Five Out: Training Camp Cuts, Aggressive Negotiations and Bad Injury Luck

This week's column is loaded with some WNBA musings as the regular season is less than two weeks away.

In no time flat, the WNBA regular season is right around the corner. In 11 days, we’ll have games with stakes and our agendas can get to agenda-ing. But just because we’re still in the preseason doesn’t mean we haven’t had plenty to talk about. There’s been training camp cuts, posturing ahead of CBA negotiations and, unfortunately, injuries. The only thing missing is MTV’s Dan Cortese.

We’ve got a loaded week of content ahead for you, so keep an eye out!

If you haven’t kept us with us on social media (@NoCapSpaceWBB on every platform), we’ve been rolling with our Welcome to Women’s Basketball series. Every day, we have a short-form video giving you a great story from every year of the WNBA’s history to arm you with ball knowledge ahead of one of the most potentially exciting seasons ever. We’ll also have short-form video previews of each team in the W as we get closer to opening night.

If you’d prefer a bit more of a fleshed out preview, Tyler is loading up over on YouTube while we’ve got you covered here on Substack. That’s between some exclusive podcasts, transfer portal talk and ‘The Origin of Slack Mamba’ that will be available for our paid subscribers. We’re coming loaded for bear this season, so tap in with us and join a growing community of ball-knowers!

Now, to the column…

1. Shyanne Sellers being cut is an indicator of how much further the WNBA has to go.

I couldn’t tell you why Shyanne Sellers was cut so early by the Golden State Valkyries. All the reports would tell you that injuries weren’t a concern. The quotes from Natalie Nakase, read into maybe too deeply, could’ve indicated a lack of fit in personality or philosophy. But that wouldn’t track with most of what we’ve heard about Sellers dating back to her Maryland days. It’s a strange situation and one that we’ll be digging into.

But Sellers is less a unique situation but a sad reminder that although the league is growing, it still has a ways to go. On the one end, there’s not a lot of roster spots and too much talent. At the same time, I look at a roster like the Phoenix Mercury or Connecticut Sun and have a hard time believing no one is willing to bring her on. I’d be surprised if we entered the regular season and Sellers was still looking for a suitor. She’s just too good and brings too much to the table especially as a potential point guard.

It’s been helpful to see more spots open up as a result of expansion but I’m curious if the WNBPA plans on addressing that disparity at the bargaining table. Right now, there is a salary cap mechanism called ‘hardship contracts’ which allow teams more flexibility if they end up in a crunch due to injuries or any other circumstance that takes players out of the mix. That feels like more a cosmetic fix than a substantive solution to the two sided issue of good players not having a home and teams running into depth issues come October every year. I really hope Sellers ends up in the league and sticking as opposed to being typecast as a journeywoman so early in her career.

2. The WNBPA has a strong posture with regard to CBA negotiations. Are the WNBA players willing to go all the way if need be?

Terri Carmichael Jackson is stepping up to the plate. The WNBPA President hasn’t spoken a ton since the players voted to opt out of the current CBA and negotiate their next agreement. But when she has, I’m liking what I’m hearing. The question is, do all the members of the PA?

At the ESPNW Summit this past week, Jackson said the PA has been “aggressive” with regard to proposals and meetings with WNBA leadership. Most notably, she declined to rule out a work stoppage while Napheesa Collier, the Vice President of the PA, said the same. It’s a dangerous button to press but there has never been a better time to dangle that possibility out there. Many people believe a players’ strike would all but destroy the momentum the WNBA has created but what they don’t realize is that there are playing options beyond the United States. EuroBasket has a great reputation while other leagues around the world are just starting to catch up. There’s also Unrivaled, which could be a temporary home for at least 30-35 of the best players in the league. In the middle of a work stoppage, who’s to say they wouldn’t be able to try and renegotiate their TV deal with Turner Sports and expand the size of the league itself?

But here’s the rub: this is a league that’s long been proud of their 144 (now 156) players and their ability to think for themselves. Who’s about it and who isn’t? A’ja Wilson, among the three biggest stars in the league and currently enjoying her greatest run of success in the midst of a signature shoe release, tried to allay fears of a work stoppage back in March. That came almost directly on the heels of Angel Reese saying they would strike if it came to that.

I’ll include the full quote here from A’ja for the sake of proper context.

“I feel like we can make things work. It’s going to take a lot but I don’t even want to say that or think that…We shouldn’t even have to get to that point.”

Read at its’ most charitable, you can make the argument that Wilson is putting more of the onus on the league to make things work. It shouldn’t even have to be a conversation because the WNBA should be willing to negotiate in good faith with the players. However, it’s not great for the PA’s leverage when you have one of the faces of the league breaking rank with everyone of note who has spoken on this in the past. That’s a vulnerability the W can exploit, driving a wedge between one of their biggest stars and everyone else, potentially even using Wilson as an example to try and dissuade others from utilizing their collective leverage. Along these lines, A’ja is right. Hopefully it doesn’t come to this. But if there’s an impasse at the table, how will the 156 decide? That’s a storyline worth following.

3. Injuries stink, part 139501827…

Ugh. I know it happens in every sport but man it sucks when players get injured in training camp or the preseason. It’s even worse when they’re long term injuries. All my homies hate ACL tears.

Katie Lou Samuelson, who was likely to factor in as a rotational player for the Seattle Storm, looks to be done for the year. Caitlin Clark is handling a leg injury ahead of the regular season, playing but clearly getting a lot of work done on it between shifts on the floor. And Georgia Amoore, one of the Mystics’ first round draft picks, went down on the first day of camp and is done for the season. It’s a particularly hard pill to swallow for Washington fans given there’s not a ton of point guard options on the current roster. Jade Melbourne has shown some flashes but are you willing to bring in someone like Shyanne Sellers when you know Amoore is back next year? They drafted the latter over the former for a reason so I have trouble with the idea that they’d bring in Sellers as a stopgap option or potentially run the risk of a point guard battle next year when Amoore is healthy.

And that’s before you get into other injuries like Betnijah Laney-Hamilton, who will likely have her contract suspended for the 2025 season due to her knee injury. We’re still waiting on Cam Brink’s return to the floor after she got hurt last year and there are a couple undisclosed injuries in Connecticut for Aneesah Morrow and Diamond DeShields. And as a reminder, Nika Muhl and Jordan Horston are both out for the year in Seattle too.

The roster issues and caps within the league also just make this stuff feel significantly more precarious for the players themselves. In most other leagues (maybe the NFL is the exception here), a season long injury sucks but it’s not a potential death sentence regarding your place in the league, especially if you’re a first or second round draft pick. Here, it’s something that you genuinely have to worry about which is why I hope the WNBPA addresses the team sizes in that CBA negotiation as well.

4. I’m a big fan of the college site preseason games…

For years, there’s been a discussion about how the WNBA bridges the fandom of women’s college basketball and translates that to the pros. Despite seeming simple in theory, it’s actually proven to be much more difficult up until about five years ago. Part of that, to me, is the rise in social media and that many women’s basketball players now are able to take their audiences with them in a way they weren’t even pre-pandemic. But it also lies in consistent marketing on the W’s part. I’ve been told by people who have worked in the WNBA offices in New York for a long time that the issue has been sort of giving up on marketing veteran players and trying to catch lightning in a bottle with a particular rookie. It’s why you’ve seen a lot of Great White Hopes, from Kelsey Plum to Sabrina Ionescu, in past years. It’s also why you see heavy marketing done for a rookie class and then watch the push taper off as they enter the league.

The one positive of the 2024 rookie boom is that the W has pivoted towards maintaining marketing for their current players while de-emphasizing (relative to how they usually do it) rookies as the future faces of the league. It’s now a league that’s A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese and others. In the past, the marketing push would center around a class and not really move off them until a new class came in.

The college games started last year — A’ja famously had a preseason game in Columbia last year which kicked off the release of her new shoe, the A’One — and were expanded upon this year. Caitlin Clark went back to Carver-Hawkeye, Angel Reese headed to the PMAC, various Aces and Wings were in South Bend while Sabrina Ionescu and Nyara Sabally will be in Eugene for a preseason matchup. All of these games are televised as well, a first in the league’s history. Instead of wanting the shiny new thing every year, the WNBA has finally seemed to realize that consistent audience connection is the key to bridging that gap. With each passing season, the homecoming game idea will look smarter and smarter and I hope it continues.

5. But guys, it’s still just preseason basketball.

I need everyone to do a heat check here. These games are meaningless. It’s about getting into playing shape, tinkering with some lineups and giving your training camp players a chance to bank in some minutes and get tape to make a case for a roster spot on that team or another. So say it with me…

THESE GAMES ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

Maybe it’s old man yelling at cloud but we have not had enough time between women’s basketball games to be frothing at the mouth like this. I get it for football or even men’s basketball where you have long offseasons between seeing the sport in any capacity. But we had the Final Four last month. The national championship was less than a month ago! I know we’re all sickos and addicts for this stuff but good lord maybe we need some WBB Methadone to bust out for this two week period.

The real stuff starts on May 16th and anything prior to that is an appetizer. Unless you are transparent in your agenda (*stares at Chauny*) and just trying to get some hate off before the real games happen, you really don’t need to read much into this. The Mystics and Fever went to OT. Cool. It tells me absolutely nothing about how the season is going to go. Some players looked fun and some rookies probably deserve another look. But I’m not reading into anything I see from a team perspective until we hit the games. Half of these younger players have had three weeks rest, at most. The veterans are getting back into playing shape. There’s no stakes here.

So everyone take a deep breath. We’re gonna need it once the real fun begins.