The WNBA players’ union is opting out of its present contract, due to expire in one year.
Which suggests the Caitlin Clark Effect has been SO great for professional American women’s basketball that the players have built a position from which they can effectively walk out.
Progress: The highest-ever attendance and TV viewership has spiked ticket prices to NBA levels, the league is expanding it’s number of teams and number of games, and the players can strike for a larger slice of the pie.
Wasn’t that long ago that I attended a professional women’s basketball game at which I was probably the only one who paid for a ticket. There were fewer than 100 people in attendance, all but one of whom were on the San Francisco Legacy’s pass list, I think.
The visitors were the NWBL champion Colorado Chill with stars Becky Hammon and Ruth Riley — I bet if you asked WNBA Las Vegas coach Hammon if she remembers that game, she would.
The Chill’s bus got lost, and also stuck in traffic, so the Chill arrived late, with no time to warm up. They fell behind by 12 early, and you’d think the freeloaders in attendance would be screaming, but the place was so quiet that I could hear Colorado coach Packard tell them calmly that she wasn’t interested in watching this. That’s all she had to say. The Chill went back out and restored universal order.
A couple years later, I ran into Coach Packard in the Sacramento Monarchs team shop. I asked her about that huddle. “Becky once said about me: ‘She doesn’t talk much or loudly, but when she does, *she means it*’.”
Coach Packard and I shared a laugh about that gym, which was the size of a junior high school gym. Getting lost on the way and falling behind by a dozen was easy to do at that place, she said.
That’s what professional American women’s basketball was like in the mid-2000s.