The Reality Check's In the Mail
The modern sports labor negotiation starts with an assumption by players that commissioners are liars who cook the books and hide the money, and an assumption by commissioners that the players are greedy layabouts who want to make $20 million per year to sit out half the season with spasms. Into this Samuel Gompers nightmare comes the WNBA, a profitless but feel-good league for which there is no previous example, and the future of which remains in question.</br></br>The WNBA has a chance to do things differently, to correct the excesses and inflations that plague its brother league -- or it has a chance to disappear entirely. Before yesterday, it was locked in labor strife because the players don't get that they aren't the NBA. Neither does the guy they chose to negotiate for them, NBA labor rep Billy Hunter. With some patience and sound business sense, maybe one day the WNBA players can argue with the league over some real money, but that day hasn't come yet.</br></br>It's a fact, and a lousy one, that WNBA veteran salaries are around $40,000, while their NBA counterparts are making $4 million and up. It's another lousy fact -- but a fact nonetheless -- that the WNBA remains a money loser that is subsidized by the NBA, and owners increasingly begrudge it. This isn't a Title IX issue. Pro sports aren't about gender equity, they're about the marketplace, and the stone cold reality is that the WNBA relies on the fervent support of Commissioner David Stern in backing the league, against the wishes of a good many NBA owners who view it as a drain.</br></br>So what is "fair" compensation for WNBA players when the league only exists because Stern likes it and believes in it?</br></br>This is the core issue that could sink the league in the long term. And it will rear its head again. The deadline drama was just window dressing compared with the central problem that without Stern to continually persuade and lean on NBA owners, the league wouldn't exist.