WNBA Dissected: Earning new deals, upcoming cuts, the future of WNBA broadcasting, and more from 2022 Week 7
Another trip around the world of women's basketball, looking at players who've made or lost money this year, impending midseason cuts, all-star picks and the WNBA implications of MLS's deal with Apple
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also buy Her Hoop Stats gear, such as laptop stickers, mugs, and shirts!
Haven’t subscribed to the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter yet?
Making money or handing it back?
As we approach the midpoint of the 2022 WNBA regular season on Saturday (more on the implications of that later), it's time to take stock of how things have evolved so far this season. We could do that in the time-honoured tradition of picking midseason award winners, but I feel like most of that has been covered through the all-star debates. So instead, we're going to bring it back down to brass tacks. The cold, hard, cash of it all. Who's made themselves money this season, and who's lost some?
Brionna Jones
If it wasn't already clear that Brionna Jones was a star post in waiting over the last couple of years, she's certainly reinforced that view this season. The numbers have gotten even better this year as her player efficiency rating (PER) and true shooting percentage have increased, and her scoring average has stayed virtually the same as last year at 14.2 points per game despite playing fewer minutes due to Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner finally all being healthy and available simultaneously.
All that talent around her helps Brionna Jones in a way, because defenses have so many other things to worry about when facing Connecticut. But a less talented post would barely play. Instead, she's still getting over 26 minutes per game, sees plenty of the ball when she's on the floor, and statistically all of Connecticut's best lineups involve her this season. Her footwork and finishing ability in the paint are outstanding, and barring injury she's already virtually nailed on as Sixth Woman of the Year.
She's been underpaid the last couple of years, after accepting a two-year deal that was essentially all Connecticut could afford in 2021 after they'd signed everyone else in their core. It was also before she'd truly broken out. Now, she's a max player, but will likely have to leave Connecticut if she wants to be paid like it. With Bonner, Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas and Jasmine Thomas already under high-end contracts for next season, the Sun would struggle to pay Brionna what she's worth. If they let players like Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman walk away for nothing and filled the rest of the roster out with minimum salaries they could get reasonably close, but that would be a tricky roster balance. It may be time for Brionna Jones to leave the nest and see what she can do without three other frontcourt stars in front of her.
Dallas Wings collective
It's an interesting group in Dallas, so they all get lumped together. We talked about two of their key question marks around the deadline for rookie-scale contract extensions, and neither of the remaining eligible players in Dallas received one. Marina Mabrey continues to produce at a high level, scoring efficiently and frequently at crucial times. She also often has to act as a primary ballhandler in order to get her on the floor alongside Arike Ogunbowale, so other teams know she's capable in that role even if it's not necessarily her natural position. She'll be a restricted free agent after this season and she's going to get offers approaching the max. Dallas will just have to decide whether they're willing to pay it.
For several weeks it looked like the Wings could find the money needed for Mabrey by giving up on Teaira McCowan, acquired in an offseason trade with Indiana. She had a very rocky start in Dallas after arriving late due to overseas commitments, including a couple of Did Not Play-Coach's Decision games against Seattle. However, partially due to Satou Sabally's injury, McCowan's back in the rotation and starting to look like the strong, physical post presence that Dallas thought they were trading for in the first place. Her market as a restricted free agent is going to be very interesting. It only takes one team to think they can coax her into playing at her peak consistently to push her price towards the max. But we do now have nearly four years of evidence that her troughs are similarly low and equally frequent.
The Wings also have Isabelle Harrison as an impending free agent, although in her case unrestricted rather than the restricted version that Mabrey and McCowan will be. Harrison will turn 29 before the free agency period so doesn't have quite the same remaining growth potential as the other two, but she's shown this year that she can be a successful starter on a decent team (or at the very least a good rotation post). She should get solid money from somewhere, even if Dallas decide to move on to their younger options.
Tiffany Hayes
I've mentioned it several times in the past - I love the all-out way Tiffany Hayes has played over the years, but as you get older it becomes harder to just bounce back up after yet another flying drive into contact in the paint. She's yet to play in the WNBA this year after returning from overseas and requiring 'rest' due to what the Dream eventually admitted is a knee injury. Having signed a one-year deal with Atlanta for $215,000 she's getting well-paid to rehab, but she'll need to get healthy and produce in order to earn the next contract. Whether it's in Atlanta or elsewhere, she may have to accept that the numbers are on the way down now because teams can't be sure how many games they're going to get out of her.
Moriah Jefferson
In some ways, this is the reverse case of Hayes. While the team hasn’t been winning, in Minnesota Jefferson is proving both that she can produce and that she can stay reasonably healthy. She missed a couple of games but has largely been available since signing with the Lynx, playing nearly 30 minutes per night and carrying a significant workload. In terms of payment this season, it was arguably hardly worth signing in Minnesota - CBA rules state that players can only earn $10,000 beyond the max salary, and she was already making most of that from the contract Dallas are paying out. However, her play with the Lynx has already earned her a deal with Perfumerías Avenida in Spain, and could well lead to further WNBA employment. Teams will still be a little wary of guaranteeing money to her for multiple years due to her injury history, but she'll have offers.
Natisha Hiedeman
Is Hiedeman making herself money, or is the potential of the unknown being lost this year? I was already wondering earlier this season if she'd be poached by another team to become their starting point guard:
Then Jasmine Thomas got hurt, and Hiedeman was thrust into that role in Connecticut anyway. The thing is, while she's done an adequate job and the Sun continue to win games, she hasn't really stepped up. She's basically doing the same stuff, for similar minutes, only while being on the court for the opening tip-off. 2.5 assists per game in 23.3 minutes - her numbers as a starter this season - aren't really the stats teams are looking for from their starting point guard. She's also often been benched while Connecticut go to their big lineup with Alyssa Thomas running the point in the second half of games.
This is one that still seems very much in flux. If Hiedeman steps up over the remainder of the season and through a playoff run, she could parlay that into a significant contract in the offseason. Of course, Jasmine Thomas is her fiancée, which potentially complicates matters further. Would she take less money to stick around in Connecticut where her future wife will likely push her back to the bench once she recovers from injury?
Kelsey Plum, Dearica Hamby
Well if you weren't already convinced Kelsey Plum was a max player before this season, you probably are now. She's excelled under Becky Hammon's coaching and moving back into a starting role, has nearly doubled her assists while shooting 41% from outside and sitting second in the league in points per game. If she doesn't sign an extension before the end of the season, Las Vegas may well consider using their core designation on her to make sure she doesn't leave for nothing.
Hamby's become a starter this year as well, and only gotten better. She remains very efficient inside without needing any plays to be run for her, can hit the three, and is fourth in the WNBA in rebounds per game (11th in rebound percentage among players who've played at least 60 minutes). She's also been a little underpaid the last couple of years, after accepting a contract extension in 2021 to lock in another year rather than taking her chances as a free agent. With A'ja Wilson, Chelsea Gray, Jackie Young and Riquna Williams already under contract for 2023, and Plum still to take care of, Hamby may have to look elsewhere if she wants to really get paid. She'll have plenty of suitors.
Han Xu, Marine Johannès, Ezi Magbegor
Because this is my article, and you should know by now that this stuff is my jam, let's round things off with the awkward, complicated cases. Han, Johannès and Magbegor will all be reserved players at the end of this season - that's what players become when their contracts have run out, but they don't have the four seasons of WNBA experience to become restricted free agents, or the 5+ to become unrestricted. Their previous teams retain exclusive negotiating rights to reserved players, which is why most of them end up playing for the minimum until they have the Years of Service required to be in one of those free agent categories. The teams aren't required to offer them more than the minimum, so they usually don't.
However, the player's one negotiating tool in these situations is "well I don't need the WNBA, so I'm not showing up for the minimum." All three of these players can, and do, make a lot of money overseas (well Han and Johannès likely do already; Magbegor would probably need to leave Australia to start maximising her earnings). So it could become something of a standoff. In all honesty, it probably won't. Players who show up for the WNBA in the first place generally seem to accept that it means proving yourself for a relatively low salary for multiple years first, and then potentially getting paid properly later on. If they're back next year, it will probably be for their applicable minimums or just a little above, so their teams can show a hint of generosity. All I'm saying is that it's possible it could get rather more interesting than that.
Midpoint Madness
This year's WNBA regular season is 101 days long (one day shorter would've made a lot of the salary maths a hell of a lot simpler). That means the midpoint is Day 51, which is coming up on Saturday, June 25 in a couple of days. The midpoint is important in the WNBA because it's the moment where unprotected contracts become guaranteed for the remainder of the year. So if a player on an unprotected deal is waived before that stage, all they cost the team is however much they've paid them so far. Waive the player on any day afterwards, you have to pay their full salary for the season.
The league have reduced the waiver period around the midpoint to 24 hours this year, so the deadline to cut players in order for them to clear waivers in time is Friday at 5 p.m. ET. Expect to see at least a few moves around the league as teams release players on the end of their benches to open up salary cap space and roster spots to try players out on seven-day contracts instead. Or just to avoid committing themselves to money for players that they don't think are worth it.
There's only one game on Friday night, but it is one that leads to some complications around these moves. New York are playing Atlanta, and might well have wanted to pull the trick I talked about last week where they waive a player before the deadline and then shift Crystal Dangerfield to their main roster from her hardship contract. However, when you waive a player the hardship also terminates (even if the eligibility for the hardship had nothing to do with the player being waived). So if, for example, the Liberty waived Lorela Cubaj at 4.59 p.m. on Friday, Dangerfield would also be removed and wouldn't be eligible to be re-signed to their main roster until June 25 - after the game against the Dream.
They could also keep Dangerfield and Cubaj through the game on Friday, release Dangerfield from her hardship deal after that game, then re-sign her when the cap math allows on July 3. That would cost them a little extra cash and cap space but allow them to keep Cubaj longer (and make her an extra $30,000). Dangerfield would still only miss one game - bizarrely enough, also against the Dream.
The joy of WNBA roster wrangling.
All-Star Arguing
I recorded a podcast this week with my Her Hoop Stats colleague Gabe Ibrahim and Kevin Pelton of ESPN, which you can watch here or listen to here (or wherever you get your podcasts). I won't give everything away, but suffice it to say that only two players from this list made my roster: Sue Bird, DeWanna Bonner, Liz Cambage, Tina Charles, Natasha Cloud, Kahleah Copper, Dearica Hamby, Natasha Howard, Marina Mabrey, Kelsey Mitchell and Diana Taurasi.
Bird and Sylvia Fowles were named as starters yesterday, removing the potential need for "Commissioner's Picks" to add them, in the vein of Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki in their final NBA seasons. For the main 22, there are going to be a lot of people unhappy about the final results. As you can see from the list above, whoever you think the 22 ought to be, there are going to be names left on the outside that others will be convinced should've made it.
Soccer and the WNBA
No, we're not talking about Arike Ogunbowale's propensity for kicking the ball and blaming it on her history playing the beautiful game. Instead, this is the recent $2.5 billion deal between Apple and Major League Soccer to screen their games for the next decade. This is relevant to the WNBA both for the changes in approach to broadcasting a sports league, and because in terms of ratings the WNBA and MLS are relatively analogous.
MLS are centralising all their broadcasts, making it so that fans can watch every single game by subscribing to a single platform (and therefore negating the kind of complaints we've all heard during the WNBA season this year that people don't know where to find the games). There are risks involved - national broadcasters could lose interest in your games if you're refusing to offer them exclusivity, casual fan interest might dwindle without local channel access, and the market value could change a lot in the space of 10 years. But $250m per year is a hell of a lot of money.
The WNBA is reportedly receiving around $27 million from ESPN at the moment, rising to $33 million by 2025 when the deal runs out. It's been topped up a little by their deals with all the other entities showing WNBA games, but not much. That's now trailing a league with a similar ratings record by a staggering amount. Also, while soccer may be considered a growth sport, it doesn't come with the public relations positives of supporting women that a WNBA deal could present.
While avenues such as the recent $75 million capital raise, partnerships and sponsorships with major companies like Google and AT&T, and even sorting out their merchandise offerings can bring in a certain level of extra income, this is the big deal. This is the one area where the league could make a seismic leap, where revenue sharing for players and franchises making genuine profits becomes a real discussion. Even if they don't bring ESPN back to the table in an effort to do something before 2025, the WNBA will be keeping a careful eye on how the MLS deal works out. They won't want to lose the exposure of being on national television, but as long as that can be maintained alongside something like MLS's deal with Apple, it could be a very appealing prospect. $250 million per year, or anything close to it, could be revolutionary.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.