📉 The Real Reason WNBA Players Will Never Get Paid What They’re Worth

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Long-time readers will know that there aren’t many sports topics on which I don’t have a strong opinion. However, there is one debate that continues to percolate, about which I’m unsure how to feel. More on that at the end.

In today’s newsletter:

🗞 The Big Story: The Real Reason WNBA Players Will Never Get Paid What They’re Worth

📉 Biggest Loser: Kevin Garnett (Finally) Just Settled His Biggest Beef

🏆 Winner’s Circle: How J. Cole Helped One Man Complete The Most Impressive Comeback in Sports

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🗞 The Big Story

The WNBA’s biggest problem is something that nobody seems to be talking about. Let me explain.

Background: If you’ve been on the internet at all this week, you’ve undoubtedly seen these t-shirts calling for WNBA players to get paid more ahead of their CBA negotiations with the league. Now, the players will be the first to tell you that they don’t want to get paid the same as the men; they just want the same 50/50 revenue split that players in the NBA get on things like: 

• TV deals

• Ticket revenue

• Merchandise sales

And while this seems reasonable enough, when you dig into the details, you learn that there’s a decision the WNBA made three years ago that could make this request impossible.

Selling Equity: From the moment the league started in 1996, the NBA has been covering the W’s losses to the tune of about $10 million per year. Now, for the NBA, this was viewed as a sort of “start-up investment,” for which they gave themselves 50% equity in the league.

Then, in 2022, the WNBA sold off more equity to a group that included:

• Nike

• Condoleezza Rice (Former Secretary of State)

• Micky Arison (Miami Heat owner)

• Linda Henry (Boston Globe CEO)

• Michael and Susan Dell (yes, that Dell)

• Dee Haslam (Owner of the Cleveland Browns)

This deal included a $75 million capital raise in exchange for a 16% ownership stake, leaving the NBA and WNBA with just a 42% stake in the league each, which wasn’t a problem when the league was losing money.

However, now that the WNBA is slated to make at least $100 million in profit starting next year, players naturally want a raise.

There’s just one problem: the math doesn’t work out.

WNBA Revenue Split: Currently, WNBA players only receive 9.3% of league revenue, which is shockingly low compared to the typical 50/50 split in other sports. However, given that the WNBA itself only receives 42% of the total revenue, it means that players can never come close to reaching that 50% threshold.

And even if the league decides to give up half of its revenue share (which seems unlikely), that would only leave players with a 21% split of league revenue, still less than half of what NBA players get.

So it seems that both the players and the WNBA will have to get creative in finding a solution, as the traditional model likely won’t suffice.

📉 Biggest Loser

Kevin Garnett finally just won the biggest beef of his career, and he only has two men to thank for pulling it off.

Background: Even though KG hasn’t played for the Minnesota Timberwolves in a decade, he still leads the franchise in almost every meaningful statistical category, including:

• Points

• Rebounds

• Assists

• Steals

• Blocks

However, even though he’s regarded as the best player in franchise history, you won’t find his jersey hanging up in the rafters in the Target Center, but why?

Just a Kid: To answer that, we have to go back to 1995 when Garnett became the youngest player in NBA history when he was drafted 5th overall directly out of high school by the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Now, it’s important to note that since joining the NBA as a franchise in 1989, the Timberwolves had never won more than 29 games. But behind a rookie head coach named Flip Saunders and a 19-year-old Kevin Garnett, Minnesota finally had a promising future ahead of them.

However, even after winning an MVP and leading the team to the Western Conference Finals, Garnett was traded to the Celtics in 2007, having grown frustrated with the Timberwolves' ownership.

But this isn’t where the beef starts.

KG’s Return: In fact, it wasn’t until 2015 that KG really started to butt heads with the ownership when he returned to the Timberwolves to lead a young core of players, which included Ricky Rubio, Andrew Wiggins, and Karl-Anthony Towns.

According to a 2020 interview with the Athletic, Garnett had only returned to the Timberwolves to play for his old coach, Flip Saunders, after coming to an understanding with owner, Glen Taylor, that he would be able to stay on with the team after he was done playing to help run basketball operations or potentially even join the ownership group.

However, in Garnett’s first year back with the team, Saunders was diagnosed with cancer, which eventually took his life the following year in 2016 – the same year KG retired from the NBA.

Last Straw: However, instead of keeping his promise to Garnett, Glen Taylor decided to hire Tom Thibodeau as head coach and president of basketball operations, which Garnett says he still hasn’t forgiven him for.

Garnett even said that as recently as 5 years ago, he wasn’t “entertaining” the idea of having his jersey retired in Minnesota – even though he’s undoubtedly the franchise’s best player.

However, now with Glen Taylor finally out of the picture after Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore bought the team, it seems likely that KG will get his moment in Minnesota, and maybe even the job he’s always wanted.

🏆 Winner’s Circle

This professional athlete you’ve probably never heard of just completed one of the most impressive comebacks in sports, and he only has one man to thank for pulling it off.

Background: This is Camden Murphy, and in 2014, at the age of 18, he left his home in Itasca, Illinois, to pursue his dream of becoming a NASCAR driver. However, after years of sweeping floors in race shops, living in his car, and struggling to get by, Camden put his dream on hold in 2017 and started driving Monster Jam trucks.

Now, the average monster truck driver can make anywhere from $40,000-$70,000 per year, which proved to be a much more consistent living for Camden. And after 8 years on the monster truck circuit, he’s become one of the most popular drivers, even earning the nickname “Monster Jam Cam.”

But his dream of becoming a NASCAR driver never left him. So, earlier this year, Camden announced that he’d be making one final return to racing.

There was just one problem: he didn’t have a sponsor.

But instead of putting his dream on hold for a second time, Camden decided to start racing without one, which caught the attention of rapper J. Cole.

J. Cole and Camden: See, J. Cole had actually met Camden after attending a Monster Jam event with his kids two years prior. The pair hit it off right away, and after a two-hour conversation where Camden told the rapper about his dreams of one day returning to NASCAR, J. Cole started following the aspiring racer's career.

That’s why, about a month after his return to the track, J. Cole reached back out to Camden and offered to sponsor his car, and with “Dreamer” on the hood, Camden took second place in his emotional ARCA Menards Series debut after a 10-year break from racing:

Talk about an unexpected collab.

⏱️ In Other News

• The Packers get leather helmets and new threads.

• An inside look at the NFL’s $13.84 billion business.

• The Olympics could be heading to Qatar (or Turkey, India, or Chile).

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👋🏻 Happy Friday!

Shaq recently made headlines again when he suggested that for WNBA players to get paid what they’re worth, they need to lower the rim.

Now, I would like to preface this discussion by stating that there are two clear, distinct sides in this debate.

One side includes the type of people who say things like “nO oNE WaTCheS wOmENs sPoRTs” and then Shaq for some reason, while the other side consists of every woman who has ever played the game of basketball.

So from the jump, I’m inclined to side with the latter.

However, in the full context of this clip, Shaq goes on to explain how there is already a version of “lowering the rim” in other sports, like how women’s volleyball uses lower nets or women’s golf tees off from closer tee-boxes.

I mean, even in the WNBA, players use smaller balls and shoot from a closer 3-point line.

And it’s hard to argue that if we were to reinvent basketball from scratch in 2025 around women instead of just around men, that we would still make the basket 10 feet.

Now, players like A’ja Wilson and Candace Parker have pointed out that lowering the rim at this point would mess with everyone’s shots, undoubtedly leading to a worse product in the short term.

But I’m genuinely torn here, because Shaq does bring up some good points. If you have thoughts, feel free to email me. I need to know how the public views this.