- Several WNBA stars — like Breanna Stewart, Brittney Griner, and Candace Parker — took pay cuts in free agency.
- The franchise players sacrificed top salaries to play alongside other stars and contend for titles.
The WNBA has enjoyed one of the most active off-seasons in its 27-year history.
An unprecedented number of league superstars — including three former WNBA MVPs — have found new homes for the upcoming season thanks to marquee free agency moves and blockbuster trades, while other perennial All-Stars re-signed with the teams that first drafted them out of college.
But whether they stayed put or opted for a fresh start, these big-name free agents chose at least one thing in common: to make less money than they did last year.
A number of WNBA superstars have signed contracts well below market value this off-season, a trend that sources around the league tell Insider is a symptom of a salary cap system that forces top talent to choose between earning maximum salaries or competing for titles.
In fact, each of the first five players listed in CBS Sports' 2023 free agent rankings — Breanna Stewart, Candace Parker, Courtney Vandersloot, Nneka Ogwumike, and Brittney Griner — has agreed to a lower salary than she made the year prior.
"Taking less is a sacrifice that you have to make to be on a championship team," said Vandersloot during her introductory press conference with the New York Liberty. "I mean, it just is what it is right now.
"Hopefully it's not always that way," she added.
Many of the WNBA's top free agents took pay cuts ahead of the 2023 season
Vandersloot, who joins the Liberty after spending her entire 12-year WNBA career with the Chicago Sky, is one of the best floor generals in the league. She's led the WNBA in assists for six seasons — including five consecutive from 2017 to 2021 — and was pivotal in the Sky's 2021 championship run.
She likely could have commanded a maximum salary from any team in need of a point guard — and potentially could've locked down a supermax deal had she re-signed with the Sky or negotiated a sign-and-trade. Instead, for the second year in a row, she took a pay cut in order to play alongside some of the league's best.
Last season, she sacrificed a couple grand to chase a second title with two-time MVP Candace Parker and an array of All-Stars. This year, she'll take even less to join a pair of MVPs — Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart — as well as budding stars Betnijah Laney and Sabrina Ionescu in New York.
"We want to sacrifice and play on a really good team so that we can compete for a championship," Vandersloot said during their joint press conference with Stewart in February.
Stewart, like Vandersloot, joined the Liberty in free agency. A two-time champion, two-time Finals MVP, and arguably the most dominant talent in women's basketball at present, the 28-year-old could have set her own price with virtually any franchise in the league — including her former team, the Seattle Storm.
In fact, she signed a one-year supermax deal worth $228,094 with the Storm just last season. But this year, she'll make over $50,000 less with the Liberty.
"They're truly taking less to come here and win," General Manager Jonathan Kolb said, "and that is not an easy decision."
They aren't the only ones either: Parker is only making $100,000 this season, a near 50% pay cut, to join forces with A'ja Wilson and the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces. Her new teammate, Alysha Clark, similarly sacrificed a nearly six-digit figure to move to Sin City.
Even stars who re-signed with their former franchises are taking pay cuts to help bolster their rosters
After spending last year away from the hardwood while detained in Russia, Griner signed a one-year, $165,100 deal to remain with the Phoenix Mercury. Her 2023 earnings mark a 32% drop from last season's salary and far less than the $234,936 supermax, for which she was eligible and could have easily drawn from Phoenix.
But as a result of Griner commanding less than 15% of the team's total salary cap, the Mercury were able to re-sign Diana Taurasi — a 10-time All-Star and the WNBA's all-time scoring champion — while reaching deals with several other free agents to round out their roster. Because Phoenix already has star point guard Skylar Diggins-Smith signed to a supermax contract of her own, the Mercury only had enough space to offer either Taurasi or Griner the supermax.
Sources familiar with the contract negotiations told Insider that Griner's financial sacrifice was one of unselfishness rather than unworthiness. It was meant as an act of good will toward the franchise — which paid her salary in full through the season she missed while in Russia — and as a show of respect to Taurasi, who played the vast majority of her illustrious WNBA career without the opportunity to make more than five figures.
Ogwumike had similar motivations for taking less money from the Los Angeles Sparks — the franchise that she's called home since they drafted her first overall more than a decade ago. Her salary is dropping upwards of $25,000 from last season because, as she said during a recent media availability, "I really want to play on a great team," and "I want to play with good players."
"To put it candidly, I told [Sparks GM Karen Bryant] and [head coach] Curt [Miller] — and they fought me on this a lot — I said, 'Wherever you need my number to be to get who we need to get, let's just do that,'" Ogwumike said.
"Right now, what we see is a lot of players making the investment in their teammates because of certain restrictions that we have," the 2016 champion and league MVP added. "And owners want everybody to win, so I'm hoping that's something that'll change soon."
Several of this year's top free agents also gave up the security afforded by long-term contracts
Money wasn't the only sacrifice made by WNBA stars who inked new deals this off-season.
Take Griner and Ogwumike. It's reasonable to assume both players may have wanted to commit to more than one season with the only franchises they've known. But in order to do so, they would've had to take on recurring financial sacrifices.
If a WNBA player opts to sign a multi-year contract with their franchise, the league's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) prohibits that player's salary from increasing by more than 3% of Year 1's payout in each subsequent season. And WNBA players cannot restructure an existing contract because, as Her Hoops Stats explains, "the length and base salaries for the original contract are locked in" upon signing.
For example, if Griner had signed a three-year deal this off-season with the first season's base salary at $165,100, she couldn't make more than $170,053 in Year 2 and $175,006 in Year 3. One season of reduced salary may be tolerable for Griner and her peers, but over time, that forgone income adds up.
Sources around the WNBA — including players themselves — see a soft salary cap as a potential solution
The WNBA and its players' union negotiated a historic CBA in 2020. The new labor deal ushered in "significant gains all across the board," per WNBPA Executive Director Terri Jackson, including dramatic salary increases, maternity benefits and other workplace protections, and improved accommodations.
But as the league has grown in viewership, revenue, and cultural cachet in the years since, some of the pain points left unaddressed in the 2020 agreement have festered. Though travel — and the lack of authorization for franchises to charter flights — is the most high-profile concern, the discrepancy between owners' willingness to pay their players more and the league's strict limits on how much they can spend has also emerged as a considerable issue.
And as Ogwumike noted during a recent media availability: "A lot of that can be solved with what we know as a soft cap."
The WNBA has a stringent salary cap. Each franchise is only allowed to spend a set amount — $1,420,500 in 2023 — on all of its salaries for the season. And unless a team finds itself without several players due to injury or other extenuating circumstances, which would qualify the franchise for a hardship or emergency hardship exception, that set amount — or cap — is nonnegotiable.
In some other professional sports leagues — most notably the NBA — team owners are allowed to surpass the set maximums. But doing so comes at a price, often in the form of a luxury tax.
That system puts the onus on owners to choose whether that competitive advantage is worth the higher price tag.
But with another five seasons to go before the WNBA's current CBA expires, discussions about soft caps and luxury taxes are, for now, merely theoretical. In the meantime, stars are assuming those financial burdens themselves — doing the cost-benefit analysis of playing for a contender on the cheap.
That's what we saw play out with the WNBA's top free agents this winter.
"I'm not worried about setting a precedent," Stewart said during her introductory press conference with the Liberty. "I think what we're setting a precedent for is to be willing to play with other great players and to want to win, and to do whatever we can to make that happen.
"It's not my decision that the WNBA has such a hard salary cap," she added. "But that's a discussion for the next CBA."