OT Ice Cube offers Caitlin Clark 5 million dollar contract to join BIG 3 League

[NbaAllDay]

An offer to play in a league that won't take take away from her WNBA commitments for the equivalent of 20 YEARS SALARY.

Eeer yes.

If you want to get into the weeds of it, it hopefully highlights the (sadly) poor state of the WNBA and the (unfortunate) delusion of some of the player base and wild overestimation as to there important in the basketball landscape.

Hpoefully Clark can bring a new fanbase to it, and a great marketing tool is watching her in the Big3 imo.

There currently is no other way to effectively market the WNBA.

[boomershadow]

I'm curious about how the larger ball would affect her shooting, if at all.

Or, would the magnets take care of this?

This has always irked me. Why the hell do they play with a smaller ball? WNBA athletes are still bigger/taller than the average person. Why the hell do Woman need to play with a ball that is only 1 inch smaller.

This has always irked me too. Most WNBA players are taller than me and all of them are more athletic.

[Slacktard]

Is this the equivalent of the Globetrotters asking Chamberlain to play for them?

I think the major difference is opportunity.

Wilt didn't have a choice. He had decided to leave College to make money and hated how he being triple teamed every game in college, but the NBA wouldn't let players enter the league until 4 years after they graduated high school. Still, he got $50k from the Globetrotters for that one year which was actually more than what he signed for his rookie NBA contract the next year when he was able to enter the league ($30k)

[KembaWalker]

I'm curious about how the larger ball would affect her shooting, if at all.

Or, would the magnets take care of this?

This has always irked me. Why the hell do they play with a smaller ball? WNBA athletes are still bigger/taller than the average person. Why the hell do Woman need to play with a ball that is only 1 inch smaller.

This has always irked me too. Most WNBA players are taller than me and all of them are more athletic.

Yeah the women that make the WNBA are but it’s just trickling back to the youth girls that often are straight up just not strong enough before puberty to be able to play with a normal sized ball. I think the women’s game has developed to the point where they could have them make the swap in high school and they probably will at some point. It’s just never an easy or convenient time to just change the ball in the middle of all these ladies college/pro careers when they’ve been using a certain ball their whole lives.

[Scalabrine]

Well the wnba is losing money every year and is subsidized by the nba.

Wnba players are already using smaller balls so its not the same game anyway. If there were more dunks due to lowered rims, I bet viewership would go up.

At any rate its not like they are doing well currently anyway....

Yeah smaller ball and shorter 3 point line already. Not sure why shorter rims would be such a big deal. Would require drastic changes to women's league development tho, probably not easy for shooters to adjust right away etc...

Lowering the rims is a no brainer. Women are shorter than men. Why do they play with disproportionately higher rims? If you reframe it, the men have a relative advantage compared to the women.

The obvious reason to me is that all over the world, hoops are 10 feet tall. To have two separate courts for men and women all over is just completely unrealistic.

[makubesu]

At 5% interest 5 million would yield 250K a year. Obviously there’s taxes and inflation, etc., but order of magnitude we are talking about a WNBA salary every year for the rest of her life for one year of work.

[shrink]

Straight Outta Cornfield

[moderndarwin]

She should do it for the money.

But this is intensely disrespectful to the BIG3 players. She’s a girl. She’d get absolutely bodied out there. I don’t even know how good she would be in say boys high school basketball. It’s easy to look amazing when you’re way better than your competition and similarly athletic. When you’re skilled but physically inferior it’s a whole different thing. She’d be able to shoot but she can’t drive she can’t guard she can’t board etc against grown strong men.

This is insane.

[Iwasawitness]

There's no chance in hell she's taking that lol. Big3 is a dumb gimmick. She's not going to lower her brand value by doing that crap.

Maybe if they offered her $50M but yeah...$5M is chump change for her

I'm sorry, how the hell is 5m chump change for her? She isn't some sort of mega earning professional athlete or business professional. 5m isn't even chump change to someone like LeBron. For context:

It's the first year of the two-year, $97.1 million contract extension he signed with the Lakers last year. He has a player option for the 2024-25 NBA season worth $51,415,938. There are 82 games in the regular season, so James makes $580,577.44 per game

5mil for a maximum 10 games = 500k/game. It would put her on an earning scale similar to the superstars of the league today.

Well, she is arguably the most popular current athlete in the United States. I'd be surprised if she takes $5M to play in a gimmick league. It's like PornHub paying Nicole Kidman $20M for a porno...I just doubt she takes it.

So where is she expected to get 5m+ from because it sure as hell isn’t going to be the WNBA.

[KyRo23]

Ice Cube should just make a deal with the whole WNBA. promote the hell out of it, lower the rims. Put a whole new spin on Womens basketball with talent like Caitlin Clark as the poster of it all.

Lowering the rim instantly discredits any league.

Sent from my SM-N975U using RealGM mobile app

Why do people say this? The WNBA already:

Has a smaller ball
Has a shorter 3pt line
Plays a 40 game regular season
Plays shorter quarters

I'm sure there's more, but why is lowering the net the part that discredits it?

[OdomFan]

I don't see the problem with lowering the rims. The WNBA needs an identity of its own. fact is they can't dunk regularly on the NBA leveled rim and that's fine imo. So make it so that they can dunk. If they want to boost ratings even a little it can help to have dunking. It doesn't have to be equal to NBA in everything.

[MrGoat]

Yeah smaller ball and shorter 3 point line already. Not sure why shorter rims would be such a big deal. Would require drastic changes to women's league development tho, probably not easy for shooters to adjust right away etc...

Lowering the rims is a no brainer. Women are shorter than men. Why do they play with disproportionately higher rims? If you reframe it, the men have a relative advantage compared to the women.

The obvious reason to me is that all over the world, hoops are 10 feet tall. To have two separate courts for men and women all over is just completely unrealistic.

You don't even need separate courts. Some rims are height adjustable. Ever shot some hoops at a YMCA before?

The main issue would be established players adjusting to shooting at a lower basket when they've practiced on a 10 foot one for years

[KembaWalker]

Lowering the rims is a no brainer. Women are shorter than men. Why do they play with disproportionately higher rims? If you reframe it, the men have a relative advantage compared to the women.

The obvious reason to me is that all over the world, hoops are 10 feet tall. To have two separate courts for men and women all over is just completely unrealistic.

You don't even need separate courts. Some rims are height adjustable. Ever shot some hoops at a YMCA before?

The main issue would be established players adjusting to shooting at a lower basket when they've practiced on a 10 foot one for years

Girls may like to be able to play basketball at parks and stuff too, it is, you know, a children’s game after all

[dhsilv2]

There's no chance in hell she's taking that lol. Big3 is a dumb gimmick. She's not going to lower her brand value by doing that crap.

Maybe if they offered her $50M but yeah...$5M is chump change for her

I'm sorry, how the hell is 5m chump change for her? She isn't some sort of mega earning professional athlete or business professional. 5m isn't even chump change to someone like LeBron. For context:

It's the first year of the two-year, $97.1 million contract extension he signed with the Lakers last year. He has a player option for the 2024-25 NBA season worth $51,415,938. There are 82 games in the regular season, so James makes $580,577.44 per game

5mil for a maximum 10 games = 500k/game. It would put her on an earning scale similar to the superstars of the league today.

Well, she is arguably the most popular current athlete in the United States. I'd be surprised if she takes $5M to play in a gimmick league. It's like PornHub paying Nicole Kidman $20M for a porno...I just doubt she takes it.

I don't even know what this woman looks like. There's no chance in hell she's anywhere close to the most popular athlete in the US lol. And no, this isn't like doing freaking porn! And she's not 20+ years past her prime either...

[dhsilv2]

Well, she is arguably the most popular current athlete in the United States. I'd be surprised if she takes $5M to play in a gimmick league. It's like PornHub paying Nicole Kidman $20M for a porno...I just doubt she takes it.

It's a horrible analogy considering that:
1) Nicole Kidman isn't a porn star, she is a highly successful actress
2) Nicole Kidman has earned far more than 20m throughout her career so this isn't the same financial windfall as it is for Caitlin
3) You may consider the big 3 to be a gimmick league, but at the end of the day its still half court competitive basketball with real stakes

Are you trying to argue that joining the big 3 will decrease both her marketability and endorsement earning power? I can see absolutely no drawback if she participates in both leagues and really the WNBA isn't in a position to play hardball with her here. That level of exposure is simply beneficial to all parties.

With that said, all the rumors, interviews, articles regarding the NBA trying to supress the Big 3 is real and I can see something fishy going on behind the scenes to prevent it from happening.

The draw back is that she'd likely be the worst player in the big 3 by a considerable amount, and that's a bad look to some. If she's even good enough to consistently make some catch and shoot plays, then more power to to her. But I'd expect a lot of women would be expecting more.

[dhsilv2]

I think it's more of a risk than it seems at first glance, but could also be a big reward.

Right now Clark is on pace to be the GOAT women's basketball player, at least in the public's opinion. It is universally acknowledged she's really good. If she goes to BIG 3 and gets smoked by some fringe NBA guys it will not be a great look and potentially hurt her mystique. On the other hand if she hangs in there and excels, even if it's only against fringe NBA talent, it would be a major feather in her cap and boost the hype even further.

Major risk/reward.

Does BIG3 actually have ''fringe NBA guys'' though? In real basketball, of course fringe NBA guy would smoke Caitlin Clark, I mean obviously, but I doubt BIG3 has those guys, or do they?

I wonder how much impact her actual play do, if men beat on her on court, would it really hurt that much? Personally I do not think so, I am not under impression Caitlin Clark is as good as ''fringe NBA guys'', so I would never expect her to dominate these type of players, I wonder how the move itself would just be perceived, I imagine that would have bigger impact on her actual brand. Some people think BIG3 is cool, but some see it as a joke...

She would struggle against high school boys in basketball. Come on people...

[dhsilv2]

I think you guys way overrate the level of play in the big 3. Half the dudes in this league don’t have the cardio or footspeed to keep up with Caitlin Clark if she ran from the baseline to one of her spots 30’ out more than a couple times. Cuttino Mobley and Mahmoud Abdul Rauf are not chasing her around the court. She’d get plenty of shots up and do fine

You're massively overrating the ability of even the greatest woman ever in basketball. She couldn't make a high school allstar boys team. She'd not make a D3 men's team. And that's not a knock on her, it's just biology.

[Scalabrine]

Lowering the rims is a no brainer. Women are shorter than men. Why do they play with disproportionately higher rims? If you reframe it, the men have a relative advantage compared to the women.

The obvious reason to me is that all over the world, hoops are 10 feet tall. To have two separate courts for men and women all over is just completely unrealistic.

You don't even need separate courts. Some rims are height adjustable. Ever shot some hoops at a YMCA before?

The main issue would be established players adjusting to shooting at a lower basket when they've practiced on a 10 foot one for years

The local YMCA here does not have an adjustable hoop. None of the parks really have adjustable hoops either. I can't think of a single adjustable hoop in my area of NY that isn't a hoop at someones house.

[dhsilv2]

The obvious reason to me is that all over the world, hoops are 10 feet tall. To have two separate courts for men and women all over is just completely unrealistic.

You don't even need separate courts. Some rims are height adjustable. Ever shot some hoops at a YMCA before?

The main issue would be established players adjusting to shooting at a lower basket when they've practiced on a 10 foot one for years

The local YMCA here does not have an adjustable hoop. None of the parks really have adjustable hoops either. I can't think of a single adjustable hoop in my area of NY that isn't a hoop at someones house.

I did a basketball camp as a kid with double rims. 8 and 10 feet. When you're 6-7 years old those 8 foot rims are clutch. Now obviously that's not the norm, but such things exist. That said top level competition in all sports/events have people using equipment the average joes doesn't have access to.

[KembaWalker]

I think you guys way overrate the level of play in the big 3. Half the dudes in this league don’t have the cardio or footspeed to keep up with Caitlin Clark if she ran from the baseline to one of her spots 30’ out more than a couple times. Cuttino Mobley and Mahmoud Abdul Rauf are not chasing her around the court. She’d get plenty of shots up and do fine

You're massively overrating the ability of even the greatest woman ever in basketball. She couldn't make a high school allstar boys team. She'd not make a D3 men's team. And that's not a knock on her, it's just biology.

No, I’m really not. There’s high school boys that would dice up most of the big 3 for the same reason, actually being in shape. There’s some younger guys that would give her problems but the guys that are there to sell the tickets, the old 45+ year old fat guys with the names are literally physically incapable of keeping up with her even in a half court setting.

Of course they could post her up every time but that’s not what I claimed, all I said is that she’d have no trouble getting up open shots against some guys in that league

Y’all don’t understand the difference between a high level performing athlete in their cardio prime vs some fat circus sideshow acts