Most people picture professional athletes living a life of privilege and playing a game for exorbitant amounts of money. That’s never really been true of WNBA players, as they’ve worked extremely hard to get the sport to the place it’s in today.
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WNBA salaries are still comically low compared to what most other athletes earn, but the upcoming collective bargaining talks should move things in a better direction. Still, things are better than they used to be, when even the league’s top players had to go overseas to supplement their meager WNBA income.
Nowadays, the Unrivaled 3-on-3 league offers offseason play for decent pay, and there are more endorsement opportunities than ever before. On the latest episode of the Post Moves podcast, WNBA legend Candace Parker shared the lengths players used to go to in order to make ends meet.
“I played overseas for 10 years,” Parker said. “I actually was Diana Taurasi’s teammate in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and I played six seasons in Russia. I played two seasons in China, and I played one season for Fenerbahce in Turkey, in Istanbul, actually.”
Post Moves cohost Aliyah Boston had asked Parker about her experience playing overseas in response to Taurasi’s new eponymous documentary that premiered last week. There’s an extremely telling quote in the doc from Taurasi in which she said, “I’m the best player in the world, and I have to go to a communist country to get paid like a capitalist.”
Parker agreed with her former teammate’s sentiment, saying, “The WNBA was a summer job … supplementary income. I also say that through the WNBA, if you’re one of the top players in the world, you get endorsements, but the opportunity to go make millions overseas was just too enticing. And the way that you take care of your family was you go overseas.”
Today, the supermax salary in the WNBA is just under $250,000 per year, though rookies top out at under $80,000. That means that Caitlin Clark, for example, the most popular player in the league, makes very little from actually playing.
Parker was a two-time MVP, a seven-time All-Star and a three-time WNBA champion. In 2021, she was named to the W25, the top 25 WNBA players of all time. In her 16-year career, though, she didn’t make more than a couple million in total salary.
In Russia, Parker was treated like royalty, and she got to play on what basically amounted to an All-Star team with players like Taurasi, Sue Bird and Deanna Nolan.
Playing a second season overseas was physically taxing but financially rewarding. Parker is happy that today’s players don’t have to deal with that but believes the WNBA still has a long way to go, saying she has challenged the league “to step their game up.”
“In Russia, we had chefs, we had amazing apartments, we had drivers, we flew charter. We traveled around Europe as the No. 1 team and were compensated as such,” Parker stressed. “My black diamonds are from Russia. They were given to me as a birthday gift. My daughter got black diamonds. I got a Rolex watch.”
“The amount of gifts that I got from my owners in Russia, it just makes you feel welcome, and it makes you feel like you are one of the top players, and you’re treated as such.”
Many fans are worried that the WNBA is headed for a work stoppage. Players wore “Pay us what you owe us” t-shirts at the All-Star Game. If the league doesn’t do just that, especially in light of the 11-year, $2.2 billion rights deal it signed last summer, it could mean that, after this season, all the league’s positive momentum could come to a screeching halt.
The existence of Unrivaled will act as a soft landing spot for some players, but others will surely look overseas once again to find a paycheck. Hopefully a deal can be reached before it comes to that.
