The directive of WNBA players to "Pay Us What You Owe Us"

Wednesday 7/23/25

The "Pay us what you owe us" demand of WNBA players ought to be something I find mystifying, just as I ought to find it mystifying that most people think this is an injustice and sexist issue rather than an economic one.

I want to ask, "How can you not understand the payment disparity between WNBA and NBA players?" but I know that most people don't understand anything, and they worship at the altar of impulse, emotion, and narrative, but not narrative in the good way of, "Here's a story of human truths to enrich your mind, life, and self."

This demand is akin to saying one's benefactor is unjust simply because they won't fork out a lot more money...just because. They're asking for what is essentially charity. Alms. But alms to the tune of a fortune, making each player. who is already comfortable, wildly wealthy.

What is the justification? It's not the revenue that's brought in. Is it the importance of the endeavor? That a greater good is being done for humankind? Minus the NBA, how could the WNBA operate? What would salaries be then?

The WNBA has this kind of golden goose, but the players of the league largely hate that golden goose, and as we'll explore in a future entry, that golden goose might not be that good, which no one seems to understand either, though it's right there in the black and white of the undeniable numbers.

What happens if people catch on to that? Which, admittedly, is doubtful, because, again, they're blinded by first impressions and group-think LCD narrative and timing and what happened to go viral that one day and built from there, amplified by echoes, which become final impressions, never challenged, thought about, but simply said and repeated as if all of this were written in inviolable stone. The echoing voices, the unthinking minds, make the thing that thing--officially--that it never really was, in terms of actuality; that is, what it is. It's the issue of what I call the associative. Someone--or something--becomes associated with a thing, because of a confluence of factors that often have nothing to do with what that someone or thing actually is, and that sticks. It can last for decades, for half a century, for longer.

But what is the actual argument as to each player getting millions of dollars more? What is that conversation like? What's the response to "Why?" And it can't be "Because men do." It's not about men and women.

Let's say you had a shop on one side of the street that made all of this money, and a shop on the other staffed by people of the other gender. (For the sake of this post, I'm not doing all the innumerable gender possibilities thing.) If that second shop makes less money, you can't just petition...who?...to give those people as much money as the people in the shop across from them.

Unfortunately, you can't do it even if their product is better. Exponentially better.

Without the NBA, the WNBA would be a league that didn't pay a living wage. There'd be less games, because players would have to balance a job in another area most likely with their athletic careers.

But people bleat and bleat, like this is sexism. Many of the chief bleaters don't partake of the product themselves--they're just people who never miss a chance to bleat, because that's the whole of their personalities and, worse, the majority of their lives. They're so easy to pick out that you can do it from a half second glance at what they chose to put in their social media bio. Never fails.

The WNBA also has a racism issue. A racism crossed with mean girls issue. I'd say that comportment is a problem in the WNBA. And no, that's not about anyone's place or any idiocy like that. It just comes across as very middle school and petty and cruel, with manifestations of physical violence.

You can have physical altercations in sports and it's well and good. That's not the issue. The issue is the reason behind that altercations. That's where things get...unbecoming. And I know we love to attack someone who uses that word because we love to think it's this thing men say about women because...patriarchy!...but anyone can be unbecoming, despite what our mostly illiterate society thinks. And this kind of thing is unbecoming, I don't care if you're Mr. Macho or Monsieur Machismo or Senor Semen or whatever.

Part of the problem is that a player who is not even the best player on her own team is lauded above everyone else, and that breeds resentment. But when that resentment is on display in the manner that it is, the league looks worse and becomes off-putting. You already have a less dynamic game to begin with. A game rooted to the court rather than played in the air. A slower game. It is an uphill battle. There are better ways to try and advance.

Right now, I feel like the WNBA serves as an alternative for families, rather than the main go-to. Like minor league baseball. It's much more affordable to take your girls to a WNBA game. It's a great place to take your girls who play themselves. But how could it be the go-to? The first choice? For enough people, that is?

I don't think there are many boys who are or would be interested in it. A lot of boys love sports. I guess you could say that a lot of girls aren't interested in the sports boys are. My guess (and I'm being super conservative here in an attempt to tilt the argument towards the WNBA) is that boys are bigger attendance drivers in American sports than girls. They're more apt to be repeatedly asking dad about going to a game. A Red Sox game, and that's with Fenway being this family environment at this point, which is safe and sunny and part of the appeal for any kid is eating the hot dog and the popcorn and the pretzel and the candy.

Are men interested in it? I mean the male sports fan. I don't mean the perpetual poseur in Brooklyn who doesn't know what a basketball is but takes a photo of his Molskine writing journal and his packet of some brand of some cigarettes you've never heard of and his copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road all carefully laid out on his his fire escape and captions it, "I love summer," and then makes another post about how wrong it is that these women aren't paid like the men, but who would never, ever, ever give them a dime himself or watch them.

And where does this kind of thing end? Is being a teacher not more important than being a basketball player? How about being a great teacher who does everything they can to improve the minds and the lives of the children who pass through their classroom? Year in, year out. Should they not receive more?

The ironic thing is, these players aren't owed what they're currently being paid. That's generosity. The payment isn't in line with the intake. I can't believe that these players don't know that. So what do they expect? To be given things just because they should be given things? That's the Roxane Gay approach to life.