Collective Bargaining

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    WNBA’s Popularity Booms but Money for Players Hasn’t Kept Pace

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    Fans and brands have embraced the league, but rules have kept its growing financial success from fully trickling down to the players.Allisha Gray is a 29-year-old guard for the Atlanta Dream. She is six feet tall, speaks with a central Georgia drawl and smiles as if she’s keeping the best secret.During the W.N.B.A.’s All-Star weekend, she jumped into a whole new tax bracket. Her salary this year is $185,000, but she earned an additional $115,150 on Friday by winning the league’s 3-point contest and skills competition.The W.N.B.A. awards $2,575 to each winner in its skills competition and its 3-point contest, but most of Gray’s windfall came courtesy of a deal announced the day before between the players’ union and the insurance company Aflac, which agreed to pay $55,000 per winner.Her situation illustrated a theme of the league’s All-Star festivities. There is more money than ever coming into the W.N.B.A. from sponsors, ticket sales and new media rights deals, like the ones announced on Wednesday, which are expected to be worth six times what its current deals are. The presence of the rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese has exponentially increased interest in the league this season, and many fans of those two players have stayed to watch the rest of what the league has to offer.But the W.N.B.A. has never been profitable. The league’s financial health has been shaky for most of its 28 seasons. Because of that, player salaries and benefits, which are outlined in the collective bargaining agreement, are a fraction of what their male counterparts in the N.B.A. receive.As its popularity booms, the W.N.B.A. has made some concessions to players beyond the collective bargaining agreement, but it isn’t quite ready to fully loosen its purse strings. Some owners would also like to make serious investments in players, but league rules protecting competitive balance often don’t allow for that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      WNBA Players Seek Expert Advice as They Assess Next Union Contract

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      With the league’s popularity rising, players have never had more leverage when it comes to issues like salaries, travel accommodations and revenue sharing.W.N.B.A players have never had more leverage than they have right now.A sparkling rookie class, headlined by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, has catapulted a league that was already growing into a new stratosphere in terms of popularity and visibility. Attendance and viewership records are being shattered, and everyone wants to know why the players’ salaries aren’t higher. The league is about to receive a windfall from a newly negotiated media rights deal which is expected to earn it at least six times what it does in the current deal, according to a person familiar with the numbers who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been finalized.It would seem an ideal time to take advantage of the opportunity they have this fall to opt out of their collective bargaining agreement, two years before it is set to expire.But the players’ union doesn’t want to be too hasty. So last month, it created a five-person advisory committee consisting of lawyers, academics and financial and media professionals to help its members parse the decision.“What we need to do as players and as part of the P.A. is we make a united decision, but also listen to the pros and the cons both ways,” said Breanna Stewart, forward for the New York Liberty and the league’s most valuable player last season. “Staying in, opting out — what are our goals going forward, especially after the things that have changed this year?” said Stewart, a vice president for the union.The advisers are Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor who won the Nobel Prize in economics last year for her work on women in the labor market; W. Charles Bennett, a former F.B.I. agent, as well as an accountant and fraud investigator; Deborah Willig, managing partner at the Philadelphia law firm Willig, Williams and Davidson, who has negotiated on behalf of other players’ unions; Tag Garson, a longtime executive in sports and entertainment; and David Cooper, a communications specialist and professor at New York University.The professional credentials of the advisory group are a sign of the importance the union is placing on the next contract. Travel arrangements — players hope to codify charter flights into the next C.B.A. — salaries and the structure of revenue sharing are expected to be significant issues.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Spain’s Female Soccer Players Strike Over Wage Dispute

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      The season was scheduled to begin on Friday, but the players refused to play after talks with the league brought no agreement. The dispute comes amid a debate over sexism and soccer in Spain.Female soccer players in Spain are going on strike as the club season begins, a union representative said on Thursday, as a dispute over conduct by the head of the country’s soccer federation widened into a fight with their clubs over pay.Early this month, the women’s players’ union announced that if working conditions did not improve considerably before the start of the season on Friday, the women would not play the matches set to begin this weekend.The dispute is playing out amid broader upheaval in Spanish soccer, with the firing on Tuesday of the women’s national soccer coach, Jorge Vilda, whom players had criticized for his domineering management style, and the filing of a criminal complaint against Luis Rubiales, the head of the country’s soccer federation, by Jennifer Hermoso, a player on the national women’s team whom he forcibly kissed during a public celebration of the team’s World Cup final victory in Australia last month.Representatives of the Spanish women’s soccer league and unions failed to reach an agreement during meetings in Madrid this week, with pay being the biggest point of contention.Protesters holding red cards calling for the resignation of Luis Rubiales, the head of Spain’s soccer federation, in Barcelona this week.David Ramos/Getty ImagesThe players asked for three years of progressive increases to bring their minimum wage up to 30,000 euros (about $32,000) a year, but the league proposed an increase, over three years, to €25,000. The current minimum for female players in the country is €16,000, compared with €180,000 for their male counterparts, according to Spain’s chief player union, A.F.E.“The irresponsibility and lack of spirit and vision of the unions lead clubs and players to a strike that seriously damages the image of Spanish women’s football,” the women’s league said in a statement on Wednesday.Spain’s female soccer players have been demanding higher wages and better conditions for years. They reached their first collective bargaining agreement in 2020 and have since been pushing for the country’s soccer league to improve conditions. The players are seeking higher wages, contracts that continue during maternity leave, and access to the same nutritionists and physical therapists as the male players.The strike will affect games scheduled for Friday through Sunday and Sept. 15 to 17.Discussions are due to continue next week between the league and unions in the hopes of reaching an agreement. More

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      Brittney Griner Is Creating a New Normal, for Herself and the W.N.B.A.

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      PHOENIX — Brittney Griner embarked on a four-day itinerary that would disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm.First came the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington, where she was decked out in a sharp, black suit that Saturday night. President Biden pointed to her in the audience and said, “Boy, I can hardly wait to see you back on the court.”Soon she was rushing to catch a flight, landing in Phoenix at 4 a.m. for the start of W.N.B.A. training camp with the Mercury. Then she hustled back east, to New York, for her first Met Gala. She wore a sleek tan suit, and her wife, Cherelle Griner, was in a strapless white gown, both custom outfits by Calvin Klein. They mingled with A-list celebrities that night, but Brittney needed to be back in Phoenix by Tuesday afternoon for more basketball and, she had hoped, a nap.The sparkling events, time-zone hopping and overall spectacle were overwhelming but perhaps also came as a kind of relief for Brittney Griner, who spent nearly 10 months detained in Russia and returned to the United States in December as a new symbol of hope. Ensnared in a geopolitical showdown between Washington and Moscow, Griner drew attention not only to herself and to the plight of other foreign detainees but also to the financial disparities facing women in sports that had brought her to Russia in the first place.On Friday, Griner will return to the court for her first official W.N.B.A. game in 579 days. The league is not the same now, in part because of her. The issues her detention spotlighted are not new and are unlikely to be easily resolved. But she has galvanized a potent fan base and sports work force who are both eager to welcome her home and to use this moment to promote change alongside her.“We have wanted change for a long time, but now we’re really starting to demand it,” Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said. “We’re just getting a little more impatient with that and realizing that it’s an issue where we don’t have the money yet, but pushing so that really, really soon we do have the resources to be treated like the athletes we are.”A modest crowd roared for Griner this month during a preseason game, her first action since she was released from Russia.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesWhy Brittney Griner Was in RussiaRussian customs officials detained Griner at an airport near Moscow in February 2022 after finding vape cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage as she returned to play for UMMC Yekaterinburg, a professional team that reportedly paid her at least $1 million. She was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony, but she was freed in a prisoner swap for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, in December. The U.S. State Department said that she had been wrongfully detained.The W.N.B.A., now in its 27th season, has long watched dozens of its players go overseas during each off-season in search of higher pay, though the league has been trying to offer them additional ways to make money stateside. The maximum salary in the W.N.B.A. is about $230,000, and was half as much just a few years ago. Top players like Griner, a seven-time All-Star center, can command hundreds of thousands more from international teams. Many people were not aware of this dynamic until Griner’s detention and expressed shock and frustration on social media and on television shows.“As much as I would love to, you know, pay my light bill for the love of the game, I can’t,” Griner said last month during her first news conference since she was freed.The Associated Press reported that 67 of the league’s 144 players still played internationally this off-season, indicative of the strong pull of the opportunity to make additional income. But in light of Griner’s detention and the war in Ukraine, players eschewed the historically lucrative Russian organizations for teams in countries like Italy and Turkey. About 90 players played internationally five years ago.Collier, 26, who has played for international teams in W.N.B.A. off-seasons, said younger players gain important experience overseas. But she said she doubted she would play abroad again after Griner’s experience and because she wants to spend more time with her daughter, who will turn 1 next Thursday.“I also encourage everyone that played a part in bringing me home to continue their efforts to bring all Americans home,” Griner said in December.Caitlin O’Hara/Reuters‘That’s How You Build Household Names’W.N.B.A. officials have attributed players’ modest salaries to its historically modest — and perhaps meager — revenue and media attention. Many W.N.B.A. players have become accustomed to entering the league with less media fanfare and to at times playing before far smaller audiences than they experienced in college.“I’ve been a part of it when I was in college and it was the hottest ticket in the country,” said Mercury guard Diana Taurasi, who starred at UConn before becoming the W.N.B.A.’s career leading scorer. She continued: “How do we make the hottest ticket in the country for the best basketball players in the world in the W.N.B.A.? That, to me, it only happens in women’s sports where the adolescents get more attention than the grown-ups.”Griner, who joined the Mercury in 2013, has been a star since she became known for dunking at Baylor. At her first news conference since returning, Griner pleaded with the unusual swell of reporters to come and cover games during the season, too.“The league is a league that needs celebrity,” said Candy Lee, a professor of journalism and integrated marketing communications at Northwestern. She added: “The league can take advantage of it. The Mercury can take advantage of it.”The surge in W.N.B.A. interest because of Griner has dovetailed with broader momentum for women’s sports in recent years. The N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball championship game last month shattered records with an average of 9.9 million viewers, according to ESPN.A whirlwind few days for Griner included the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner and the Met Gala, which she attended with her wife, Cherelle Griner.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesW.N.B.A. teams will play a record 40 regular-season games this year, and the league signed a multiyear deal with Scripps to televise Friday night games on the network ION. Griner’s first two regular-season games, on Friday in Los Angeles and Sunday in Phoenix against Chicago, will be nationally televised by ESPN. Viewership during the 2022 regular season rose 16 percent over the previous year, according to the league, making it the most-watched season in 14 years.Flip on the N.B.A. playoffs and you’re likely to spot a W.N.B.A. player, like Candace Parker of the Las Vegas Aces or Arike Ogunbowale of the Dallas Wings, featured prominently in a commercial. Puma recently announced the second signature shoe for the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart. Griner, who became the first openly gay athlete signed to Nike in 2014, remains with the brand, a spokesman confirmed, but the company did not answer questions about whether it planned to market her this season.A few weeks before Griner was detained, W.N.B.A. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced that the league had raised $75 million from investors that she planned to use for marketing and revamping the league’s business model.Collegiate stars like Angel Reese of Louisiana State, Paige Bueckers of UConn and Caitlin Clark of Iowa are poised to enter the league in the next few years, bringing their dynamic games, name recognition and national television exposure.“That’s why we’re putting so many marketing dollars behind some of our star players,” Engelbert said. She added: “That’s how you build household names.”Griner’s absence and images of her behind bars or in court weighed on her Phoenix teammates last year.Pool photo by Evgenia NovozheninaThe Travel DebateConcerns about Griner’s security while traveling since her detention have added to the fiery debate about travel in the W.N.B.A.Unlike in the N.B.A. or on many top men’s and women’s college teams, W.N.B.A. players fly on commercial airlines to games. It has long been a sore point for players, who have had to sleep in airports or rush to games because of delays. This year, it is widely believed that Griner will need to travel privately, though neither the Mercury nor the W.N.B.A. have disclosed her plans.“Would definitely like to make all those flights private,” Griner said. “That would be nice. Not just for me and my team, but for the whole league. We all deserve it. We work so hard. We do so much and it would be nice where we finally get to the point where we get to that point, too.”The W.N.B.A. has said that it cannot afford the tab of over $20 million a season for charter flights, even though some owners might be willing to provide them for their own teams. Charter flights are prohibited in the collective bargaining agreement between team owners and the players’ union as an unfair competitive advantage. The W.N.B.A. fined the Liberty $500,000 for secretly using charter flights to travel to some games during the 2021 season.In April, the league announced that it would have charter flights for teams playing on consecutive days during the regular season and for all playoff games. The W.N.B.A. had made exceptions in similar situations previously.“We’re going to chip away at this as we continue to build this model,” Engelbert said. “Because once you do it, you have to do it essentially for perpetuity, so we want to make sure we’re not putting the financial viability of the league at risk.”On Thursday, the W.N.B.A. players’ union announced a deal with Priority Pass to give players access to airport lounges, which could provide food, spa treatments and places to sleep. Nneka Ogwumike, the star Los Angeles forward who is president of the players’ union, said in a statement that she hoped other “partners” would see the deal as a “call to action.”In a statement, Terri Jackson, the union’s executive director, called the deal a “significant step in the right direction.”Players around the W.N.B.A. wrote to Griner and pushed for her release throughout 2022.Rebecca Noble for The New York Times‘She Impacts the World’Vince Kozar, the president of the Mercury, described an ominous cloud over the franchise last season at every practice, media session and game without Griner. Brief video clips that emerged of her in Russia showed her handcuffed or caged. The day Griner was sentenced, Mercury players came together and cried — then had to play a game. “You carried that weight of the uncertainty and the fear,” Kozar said.It finally, suddenly, parted upon Griner’s release in December. Kozar did not expect Griner to announce immediately whether she would again play in the W.N.B.A. But when she returned to the United States, she said she would play.Griner may have been the most plugged-in W.N.B.A. player last season. Players from around the league sent her letters, their only means of communicating with her. In letters with Kozar, Griner was not asking about the organization and its going-ons as much as informing him about them.“It was just a reminder that basketball was one of the things that had been taken away from her, this thing how she impacts the world that’s central to her identity, that so many of her relationships are built around,” Kozar said.Griner will lead the league in hugs this season. She scribbled autographs and posed for selfies in the tunnel of a preseason game against the Sparks in Phoenix last week. It was her first action since she’d returned. A modest crowd cheered louder than it seemed capable of during Griner’s pregame introduction. Mercury Coach Vanessa Nygaard said chills ran down her spine.Griner towered over everyone else on the court, securing her first bucket on a quick turnaround a minute into the first quarter. All right, here we go, Griner thought to herself. So much had seemed unfamiliar to her lately. Jet-setting for a living? That’s not her, she said with a laugh. But that first shot, she thought, that felt comfortable.Matt York/Associated Press More

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      The N.B.A. and Its Players’ Union Reach a Tentative Labor Deal

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      The collective bargaining agreement, which is said to create a new in-season tournament, must be ratified by the players and team governors.The N.B.A. and the N.B.A. players’ union have agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement that will ensure labor peace, the league announced Saturday morning. The new deal must be ratified by N.B.A. players and the league’s board of governors before it becomes official.The deal includes the addition of an in-season tournament with monetary rewards for players and coaches who win it, the removal of marijuana as a banned substance, and a second luxury tax tier, according to a person familiar with the terms who requested anonymity because the deal is not ratified.The new collective bargaining agreement will begin next season and last for seven years, with a mutual opt-out clause after six years, the same person said.Although some expected that this collective bargaining agreement would lower the age limit for entering the N.B.A. draft from 19 to 18, the sides did not agree to that. The age limit will remain at 19, which means most players coming out of high school will need to wait a year before entering the draft.The league announced the deal in a tweet at 2:59 a.m. Saturday. The parties had agreed to extend the midnight deadline for either side to opt out of the current agreement, which has been in effect since 2017.Had the sides not agreed or come close by Friday, the league intended to exercise the opt-out clause, according to Commissioner Adam Silver. That would have caused the current collective bargaining agreement to expire on June 30 instead of next year, compressing the time the sides would have had to avoid a work stoppage.The N.B.A. has not had a work stoppage since the lockout in 2011, which delayed the start of that season until Christmas.This deal is the first negotiated by executive director Tamika Tremaglio, who began her tenure as the head of the union in 2021, and for CJ McCollum, the Pelicans guard who became its president in August of that year.The second luxury tax tier appears to be a compromise from what the league had wanted. The league had been concerned that some teams were at too great of a disadvantage because a small number of them vastly outspent the others through salary cap exceptions within the existing luxury tax system. This season, the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Clippers are paying luxury taxes and spend far more on their star-studded rosters than any other team. To prevent that spending imbalance, the league had hoped to institute a fixed sum that teams could spend on salaries, but the union made clear early on that it would not accept any hard spending limit for teams.The sides hope the new tier will allow more teams to enter the luxury tax.Adding a tournament during the N.B.A. season had long been a priority for Silver.“It’s something that I remain excited about,” Silver had said during a news conference in September. “I think it continues to be an opportunity within the current footprint of our season to create some more meaningful games, games of consequence, during an otherwise long regular season.” More

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      As Bargaining Deadline Looms, N.B.A. and Players’ Union Enjoy Friendly Ties

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      The connections between team owners and players are stronger now than in previous years. A deadline to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement offers a test of that relationship.Tamika Tremaglio, the executive director of the N.B.A. players’ union, organized a friendly social gathering ahead of this season between union officials and N.B.A. league executives: party games, cocktails and even a five-on-five basketball game. They would spend much of the next few months negotiating against each other for the next collective bargaining agreement, and Tremaglio first wanted them to have a little fun together.Tremaglio and N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver competed against each other in an egg toss.“For our benefit,” she said, “Adam and I, we didn’t have to play basketball.”The tenor of the relationship between the league and its players’ union seems a far cry from the contentious moments that have dotted their history: the players’ very first attempts to unionize in the 1950s; tense years in the 1990s; and antagonistic battle in 2011 that led to the league’s most recent lockout.Recently, the N.B.A.’s labor landscape has been peaceful, but the strength of that collegiality is being tested by pressure points during a negotiation that has addressed issues like the age limit for players entering the league, a possible in-season tournament and the league’s luxury tax system.One of those pressure points might come this week as the deadline for either side to opt out of the current agreement looms on Friday. Silver said on Wednesday afternoon that he can foresee a deal being reached by Friday, but the league would likely opt out if not. That would make the current collective bargaining agreement expire on June 30 instead of after the 2023-24 season and add urgency to the negotiations for a new agreement. Tremaglio said in a statement that the union does not plan to opt out.“If we don’t have a deal and the league decides to opt out, it will be disappointing considering all the work both sides have put into the negotiations, and the fair nature of our requests,” Tremaglio said.Whatever happens will be set against the backdrop of an era in which N.B.A. players and team owners have largely cooperated, making their dynamic look far different from the labor fights that have played out recently across numerous industries in the United States.People on both sides refer to the relationship between players and team owners as a partnership, and they often develop friendships with each other. During this period, star players have immense power over their careers on and off the court, and the league has benefited from lucrative media rights deals.“It’s not like you can draw a line and say previously it was bad and now it’s good or anything else,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the principal outside counsel for the union, who has been working with the union since 1978. “It just varies over time, shaped by a lot of different forces, shaped by the economics at the time, shaped by the personalities at the time, shaped by the experience. They go through different cycles.”Finances, as they often do with collective bargaining in any industry, have shaped the tenor of the relationship for decades. In 1954, when N.B.A. players first tried to organize, back pay for a group of players was among their top issues. The league recognized the union three years later.Over the next several decades, issues like pensions, free agency and players’ share of league profits became sticking points.“We were the first ones to establish a percentage of the growth revenue going to the players,” Junior Bridgeman, a former player, said, referring to the 1983 C.B.A., two years before he began his tenure as president of the players’ union as the league’s popularity was growing because of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. “No one thought at the time that the numbers would get to where they are today and it would be as meaningful as it is today.”Today, Bridgeman is a business magnate who built a fortune in the food and beverage industry, but when he first attended bargaining sessions, he considered it an unofficial curriculum for a master’s in business administration. He saw what mattered to the team owners and how they communicated.“Most of the meetings ended up being contentious to some extent,” Bridgeman said. He added: “We went to one meeting that lasted all of seven minutes. We got up and walked out. It was the art of negotiation in real life.”In 1995, the league locked out the players for the first time. Union leadership and the league’s representatives had agreed to a deal, but players were unhappy with basic terms and the way the negotiation was conducted. A group of high-profile players filed an antitrust lawsuit and moved to decertify the union.They reached an agreement before the season began, but the deal had an opt-out clause that eventually led to the longest lockout in league history, nearly canceling the 1998-99 season. The sides reached an agreement in January 1999.Silver has worked for the N.B.A. since 1992, spending much of his early years in N.B.A. Entertainment. He became the league’s deputy commissioner, serving under David Stern, in 2006, the year an age limit of 19 went into effect for the draft.The league’s next work stoppage came in 2011. Stern appointed Silver as the league’s lead negotiator for those talks. Silver chuckled at the title.“When David Stern is in the room, he’s the lead negotiator,” Silver said in a phone interview Monday.Stern, who died in 2020, was indeed still the face of those negotiations. His biting wit and tough demeanor led to memorable moments. Billy Hunter, then the union’s executive director, once said he thought the league’s claim that it was losing $400 million a year was “baloney.” Stern, whose family owned a deli, quipped in response: “I grew up at Stern’s delicatessen. He has his meat wrong.”As a player, Michael Jordan had been heavily involved in union battles. His name was on the antitrust lawsuit Kessler filed on the players’ behalf in 1995.In 2010, he became the majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, now the Hornets, and took an active role in labor negotiations later that decade. He is now the chairman of the labor relations committee.“The expectation maybe from some people on my side that when Michael was at the table, everything would be hunky-dory,” Silver said. “‘Oh, Michael Jordan is saying it. Therefore that must be a fair position.’”As a player, Michael Jordan, right, helped the league increase its popularity and was active in union battles. As a team owner, he took an active role in labor negotiations in the 2010s.Chuck Burton/Associated PressPlayers, he said, didn’t agree. Silver recalls the star guard Chris Paul, who was the president of the union from 2013-21, telling him: “No question I admire and trust Michael Jordan, but we’re now, in essence, adversaries in this process.”Silver believes the relationship between players and the league is more trusting now than in previous bargaining cycles, in part because the league is more open about its finances.“It doesn’t necessarily mean that it makes it easier to get a deal done,” Silver said. “But we’re now able to jump over what used to be months of back and forth over what the so-called truth was regarding the league’s financials.”Paul, who was drafted in 2005, said he has seen players become more interested and involved in understanding the business of the league now than earlier in his career. Silver has made a point to build personal capital with players. He also fostered a close relationship with Michele Roberts, Tremaglio’s predecessor, who held the post from July 2014 to January 2022. Roberts declined to be interviewed for this story to avoid the appearance she was trying to influence negotiations from retirement.“That’s one of his strengths,” Jerry Colangelo, who was an executive for the Bulls in the 1960s before leaving to work for and later own the Phoenix Suns, said of Silver. “He’s a communicator, a terrific communicator. David was a little bit more arm’s length.” He added: “Both are really good negotiators. Both really could be very tough when they need to be tough. But on a personal basis, Adam is more available.”Both Silver and Paul said that doesn’t mean negotiations are easier.“They always get contentious,” Paul said.Where that productive relationship helps is in times of unexpected upheaval, like when the coronavirus pandemic hit and caused the league to shut down operations in 2020.“The shutting down of the business, playing in a bubble in Orlando, all those things were far outside the scope of our agreement,” Silver said. He added: “The trust enabled us to sit down with the leadership at the union and with the leaders and with the players executive committee, and we worked through some really difficult issues.”Their shared stakes also helped them navigate the work stoppage that occurred in the bubble when players, led by the Milwaukee Bucks, decided not to play after a white police officer in Kenosha, Wis., shot a Black man named Jacob Blake. Before games resumed, players met with team owners over videoconferencing and asked them to commit to support social justice concerns.During the pandemic stoppage, Silver said he and other key league executives began having daily calls with Paul, guard Kyle Lowry and center Dwight Powell, who were part of the league’s competition committee. They checked in on how players were feeling about issues like returning to play, their own safety and the racial justice movements that were sweeping the country.When CJ McCollum replaced Paul as president of the union in August 2021, he was added to those calls. Silver said the calls are no longer daily, but still happen regularly.“We talk about everything,” McCollum, a Pelicans guard, said of his relationship with Silver. “The state of the game, where the game is at, ways to improve.”This season they discussed topics like an uptick in travel calls and changes to foul calls. When the W.N.B.A. star Brittney Griner was imprisoned in Russia, McCollum said they sometimes discussed what they could do to help the efforts to free her.Tremaglio, the N.B.P.A.’s executive director, said the party last fall helped her bolster her relationships with league executives, too.“We are in business together, right? We have a partnership,” Tremaglio said. “For me, I tend to do business with people that I like and know something about.” She added: “I thought it was really critical before we go into negotiations that we had a chance to really get to know one another.”There were some new faces in the union and new faces in the league office, and most of their interactions during the past several months had been held remotely.“I share her view,” Silver said. “I thought it was a great idea.”He added: “When you negotiate with a players’ association, or frankly any collectively bargained relationship, you get a deal done and then the next day you’re dealing with those exact same people and you’re living under that deal.”Tremaglio said the union won the games, though league sources dispute that contention. The stakes were lower that day, but their competitive natures persisted. More

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      With End of Griner’s Detention, a New Wave of WNBA Activism Begins

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      With their campaign to free Brittney Griner from prison in Russia over, W.N.B.A. players say they will help free others and focus on women’s health and pay equity.The W.N.B.A. is a trendsetter, a league of mostly Black women who have taken up major progressive causes: voting rights, stricter gun laws, equality for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But this year’s push to free Brittney Griner, one of their own, from a geopolitical standoff in Russia — that was their toughest test yet.“This is what Black women do,” Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics said. “We carry the weight in our family, this country, and we always have, whether we get the acknowledgment or not from it.”Griner was released from a Russian penal colony on Thursday in a prisoner exchange after, the U.S. State Department said, she had been “wrongfully detained” on drug charges for nearly 10 months. Griner is home. Other imprisoned Americans who also may be in danger are not. The W.N.B.A.’s mission continues.“We also want those other prisoners over there to come home as well,” Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said. “We don’t want them to just be like, ‘Oh, we just got B.G. home, and we’re done.’ No, that’s not what the W does.”In recent years, W.N.B.A. members helped flip a Senate seat in Georgia by supporting the Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, when Senator Kelly Loeffler, a Republican who owned the Atlanta Dream, spoke against the Black Lives Matter movement. They walked out of games to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man in Wisconsin, and dedicated a season to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by Kentucky police. Their latest collective bargaining agreement set new benchmarks in pay and benefits for women in sports.Natasha Cloud of the Washington Mystics, center, marched to the M.L.K. Memorial in Washington to support the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020.Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images“But, at the same time, they are mere mortals,” said Terri Jackson, the executive director of the W.N.B.A. players’ union. “Emotionally, this does take a toll. All of their advocacy and their work in the communities around so many issues — pick an issue, reproductive rights, voting rights, gun control — it wears on them.”More on Women and Girls in Sports‘We Have Fun All the Time’: Women’s college running programs can be rife with toxicity. At North Carolina State, Coach Laurie Henes is winning with a different approach.Pressure to Cut Body Fat: Collegiate athletic departments across the country require student-athletes to measure their body composition. Many female athletes have found the tests to be invasive and triggering for those who had eating disorders or were predisposed to them.New Endorsements Bring Up Old Debate: Female college athletes are making millions thanks to their large social media followings. But some who have fought for equity worry that their brand building is regressive.Pretty in Any Color: Women’s basketball players are styling themselves how they want, because they can. Their choices also can be lucrative.The plane returning Griner from Russia had not even touched down in the United States before Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, pledged that the campaign to free Griner would transition into securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans around the world. W.N.B.A. players have been at the heart of that campaign and many others.“While I was fighting for B.G. this year, I was still fighting for sensible gun laws,” Cloud said. “While we were still fighting for B.G., we were still fighting for a woman’s right to her body and to the choice to her body and the choice to her life. We were still fighting and trying to get people out to vote, understanding how important these elections were in the trajectory of where our country was headed.”W.N.B.A. players went about their season while knowing their teammate and friend was imprisoned in Russia. “Honestly, I don’t think the W.N.B.A. ever takes a break from advocacy,” Harrison said. “I think we’re always at a point where we’re fighting and trying to get some type of justice, all whilst trying to build up our league and play basketball.”On Aug. 4, the day a Russian court sentenced Griner to nine years in a penal colony, her Phoenix Mercury teammates played a game.“Nobody even wanted to play today,” Mercury guard Skylar Diggins-Smith said afterward. “How are we even supposed to approach the game and approach the court with a clear mind when the whole group is crying before the game?”Napheesa Collier, of the Minnesota Lynx, said she didn’t go more than a day or two without talking about Griner, and her group chats with other W.N.B.A. players constantly included discussions of the situation in Russia.“They’ve advocated every single day, keeping her in the media, keep talking about her, making sure that no one’s forgetting, making sure that we’re doing everything that we can to bring her home,” Collier said.Isabelle Harrison of the Dallas Wings said Griner had been fun to play with and kind to her when she was a rookie.Tony Gutierrez/Associated PressW.N.B.A. players often proudly refer to themselves as “The 144,” referring to the total number of players in the league. Some, like the Seattle Storm’s Breanna Stewart, a former most valuable player, sent social media messages daily in support of Griner.“I was using my platform in all ways possible and really making sure that throughout this time, everybody was still keeping B.G. in their thoughts during her wrongful detention,” Stewart said. “To finally be at a moment where I don’t have to send that tweet is amazing.”She added: “Ever since I came into the W.N.B.A., we’ve always been at the forefront in speaking out against social injustices, and that’s what we’re going to continue to do. As a league full of women and majority Black women, there’s a lot that needs to be fought for, and we’re used to it and we’re used to speaking up on our own account and now for others.”Many players wore Griner-themed clothing designed by Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old known as Jiggy Izzy, who is popular on social media for her basketball skills. The front of the design, seen on hoodies and T-shirts, features a smiling Griner in her Mercury jersey with a basketball that reads “WEAREBG” — the phrase that became the rallying cry for her release.Griner’s jersey number, 42, is wrapped around the left side, and on the back, her first and last name are printed in capital letters. With the help of her brothers, Escribano worked with Griner’s agent and the W.N.B.A. players’ union to get the clothing to players across the W.N.B.A. and the N.B.A. Escribano said it was “very empowering and rewarding” to see Griner freed.“Because just, like, for all we’ve done, and for her to be home now, it was for a purpose,” Escribano said, adding: “I hope one day I can meet her and tell her how I felt and how I wanted to help her in any situation possible.”Isabella Escribano, a 14-year-old hooper known as Jiggy Izzy, designed T-shirts and hoodies that helped raise awareness of Brittney Griner’s detention in Russia.Meg Oliphant for The New York TimesAmira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Penn State University specializing in race, sports and gender, said that the W.N.B.A. had proved itself as a force for social justice, though she “would love for them to have the opportunity to develop advocacy on their terms.”“They meet the challenge every time, but wouldn’t it be great to not have to?” she said.Jackson, the union’s executive director, said Griner’s ordeal shoved to the forefront important issues like pay equity and W.N.B.A. investment. Griner had been in Russia during the W.N.B.A. off-season to play for a professional team there that reportedly paid her at least $1 million, more than four times what she made in the United States. Dozens of W.N.B.A. players compete internationally in the off-season to boost their incomes. But Griner’s detention led many players, fans and opinion columnists to wonder aloud whether more should be done to raise pay here so players do not feel the need to go abroad.“We are not honoring the players, we are not honoring B.G., if we don’t have those conversations,” Jackson said.This weekend, the W.N.B.A. players’ union plans to certify a new executive committee, whose members will set the agenda for the next wave of activism. Jackson and others expect the players to focus on women’s health and continue pushing for the freedom of those like the American Paul Whelan, who is also detained in Russia. Many people were disappointed that Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, had not been included in the prisoner exchange that freed Griner.“Instead of people hating and complaining for one American coming home who has won and has represented her country in the most respectful ways, we should harness that into fighting for Paul,” Cloud said.The league, for years now, has shown that it knows no other path. One issue is solved. Others remain.“They really understand the power of the collective voice, and so they can lean on each other — literally, sometimes — to continue to draw that strength and propel them forward,” Jackson said.Shauntel Lowe More

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      U.S. Soccer and Players Guarantee Equal Pay in New Contracts

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      Landmark labor agreements with members of the men’s and women’s national teams will include higher paychecks and shared World Cup prize money.As the women’s soccer stars stared at their laptop screens Monday night and the new labor deal was explained to them, the numbers just kept climbing. A few thousand dollars here. Tens of thousands of dollars there. Pretty soon, the figures had crossed into the millions.What they added up to, the players all knew, was something many of them had chased for most of their careers: equal pay.That reality arrived Wednesday in landmark contracts with the U.S. Soccer Federation that will guarantee, for the first time, that soccer players representing the United States men’s and women’s national teams will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions.In addition to equal rates of pay for individual matches, the deals include a provision, believed to be the first of its kind, through which the teams will pool the unequal prize money payments U.S. Soccer receives from FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, for their participation in the quadrennial World Cup. Starting with the 2022 men’s tournament and the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that money will be shared equally among the members of both teams.“No other country has ever done this,” U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Cone, said of the deal to equalize World Cup payments. “I think everyone should be really proud of what we’ve accomplished here. It really, truly, is historic.”U.S. Soccer’s president, Cindy Parlow Cone, a former national team player who helped guide the national teams to a deal, with President Biden at an Equal Pay Day event in March.Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe agreements were reached just over six years after a group of stars from the World Cup-winning U.S. women’s national team began a campaign to overcome what they said was years of wage discrimination by U.S. Soccer against its female players. The players argued that they had been paid less than their male counterparts for decades even as they won world championships and Olympic gold medals.The fight over per diems and paychecks eventually morphed into a federal lawsuit in which the women accused U.S. Soccer of “institutionalized gender discrimination.” While the women lost in federal court in 2020, when a judge ruled against their core claims, they eventually won their equal pay victory at the negotiating table, with a final assist from the men’s team.It was the men’s team’s players, in fact, who opened a pathway to a deal late last year when they privately agreed to share some of the millions of dollars in World Cup bonus money that they have traditionally received by pooling it with the smaller payments the women receive from their own championship.That split could see the two teams pool, and share, $20 million or more as soon as next year. That will be in addition to match payments that are expected to average $450,000 a year — and double that, or more, in years when World Cup bonus money is added.For the women’s team’s players, Wednesday’s agreements were as much a relief as a triumph. Becky Sauerbrunn, one of the five players who signed the original complaint in 2016, admitted, “It’s hard to get so, so excited about something we should have had all along.”Through the years, as the sides battled in courtrooms and negotiating sessions, the dispute produced sometimes caustic — and personal — disagreements about personal privacy, workplace equality and basic fairness, and drew support (and second-guessing) from a disparate chorus of presidential candidates, star athletes and Hollywood celebrities — not all of them supportive of the women’s campaign for pay equity.The difference in compensation for men and women has been one of the most contentious issues in soccer in recent years, particularly after the American women won consecutive World Cup championships, in 2015 and 2019, and the men failed to qualify for the 2018 tournament. Over the years, the women’s team, which includes some of the world’s most recognizable athletes, had escalated and amplified its fight in court filings, news media interviews and on the sport’s grandest stages.The dispute had always been a complex issue, with differing contracts, unequal prize money and other financial quirks muddying the distinctions in pay between the men’s and women’s teams and complicating the ability of national governing bodies like U.S. Soccer to resolve the differences.Yet the federation ultimately committed to a fairer system. To achieve it, U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements. These agreements will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year from sponsors, broadcasters and other partners.The U.S. women’s soccer team amplified its equal pay message on the way to winning the 2019 Women’s World Cup.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesLabor peace will be expensive: U.S. Soccer has committed to single-game payments for most matches of $18,000 per player for games won, and as much as $24,000 per game for wins at certain major tournaments — cementing the status of the U.S. men and women as two of the highest-paid national teams in the world. And the federation will surrender to the men and women on those teams 90 percent of the money it receives from FIFA for sending teams to the next two World Cups.The split of prize money, then, is a notable concession by the American men, who have previously been awarded the bulk of those multimillion-dollar payments by U.S. Soccer, and a potential seven-figure windfall for the women. The 24 teams at the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France, for example, competed for a prize pool of $30 million; the 32 men’s teams that will compete in Qatar in November will split $450 million.Timeline: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s Fight for Equal PayCard 1 of 11A six-year legal battle. More

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      Why Brittney Griner and Other W.N.B.A. Stars Play Overseas

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      Competing for international teams during the W.N.B.A.’s off-season is common for players. The chance to earn extra money is just one of the draws.Brittney Griner, a center for the Phoenix Mercury, has been detained in Russia in connection with a drug investigation. She had been there playing for the professional basketball team UMMC Ekaterinburg during the W.N.B.A. off-season. The news of her detention on Saturday prompted questions about safety and politics but also about logistics — namely: Why was one of the W.N.B.A.’s best players competing in Russia anyway?Griner is a seven-time All-Star, and she won a W.N.B.A. championship in 2014 alongside Diana Taurasi, who has also played in Russia. Trading off-season rest for international competition is common among W.N.B.A. players for many personal and professional reasons, but often the most pressing motivation is financial.Here is a quick look at what drives W.N.B.A. players to play internationally.Questions You May HaveWhich players compete overseas?How much money do W.N.B.A. players earn?How much do players make overseas?So, is it just about money?If they play in the season and the off-season, when do they get a break?Which players compete overseas?It could be anyone, from the W.N.B.A.’s best veterans to young players hoping to get extra playing time. About 70 players are believed to be playing for international teams this off-season, with more than a dozen in Russia and Ukraine. There are 144 roster spots across the 12 W.N.B.A. teams. In past years, some W.N.B.A. teams had posted trackers showing players who were competing in China, Israel, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Australia and several other countries.Connecticut Sun forward Jonquel Jones, who won the Most Valuable Player Award last season, had been playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia but left after Russia invaded Ukraine. Jones posted on Twitter about airspace restrictions on Wednesday as she was flying out of Russia and said: “Just landed in Turkey and all I want to do is cry. That situation was way more stressful than I realized. Thank you God for always watching over and protecting me.”Other big-name stars, like Liz Cambage, Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Sue Bird and Arike Ogunbowale, have played internationally.How much money do W.N.B.A. players earn?The maximum salary for the 2022 season is $228,094; the minimum is $60,471.It’s hard not to notice how small those numbers are compared with salaries in the N.B.A., where even little-used bench players can earn millions. Top players like Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant earn more than $40 million per year. Their seasons are longer (82 regular-season games compared with 36 in the W.N.B.A.), and the men’s league brings in significantly more revenue than the women’s. But the stark disparity has been a constant source of debate in recent years as gender and pay equity have become hot-button topics.W.N.B.A. players have pushed for higher pay, and in 2020 their union, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, signed a new collective bargaining agreement that the league said would increase the average salary to six figures — almost $130,000 — for the first time. The year before, in 2019, a player could earn as little as $41,965 and no more than $117,500.The new contract also created opportunities for players to earn additional money through a marketing program and an in-season tournament.How much do players make overseas?It varies among countries, leagues and teams, but players can make several hundred thousand dollars and even more than $1 million. For many players, the bulk of their income is not earned in the W.N.B.A.Cambage, a four-time All-Star who is from Australia, said recently on “NBA Today” that her pay for overseas teams was five to eight times as much as she earned in the W.N.B.A. Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier, who won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2019, said going overseas is essential for many players because of the lower W.N.B.A. salaries.“For a lot of people, it’s not like you make enough to live off that for the rest of the year,” Collier said on her podcast in August, according to the website Just Women’s Sports.In 2015, UMMC Ekaterinburg reportedly paid Taurasi, the Phoenix Mercury guard, $1.5 million to play for it and not to play in that year’s W.N.B.A. season. “It was a very personal choice,” Taurasi told The New York Times at the time. “My agent said it would be financially irresponsible not to do it.”International teams tend to have more government and corporate financial support than those in the W.N.B.A., which helps explain the higher salaries.So, is it just about money?No, not for everyone.Playing time is a key incentive for many players. With just 144 roster spots and easy-to-cut contracts in the W.N.B.A., it can be difficult for even talented players to stay on rosters and in the game. Last month, forward Lauren Manis told The Times about signing with teams in Belgium and Hungary after the Las Vegas Aces waived her in 2020 and again in 2021. She has yet to appear in a W.N.B.A. game — the Aces waived her about a month after drafting her in 2020 — but she recently signed a training camp contract with the Seattle Storm.The W.N.B.A. also draws players from all over the world, so the off-season gives many of them an opportunity to play in their home countries in front of their families and friends. But playing year-round can mean that players are tired when it’s time to return to the W.N.B.A.Connecticut Sun forward Jonquel Jones was one of several W.N.B.A. players who left their international teams in Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine.Ashley Landis/Associated PressIf they play in the season and the off-season, when do they get a break?Sometimes they don’t.This can be a problem for the players — little rest can lead to injuries — and for the W.N.B.A. The league and its teams have been supportive of the players’ international careers, with notes about their accomplishments included in their website bios, but the new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 added steep financial penalties to discourage overseas play.Many players are not finished with their international seasons before W.N.B.A. training camp begins in April and the start of the season in May. Last season, 55 players were late to training camp, and about a dozen missed their season-openers, according to The Hartford Courant. Players can be fined up to 20 percent of their salaries for missing regular-season games because they are playing in other leagues, and starting next season, they may not be allowed to play at all if they are not back by the start of the regular season. More