I watched her play for the first time last night and she made it look easy hitting so many of those deep 3's. She's a better shooter than a lot of bench players in the NBA in shooting 3's and free throws, that's for sure. It's sad though that the best professional female basketball player in the world makes 10,000% less per game than the highest paid men's basketball player.
The salary difference is crazy but that’s only because of viewers and tv deals and sponsorships and etc right? There hasn’t been enough hype around teams or players to be able to give the WNBA that hype which would translate into higher salaries. Market has to be giving lots of money to each team which would translate to higher salary cap, if I’m thinking the correct way. For example, Caitlin Clark will be making the max per year I’m assuming which is about $250k a year. If she DOES NOT accept Ice Cube’s Big 3 League joining for 10 games for $5 million, it’ll take her 20 YEARS to get $5 million in the WNBA, so she better take this offer. Now, there’s a few WNBA players that have lots of endorsements, so Caitlin Clark will definitely get a LOT of money from Nike and whoever else. For example, Sabrina Ionescu, the first overall pick in the 2020 WNBA draft, has an annual salary of $205,030. Her two-year, $410,060 contract with the New York Liberty includes a base salary of $202,000 for 2024. BUT SHE ALSO HAS ENDORSEMENT deals with a number of brands and companies, including Boardroom, Body Armor, Nike, State Farm, and Xbox. Earlier this year, she signed a $24 MILLION deal with Nike and launched her first signature apparel and shoe collection, the Sabrina 1.
I think it's sad really. They cater to marketing men's sports much harder. There are guys who have more respect for little league or high school players in baseball, basketball, and football than women's professional sports players. It's a man's world. No professional basketball, baseball, or football team ever did what the Comets did. Nobody won 4 straight championships. That's damn near impossible to do. It takes an ability to play your best under pressure year after year in championships. We've seen plenty of athletes choke in those moments, and there was no chance to come back and win a title back then like in the NBA or baseball if you played poorly a couple games. It was a 1 game win or lose their first year in playoffs to take the championship, and only 2 of 3 the next 3 years. When you think about how special those players were it's crazy to think they didn't have whole sections of the local papers on them or tons of special collector magazines covering their season like they did all over the store racks when the Astros won the World Series. When you think how someone like Caitlin Clark, who beat Pistol Pete's scoring record in the NCAA, will only get paid a tiny fraction of the salary men make to play against others in a women's league, it's sad. Men run the leagues, and they hype up what they choose to. Sure Ice Cube's offer is way more, but don't think for a second she wouldn't get elbowed by those big men in the chest, and regardless of how small it is or not, it would be like forcing a young smaller built guy to go play with middle aged men without a cup and have guys who play like Chris Paul or Draymond Green punch him in his nuts game after game. It's just not as appealing as it may seem to some to put yourself in that position. I mean even Chris Paul has 25 pounds on her, but some of those guys built more like Draymond Green easily have more than 75 lbs of brute force on her. I don't think that would be too appealing to any woman, to put herself in that men's league in a sport with so much physical contact.
This seems ridiculously high. I watched most of the first half and had to switch it because the play is so bad. They need an even smaller ball and 9 foot goals. They were bricking so many wide open shots. I couldn't take it and tapped out.
They’re literally giving Caitlin the Harden treatment and triple teaming her and making her team mates make something. Pretty wild!
