What should the W do with Unrivaled?

[cdubbz]

Should the W create an off season league to…Rival Unrivaled’? Should they buy them out? Should they be happy Unrivaled is keeping players from going overseas and keeping them paid out of their own pocket?

I would love to see the W create their own off season mini league or off season tournament. Involve more players - make it part of the contract and current pay, involve all WNBA players.

If players salaries go up to like $650k minimum then playing in W and their new off season league would still be good money.

[Doctor MJ]

Should the W create an off season league to…Rival Unrivaled’? Should they buy them out? Should they be happy Unrivaled is keeping players from going overseas and keeping them paid out of their own pocket?

I would love to see the W create their own off season mini league or off season tournament. Involve more players - make it part of the contract and current pay, involve all WNBA players.

If players salaries go up to like $650k minimum then playing in W and their new off season league would still be good money.

So, the question I want to ask and answer is actually "What should the W have done before Unrivaled?", because quite literally there's nothing about Unrivaled that the WNBA couldn't have done. The existence of Unrivaled is another indicator that the NBA never really had a good gauge of how popular women's basketball was, and that they really did blame women's basketball for the W not giving them the profit that they would have presumably wanted.

What to do now? The number one question they need to be asking themselves - and should have answered before they started taking money for a bunch of expansion teams:

If we aren't going to match & surpass Unrivaled salaries, what's to stop the best talent from prioritizing Unrivaled?

I'd presume they'll reach the conclusion: Nothing unless Unrivaled fails on its own. The cheapest thing they can expect to do and get away with it is to only skyrocket the salaries of players good enough to get an Unrivaled invitation, and to keep everyone else on much lower salaries.

Of course the W should be expected to seriously examine the possibility of Unrivaled's failure... but they also need to understand that they can't wait years for that to happen. If Unrivaled has another successful season in 2026, then the WNBPA is going to be negotiating with a labor base that has less concerns than ever about losing their jobs, and that will either lead to giving in to WNPA demands, or a work stoppage right as this rival league is poised to pounce.

[Doctor MJ]

btw, on the other options:

- I think the WNBA basically should have created their own winter league the moment Russia arrested Griner. Not for any moral reasons, but Russia's behavior is what made it possible for the W to potentially take over the winter market for the first time, as previously the biggest stars got paid more by oligarchs than could be justified by capitalism.

But I'd say it's too late now. A WNBA winter league that lacks top WNBA players going against a rival American league that has those players is something that basically no one will have any interest in.

- In terms of "buy'em out", it's certainly something to consider. But since Unrivaled is essentially a worker-owned league, they may not be realistic.

So then I'd say, work with them. They did the thing WNBA would have done if WNBA leadership had more vision, they honestly might consider hiring Napheesa Collier to be commish of the W when she's ready to retire because she seems to have a better pulse of what's possible.

[cdubbz]

Should the W create an off season league to…Rival Unrivaled’? Should they buy them out? Should they be happy Unrivaled is keeping players from going overseas and keeping them paid out of their own pocket?

I would love to see the W create their own off season mini league or off season tournament. Involve more players - make it part of the contract and current pay, involve all WNBA players.

If players salaries go up to like $650k minimum then playing in W and their new off season league would still be good money.

So, the question I want to ask and answer is actually "What should the W have done before Unrivaled?", because quite literally there's nothing about Unrivaled that the WNBA couldn't have done. The existence of Unrivaled is another indicator that the NBA never really had a good gauge of how popular women's basketball was, and that they really did blame women's basketball for the W not giving them the profit that they would have presumably wanted.

What to do now? The number one question they need to be asking themselves - and should have answered before they started taking money for a bunch of expansion teams:

If we aren't going to match & surpass Unrivaled salaries, what's to stop the best talent from prioritizing Unrivaled?

I'd presume they'll reach the conclusion: Nothing unless Unrivaled fails on its own. The cheapest thing they can expect to do and get away with it is to only skyrocket the salaries of players good enough to get an Unrivaled invitation, and to keep everyone else on much lower salaries.

Of course the W should be expected to seriously examine the possibility of Unrivaled's failure... but they also need to understand that they can't wait years for that to happen. If Unrivaled has another successful season in 2026, then the WNBPA is going to be negotiating with a labor base that has less concerns than ever about losing their jobs, and that will either lead to giving in to WNPA demands, or a work stoppage right as this rival league is poised to pounce.

This is what i am thinking except if the players accept a new deal where minimum contracts are bigger or much bigger than Unrivaled pay (250k) then I see the possibility of W putting a halt to unrivaled. They just create their own league or tournament with more players, more talent, and they already will get paid nicely.

[hermes]

why does there need to be on off-season league? the other sports don't have them (that the league runs anyway, i know there are competitors to the nfl every once in a while)

the wnba could really take the wind out of unrivaled's sails if they put in a minimum salary of like $500k. the whole point of unrivaled is that players wanted more money, and if the wnba gives it to them, why play in unrivaled (or overseas)? it might take a few years to fizzle out. top players, if they are getting a few million a year, will probably skip for rest/recovery. if unrivaled is only getting bench/fringe players interest will probably dwindle

if the wnba wants to cut the legs off unrivaled they could put in some prioritization rules like what they have for overseas players (there is risk to this). the hardline approach would be: if you play in unrivaled, you are suspended for the next wnba season (if you are on a rookie deal, maybe only half the year suspended or something). so if the players want to play in the wnba, they'll have to give up on unrivaled. the risk is that, if the cba deal isn't that good, the players could just all decide to say heck with the wnba and stick with unrivaled. if the wnba wants to try this option, they'll still have to pony up in the cba to entice the top players to skip out on unrivaled - otherwise they'll lose all their top players (except for a'ja and cc i guess)

[ellobo]

why does there need to be on off-season league? the other sports don't have them (that the league runs anyway, i know there are competitors to the nfl every once in a while)

The WNBA is the actual "off season" league relative to the rest of the basketball world. It also has a short season and low salaries, so logistically and financially it makes sense for players to seek additional opportunities during the actual basketball season. The way for the WNBA to put Unrivaled out of business is to run a full length schedule and pay salaries at least as high as what players can make now playing in multiple leagues. Prioritization rules are not going to work unless you are paying enough to compensate players for giving up other opportunities.

BTW, I read recently that when Unrivaled was in the planning stages, they approached the WNBA about a partnership and the WNBA was not interested.

[Green Chile]

why does there need to be on off-season league? the other sports don't have them (that the league runs anyway, i know there are competitors to the nfl every once in a while)

the wnba could really take the wind out of unrivaled's sails if they put in a minimum salary of like $500k. the whole point of unrivaled is that players wanted more money, and if the wnba gives it to them, why play in unrivaled (or overseas)? it might take a few years to fizzle out. top players, if they are getting a few million a year, will probably skip for rest/recovery. if unrivaled is only getting bench/fringe players interest will probably dwindle

if the wnba wants to cut the legs off unrivaled they could put in some prioritization rules like what they have for overseas players (there is risk to this). the hardline approach would be: if you play in unrivaled, you are suspended for the next wnba season (if you are on a rookie deal, maybe only half the year suspended or something). so if the players want to play in the wnba, they'll have to give up on unrivaled. the risk is that, if the cba deal isn't that good, the players could just all decide to say heck with the wnba and stick with unrivaled. if the wnba wants to try this option, they'll still have to pony up in the cba to entice the top players to skip out on unrivaled - otherwise they'll lose all their top players (except for a'ja and cc i guess)

Yeah, I think that's the most sensible outcome.

If the W pays the players, there's just no need for Unrivaled.

[DOT]

[hermes]

what is a full length schedule?

[Doctor MJ]

why does there need to be on off-season league? the other sports don't have them (that the league runs anyway, i know there are competitors to the nfl every once in a while)

The WNBA is the actual "off season" league relative to the rest of the basketball world. It also has a short season and low salaries, so logistically and financially it makes sense for players to seek additional opportunities during the actual basketball season. The way for the WNBA to put Unrivaled out of business is to run a full length schedule and pay salaries at least as high as what players can make now playing in multiple leagues. Prioritization rules are not going to work unless you are paying enough to compensate players for giving up other opportunities.

BTW, I read recently that when Unrivaled was in the planning stages, they approached the WNBA about a partnership and the WNBA was not interested.

This is an important piece of context for people to understand.

Basketball is traditionally a winter sport for HS/college/pros because it was played in indoor gyms when the weather was too bad to play football or baseball or whatever. And that's why the NBA and all the international leagues are still largely on that schedule.

So then the NBA made a really smart call with the WNBA to hold it in the basketball off-season. That allowed for a) the WNBA to make use of arenas when the NBA wasn't using them and b) allowed for players to play in the WNBA without having to choose between the W and their other international season, which was particularly important because the WNBA was never the place that women got the highest salaries and thus if they'd been forced to choose, many would have chosen the international season.

All that changed in 2022 when Russia decided to invade Ukraine, arrest Griner, and basically embrace a new attempt at imperialism at the cost of things like encouraging foreigners to ever want to go to Russia.

That was the moment when the WNBA had the opportunity to assert year-round dominance over women's basketball.

Instead, they continued to only focus on putting in rules to make it harder for players to play in both the W and international leagues over the course of the season without a massive addition to the schedule, and thus in 2023, when the planning for Unrivaled really took off, there was a giant vacuum just waiting to be filled in the winter.

So we can see, the nature of the timing was that the W didn't actually have a lot of time to make their big expansion into the winter between a) Russia's announcing its intention to kill large amount of citizens on an ego-trip and b) Unrivaled taking advantage of the new opening, and in that sense, this isn't something I'd call an easy thing for the W to take advantage of quickly given the way the modern NBA itself works on a bureaucratic level - slowly, with lots of leaders who don't know basketball all that well.

But this is also why I push back against any notion that the WNBA should be looking to declare war on Unrivaled. The leaders of Unrivaled are literally smarter than the leaders of the WNBA about this, and they are also employees of the WNBA, so the smart thing to do is to do whatever it takes to get players like Phee as their allies.

The W may think that Unrivaled is just an upstart that they can surely crush when they finally decided what they should do about the upstart, but if the W were to end up with a work stoppage specifically led by all the stars of the W who don't need their W salary, they run the risk of having a league with the best talent 11-100 in the world in a sport where only the 1-10 actually move the needle.

[Doctor MJ]

why does there need to be on off-season league? the other sports don't have them (that the league runs anyway, i know there are competitors to the nfl every once in a while)

the wnba could really take the wind out of unrivaled's sails if they put in a minimum salary of like $500k. the whole point of unrivaled is that players wanted more money, and if the wnba gives it to them, why play in unrivaled (or overseas)? it might take a few years to fizzle out. top players, if they are getting a few million a year, will probably skip for rest/recovery. if unrivaled is only getting bench/fringe players interest will probably dwindle

if the wnba wants to cut the legs off unrivaled they could put in some prioritization rules like what they have for overseas players (there is risk to this). the hardline approach would be: if you play in unrivaled, you are suspended for the next wnba season (if you are on a rookie deal, maybe only half the year suspended or something). so if the players want to play in the wnba, they'll have to give up on unrivaled. the risk is that, if the cba deal isn't that good, the players could just all decide to say heck with the wnba and stick with unrivaled. if the wnba wants to try this option, they'll still have to pony up in the cba to entice the top players to skip out on unrivaled - otherwise they'll lose all their top players (except for a'ja and cc i guess)

So I'd say what you're suggesting is that the WNBA treat their salaries like a loss leader in order to kill off the competition, which is generally a pretty good strategy for big business - basically right out of the Walmart playbook.

It's not a bad plan if the WNBA owners are willing to pay enough.

The complication here is that if you try to threaten bans for superstars, they'll just leave you at this point, and they don't actually need to earn anywhere near as much revenue as the W in order send the W in a tailspin.

Further, while you might temporarily kill Unrivaled, you're not doing so in a way that makes it unable to re-spawn when you eventually try to put the squeeze back on the costs. The moment the W goes back on those high salaries is the moment where Phee & co go right back to what they were doing before with far more experience and confidence than they had the first go around.

Re: not lose A'ja & CC? Oh they're absolutely at risk of losing those players too. Absolutely no reason to think that any of the W's superstars will choose to remain loyal to the W if management won't play ball with the union.

[ellobo]

what is a full length schedule?

Since I mentioned a "full length schedule," I assume this is directed at me.

By full length schedule, I mean a schedule long enough to preclude playing an additional schedule in another established league. In other pro sports, there isn't room for an off season league because the main league schedule is long and demanding enough that it just isn't feasible to play another league schedule in the off season.

I don't have a specific number of games or months in mind, just the general concept that there wouldn't be time to squeeze in an off season schedule, and/or that it would be too physically demanding for players to do it.

Sure, if you pay players enough, even if it worked logistically to squeeze in an off season league, players would probably just not want to participate. Last year, players like Caitlin Clark and A'ja Wilson passed on Unrivaled partly because they could afford to, although they could still end up doing it in the future. But if you're not going to make it worthwhile financially, AND you're running a schedule that leaves room for players to play two seasons in a year, then most players are going to play a double season.