD Garden this year with a first round rematch between the Sun and Fever on July 15th. Unfortunately, we'll be traveling.
I know we have to wait a bit, but I'm ready to watch some WNBA. Viewing some of these NBA games has become so boring. Too many 3's and the isolation game just puts me to sleep. At least I can some watch some decent college hoops for a while.
I can't think of a league more self-destructive. I love the WNBA game but the petty , let's be honest, racism is hard to stomach. A female player wins a prestigious award and an owner in the league has to complain about it. It is shocking how some things can be repeated and never get fact checked. Angel Reese is once again touted as Clark's equal when it comes to growth in the league. Angel Reese was such a draw the Sky went from 6th in the league in attendance to 8th. The fan support went up about 1500 fans, a bit less than league average. The Fever went from 11th to first an increase over 13,000 fans per game. Let's be honest Angel Reese would not be known if it was not for her confronting Clark, and smartly making herself to cash in on the Anti-Caitlin vibe.
I mean who is in charge over there? There is no comish to tell people to STFU up and cash the cheques? The WNBA deserve to fail if the can't cut out this crap.
And I really hope people don't come back with Clark's popularity being racist. She isn't the first white star. Rebecca Lobo was huge in college. Sue Bird was incredible. I have been intrigued by Cc becasue her highlights are more exciting than any other female players. A'ja is great but her highlight package is like watching clips of that really nice non jumping Mormon kid in a small city going off to sit on the bench in D3. Great footwork and mid range jumpers don't fill aenas, despite the off the charts charism of the player. But Caitlin Clark makes shots most players male or female would never make in a game. She's different. She's the first female player I ever watched where I knew she was doing things I could never have done. Also maybe look at how much money semi retired Venus Williams makes, Coco Grauf makes, before saying race is the factor in CC's draw.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/13/sport/sheila-johnson-caitlin-clark-time-magazine-spt-intl/index.html
I mean who is in charge over there? There is no comish to tell people to STFU up and cash the cheques? The WNBA deserve to fail if the can't cut out this crap.
And I really hope people don't come back with Clark's popularity being racist. She isn't the first white star. Rebecca Lobo was huge in college. Sue Bird was incredible. I have been intrigued by Cc becasue her highlights are more exciting than any other female players. A'ja is great but her highlight package is like watching clips of that really nice non jumping Mormon kid in a small city going off to sit on the bench in D3. Great footwork and mid range jumpers don't fill aenas, despite the off the charts charism of the player. But Caitlin Clark makes shots most players male or female would never make in a game. She's different. She's the first female player I ever watched where I knew she was doing things I could never have done. Also maybe look at how much money semi retired Venus Williams makes, Coco Grauf makes, before saying race is the factor in CC's draw.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/13/sport/sheila-johnson-caitlin-clark-time-magazine-spt-intl/index.html
Yeah I mean, I won't go on quite a righteous rant as Reggie, but it's just a silly quote by this woman all around.
Added Johnson: “While Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly talented, putting one individual on such a pedestal can foster resentment in a team sport like basketball. It doesn’t reflect the collective efforts that make the game so special… When you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings.”
Sheila, the whole point of pro sports is to single out people for excellence and put them on a pedestal. Do we award one trophy to the league champion? Or is everybody a winner and everyone gets a prize? Can anyone walk up and get a job playing sports, or does it require differentiating people by skill? Do the announcers in a game praise everyone equally, maybe just for their effort, or are they focusing on the players distinguishing themselves by results?
It's just so obviously nonsense by her that I'm not sure it even deserves anyone getting worked up about it.
Added Johnson: “While Caitlin Clark is undoubtedly talented, putting one individual on such a pedestal can foster resentment in a team sport like basketball. It doesn’t reflect the collective efforts that make the game so special… When you just keep singling out one player, it creates hard feelings.”
Sheila, the whole point of pro sports is to single out people for excellence and put them on a pedestal. Do we award one trophy to the league champion? Or is everybody a winner and everyone gets a prize? Can anyone walk up and get a job playing sports, or does it require differentiating people by skill? Do the announcers in a game praise everyone equally, maybe just for their effort, or are they focusing on the players distinguishing themselves by results?
It's just so obviously nonsense by her that I'm not sure it even deserves anyone getting worked up about it.
I read that the WNBA lost $40 million this past season and am aware that the NBA is funding the league. Has the WNBA made money in any year? Will it make money going forward with the new TV contract?
Short answer: They may have broken even for a few years, but the league in total has collectively lost an average of $10M / yr since founding. That changed ~2-3 years ago, with attendance declines reversed and much more attention paid even pre-Clark, and they likely made money on a gross-margin basis this year, before CapEx that took it to the $40M net number you've seen. Yes, very likely they will be quite profitable on an EBITDA basis going forward with the new TV deal, but may still deficit-spend for growth in spite of that. It just doesn't indicate weakness anymore, rather the opposite.
This post discussed the WNBA's financial picture and investment profile, and this one the new TV deal from back this summer. Summary: The new TV deal makes it crystal clear that they're in the black (going from $40M / yr to $200M / yr inbound revenue), but they likely were profitable on an EBITDA basis previously. The deficit spending isn't because of a lack of revenues or margins (or franchise valuations wouldn't have gone 5x over the last ~4 years), it's an investment in audience growth and league infrastructure - basically, they could be cashflow-profitable if they wanted to be, but right now it's more important to them to prioritize expansion (of teams, of reach, of fandom) and professionalizing different aspects of back-office operations, such as each team's commercial-revenue groups), and the league's growth justifies spending to enhance that growth.
For a while the league couldn't even give away franchise ownership, much less have demand exceed supply. Now you've got Golden State paying a $50M expansion fee to join the league, as did the forthcoming Toronto franchise, and the next expansion teams will pay probably even more than that. They're not doing that if the business fundamentals are trending down or even flat.
The vast majority of her popularity isn’t racist, but there is a very loud online minority who only care about her because it lets them punch down on the black and queer women who have been the W’s biggest stars for most of the league’s history.
That loud minority is FURIOUS at her online right now because that Time article repeated her quote about her popularity having an element of privilege to it (a quote from months ago, BTW, that the fans who are mad-online now just hadn’t noticed when it happened).
Which is a perfectly fair and correct thing for her to acknowledge, being traditionally-pretty midwestern white woman has definitely contributed to a broader population (including more white and relatively conservative people) becoming fans of her and the W, even the vast majority of those who are real fans of her as a player and aren’t being racist at all in their fandom.
More people just see themselves in her (and to your point, what they see is really exciting) which we know it’s important in new fandoms, even compared to recent white stars like Sue Bird or Breanna Stewart (who played together, and are both more fun than A’ja, IMO, I’d not quite as good, but are both gay) or Sabrina (who’s game is the most similar to CC, but is a west coast kid from an immigrant family with a foreign-sounding name). I think Lobo was too long ago to be comparable, the league wasn’t ready for a true breakout star in the 90s/early-2000s, and she was also a big with a less interesting game.
That wider interest is a good thing, though (the most part; again, the ugly parts of her fandom are also real, but they’re a small part of it, IMO) and the league should be leaning into it, not saying silly things to minimize it.
Some of it is the privilege and habit of complaining by the WNBA players. Plum's silly desire that she wants same % of revenue as Lebron when the NBA generates 100s of Billions profits come from the privilege of playing in league that has guaranteed existence. The W players have a better experience, in a league that has done nothing but lose money, in much better than the NBA players of the 70s. They stay in better hotels, have better more comfortable, travel, have their health looked after better, etc. So when Larry and Magic came along those guys were happy, because a league losing money may fold, while the WNBA has had their losses absorbed by the NBA. I am a basketball purist, so I have always enjoyed WNBA games, but the near constant complaining about being under appreciated was and is tiresome. The W X and Os are more applicable to level I coach, and I (an old white man) cannot count the times while searching for an OOB play, or ball screen coverage in W videos I came across compaints about how old white men refuse to watch. So many post game interviews were filled with anger at the people not watching. While I believe racism and jealousy are #1 motivators in the Cc hate, a habit of looking the gift horse in the mouth is also a factor.
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We'll be in Miami next month for my wife's conference. We're missing the Cs by a week and the Heat are out of town for the duration.
HOWEVER my kiddo let me know that Unrivaled is going on and I just grabbed 4 tickets directly behind one of the benches! Back-to-back three on three games, 4 teams. I'm pretty sure there's more seating in a typical HS gym. I don't know if this is a made for TV production but we'll be close up. If I weren't SoSH average, I'd be worried about Griner towering over me.
HOWEVER my kiddo let me know that Unrivaled is going on and I just grabbed 4 tickets directly behind one of the benches! Back-to-back three on three games, 4 teams. I'm pretty sure there's more seating in a typical HS gym. I don't know if this is a made for TV production but we'll be close up. If I weren't SoSH average, I'd be worried about Griner towering over me.
Ooh…that sounds fun, @Bunt4aTriple!! Let us know what it was like.
FYI - all Unrivaled games will air on Max.
FYI - all Unrivaled games will air on Max.