NBA players could put their money where their mouths are when it comes to WNBA
Brittney Griner’s not-so-excellent Russian adventure is over. In the interest of maintaining holiday tranquility, we won’t get into whether trading the world’s most notorious arms dealer for the two-time WNBA scoring leader will make Joe Biden the GM of the year.
We will delve into the sore spot of why Griner was in Vladimir Putin’s playhouse to begin with. According to the WNBA party line, she wasn’t making enough money in America.
“The reality is, she's over there because of a gender issue — pay inequity," WNBA players union president Nneka Ogwumike told "Good Morning America" during Griner’s captivity.
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Any business that loses $10 million a year isn’t going to pay employees a lot of money, regardless of their gender. And a business that generates $10 billion a year, like the NBA, is going to make its small labor force wealthy.
That's not unfair. That's simply reality. But it has never stopped people from lamenting how shameful it is that the average NBA salary is about 80 times larger than the average WNBA wage.
In the interest of telling people how to spend their money, I have a solution. It begins with the reaction to last week’s prisoner swap.
Banners went up around NBA arenas welcoming Griner home. Players rejoiced.
“Shoutout to President Biden and his administration, and all the athletes, activists, people who used their platform to speak on her behalf,” Steph Curry said.
"To have her a part of the basketball brother and sisterhood, it's a big day for us and what we do,” LeBron James said.
But the sisters say they need more money to do what they do. Why doesn’t the NBA, which has been bankrolling the WNBA for 25 years, designate 5% of its salary pool to women players?
The men would lose their minds, that's why. And it would be perfectly understandable.
A lot of NBA players are quite charitable. They just don’t want to be told where to donate their hard-earned wages.
But 61 players are making $20 million or more this season. Would it really kill them to donate $1 million, if it’ll keep WNBA players from having to go abroad with tin cups in hand?
I know, easy for me to say. Just like it’s easy for players to say how much they love and support their hoop sisterhood.
Guys, there’s one sure way to prove it ...
Stud of the Week: Baseball free agency. Clubs handed out a record $1.6 billion during the four-day Winter Meetings. That broke the mark Texas A&M set to lure last year’s recruiting class.
Stud II: Alabama, which stunned Houston 71-65 to become only the fourth team to beat two No. 1 college basketball teams in the same season. I’m old enough to remember when Alabama was a football school.
Can ex-NFL receiver Antonio Brown simply go away?
Dud of the Week: Antonio Brown. The ex-NFL receiver/nutcase spent the week holed up in his Tampa house, refusing to come out as police wait to arrest him on domestic violence charges. Is there any way we can trade him to Russia for a bag of stale pierogis?
Dud II: The Football Writers Association of America, for naming O’Cyrus Torrence a second-team All-American despite the fact he didn’t allow a sack or commit a penalty in his four-year career. He was the highest-graded guard in the country, according to Pro Football Focus. Writers can be so dumb ...
Kudos to Russell Wilson, who had three touchdown passes in Sunday’s 34-28 loss to Kansas City. That gave him 11 on the year. One more, and Wilson will have as many TD passes as he does bathrooms in the $25 million mansion he bought when Seattle unloaded him to Denver ...
The Saints, two coaches and defensive end Cameron Jordan were fined a total of $500,000 for faking an injury during last Monday night’s loss to Tampa Bay. The NFL then fined the Bucs $500,000 Sunday night for pretending to be a football team during their 35-7 loss to San Francisco ...
Inequity Update: Steph Curry makes $585,451 a game. That’s more than double what the top WNBA player makes in a season. Then again, Golden State generated $765 million in revenue last year. The entire WNBA generated $60 million ...
Worst Trade Ever: Ron Wayne got 10% of Apple stock when he co-founded the company in 1976. He had no confidence in Steve Jobs and sold his shares for $800. Those shares would now be worth $226 billion ...
ESPN reported Brittney Griner dunked a basketball during her first workout since being sprung from a Russian prison. In related news, TASS reported arms dealer Viktor Bout sold $184 million worth of shoulder-fired missiles in his first meeting with terrorists since being released from U.S. custody ...
Trivia Question: Which is the larger, the number of fans at an average WNBA game, or the number of bathrooms at LeBron James' house?
Tennessee receiver Jalin Hyatt signed an NIL deal with Hyatt Hotels that will help provide Hyatt rooms to teammates’ families at the Orange Bowl. They are just grateful he wasn’t named Jalin Econo Lodge ...
That’s about all the space we have for this week’s Whitley’s Believe It or Not. Till next week, if you get a call from Ron Wayne Financial Services offering free investment advice, please hang up the phone.
— David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. And follow him on Twitter: @DavidEWhitley.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: NBA players could help Griner and WNBA players stay safely at home
