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Neil Donahue11 months ago
It feels just so stupendously short-sighted of the WNBA to resort to nickle and diming at this point. Petty is as petty does, so all they're doing is denigrating the value of their own product. It all feels so deeply tone deaf that I'm suspicious they even believe there's a future. Has anyone really looked under the hood and can say that there's an upward trajectory? So instead of expanding roster spots, investing deeply in players and working with NCAA to create a super force, they seem to be trying to cash in on expansion fees and are risking a too rapid expansion, almost like they're courting failure. Something is amiss here.
Todd Rowe11 months ago
Splitting the WNBA owners from the NBA owners sound great in theory, but we are talking Fever, Lynx, Mercury, Liberty, Valkyries, (all playoff teams) plus Sparks. Not to mention future expansion teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. That's half of the future league. How exactly would either league survive?
Nosy Gamer11 months ago
I feel the WNBA CBA talks are becoming as much a story about the media as about business. When I read stories the impression I get is the union has almost no agency. The union has to either accept or reject what the owners offer. The American public tends to side with the underdog, and if the framing is the players have no agency, the owners are the automatic bad guys in the story.
By the way, you can't count Project B as a replacement league if there is a strike that cancels the 2026 season. That league doesn't start play until November/December of 2026, so members of that league will take up roster spots in the other leagues. And if the 2026 season is wiped out, Andrew probably gets his wish with the WNBA folding and another league having to take its place in the next couple of years.
Andrew HaubnerAuthor11 months ago
Haub here!
Agreed that generally media tilts towards management/ownership when covering labor dispute. But the reason there is a perceived lack of agency is because they've made clear their position at the bargaining table and haven't seemed to deviate much from it. Because of that, the ball tends to be more in the owners court, giving them more of the agency in this dispute than the PA.
While Project B doesn't get started, there is an open question about the structure of the inaugural contracts. If there is some type of financial security that covers a work stoppage, then it opens the door for PB to be a viable alternative regardless of scheduling come 2026. Given that their venture capital owners seem particularly interested in winning the narrative battle via big money and equity stakes, it wouldn't shock me if they stepped up to the plate in the event of a strike.
