For WNBA players, the real money is overseas
Forward Nneka Ogwumike #30 of the Los Angeles Sparks against the Minnesota Lynx in Game 3 of the 2016 WNBA Finals at Galen Center on Oct. 14, 2016 in Los Angeles. Credit: Getty Images / Harry How
There has been a lot of recent talk about trade deficits and the decline of manufacturing, but it safely can be said that there is one area in which the United States is a leading exporter.
We’re talking women’s professional basketball players, and that every fall, there is a massive transfer of talent from the United States to teams in Russia, Turkey, Korea, China, Italy and a handful of other countries in Europe and Asia. At least 63 players representing all 12 of the WNBA’s teams are playing overseas, according to WNBA.com. In other words, slightly more than half of the players in the league spend the “offseason” playing basketball somewhere else.
It’s not only journeymen who go. It’s many of the WNBA’s best players, such as reigning MVP Nneka Ogwumike of the Los Angeles Sparks. Ogwumike recently recorded one of the best seasons in the history of the league, making 66.5 percent of her shots in the regular season, the second highest in league history, and hitting the winning basket in Game 5 against the Lynx as Los Angeles won the WNBA title.
Yet only 12 days after hitting the biggest bucket of her career, Ogwumike was suiting up for her first game with Dynamo Kursk in Russia.
Can you imagine NBA MVP Stephen Curry packing up for Russia less than two weeks after playing in the NBA Finals? Of course not. That’s because Curry made $11.4 million last season — and Ogwumike’s base salary last season was $109,000, the league maximum for a player with her level of service.
Ogwumike’s salary in Kursk is not made public, but elite WNBA players can make about 15 times more from their overseas teams than they do from their WNBA teams. Diana Taurasi, for example, makes $1.5 million from her Russian team, enough that she infamously chose to skip the 2015 season after she was asked to do so by the team, UMMC Ekaterinburg.
Why are overseas teams able to pay women’s basketball players so much more than they are paid here? There are a variety of reasons, according to Allison Galer, who represents eight WNBA players and a handful of non-WNBA players overseas.
Some teams, like most of the teams in Russia, are funded by the municipal governments to serve as a source of local pride. Others, like those in Turkey, are attached to very lucrative men’s soccer clubs.
“It is quite exhausting, though, to jump from one season to the next and have to reset your life, but it’s a part of the process and still is, nevertheless, a blessing we get to work jobs we love,’’ Ogwumike said in a recent interview via email. “In a calendar year, we play about 80, 90 games. I don’t worry about playing year-round because I won’t be doing it every year. It’s the sacrifice you’ve seen many tak
The WNBA just celebrated its 20th season, in which it had an increase in attendance and television ratings and had its most exciting final round in years. it is easily the most successful women’s sports league in this country. the newlsy-formed national women’s hockey league, by contrast, announced on friday that they were going to have to slash salaries by 50 percent in order to stay in business. Yet we still are in a weird spot in the evolution of women’s professional basketball. Players generally are happy to have the opportunity to make big money overseas, but they also wish they didn’t have to do that.
Ogwumike, who was elected president of the WNBA’s players’ union in October, was emphatic when I asked her if she was bothered by the pay disparity between men and women.
“Of course!” she wrote, using all caps. “Though we would appreciate more economic advances, it doesn’t disregard my appreciation of the opportunities I’ve had to make great money overseas or the cultural experiences that contribute to my worldliness as an athlete and a person . . . The disparity is obvious, apparent and no secret. But our league is still young and we have a lot of growth I look forward to being a part of, and very soon.”
While the economics are not there to pay women anywhere near what men’s basketball players make, should the MVP of the NBA make about 104 times more than the MVP of the WNBA?
The WNBA is easily the most competitive women’s basketball league in the world, even if it’s not the highest-paying. That, and a sense of loyalty to growing the game, likely is what keeps scores of the best female talent from abandoning the league and playing only in Europe, as Taurasi did two years ago. One has to wonder if that always will be the case.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
