WNBA Wake Up Call

I said. We were going to talk about it, so we're not going to talk about it, but just go find it because it's absolutely bonkers what's going on. Given that we're not doing that for consecutive episodes, we're going to delve into something that's a little less sexy, but definitely with just as much drama. There is some recent news in women's hoops that is going to blow your fucking mind. Why the system of sports pretty much is broken. What's happening to the w NBA players currently playing in

Russia and Ukraine. Fascinating stuff and more so, go ahead, bro drop.

people back. I mean, the drama continues, but yeah, yeah, he wasn't answering phone calls. Just like, look it up. I don't want to talk about it. I don't like he used to look it up. I don't he's so bad. I just like, there's so much raw material in fodder for me. It's like red meat and a hungry rottweiler. I am the rottweiler in this situation. Rob Polinka is the red meat and the Lakers and just how much

joy I get from shit talking them. But like it's boring to you, even though if it might be hilarious to me. So let's break down some hoops. But today we're gonna be talking about one of my favorite things in the world WNBA. So there's multiple WNBA stories going on right now. Both of those are actually global news stories. We'll start with what's happening right now in the Ukraine and how that has the ability to affect how the

women's game operates moving forward. As everybody knows, unless you've been living under a rock kind of like I've tried to avoid it. If you need to tell me if I need some some news, I'm just gonna make sure that Twitter tells me or someone on the street tells me. I'm not gonna go out here and be looking for for Sea. Hey, did you know I hear somebody on a train I'm listening on Amtrak. I got I got Chris Coons behind me on the Amtrak talking about Mitch McConnell.

I mean, you can't escape it, right. So, unless you're sitting in your crib playing two K you know that Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago and the economic fallout has been immense. There's been immediate economic sanctions against the Russian state. They've literally tanked the ruble. We've got the owner of Chelsea pretty much being forced to sell the team because he's broke. Now all of these Russian oligarchs are losing their wealth. Uh, it is just abs slutely.

Bonker's Russian stock Market, which is an aggregate of the biggest companies in Russia, lost eighty percent of its total value in the first two days alone. Let's just say things are not going the way that the head of Russia named Vladimir Putin has anticipated them going. We'll just say things have not been going according to plan. Major foreign investors have pulled out of Russia. The country has

been banned from international banking platforms. If you want to wire money from country to country and you're Russian, that's a know. Some people have lost all access to Pornhub if you're in Russia, which is a huge loss. Russian oligarchs who have built multi billion dollar portfolios stand to lose everything. So the lot is a lot has happening, Lots popping around the world here. How does this affect

women's hoops? Though? Let me explain, for years there has been an unspoken right, This is a fascinating shit unspoken rivalry between various Russian oligo billionaires and that has spilled over onto the court. In this case, Russian women's basketball Premier League has been the biggest payday by far for

women's basketball players for many, many years. Folks like Brittany Griner, Breonna Stewart, Diana Tarasi have played for Russian teams for seven figure or more contracts, which, to be frank is a lot more money that they make in the United States. They have made well over five times the maximum salary allowed in the WNBA in Russia. It's good business to

hoop in Russia if you're a woman. And it's basically just we'll just say what it is, a dick measuring contest by really rich guys in Russia that decided that the women's basketball Russian Women's Basketball Premier League. Hard to say. Is there a little breeding ground for how they end up competing with one another. It's their little sex squid games to a degree, only no one gets hurt. In the past past two days, this just like another way of them, you know, measuring how good they are with

one another. So the past two days, though women's basketball players living in Ukraine and Russia struggling to get out, a move made more difficult since Russia has now made it very difficult to fly out, having banned flights from thirty six countries and counting. Thankfully, all the American players who played in the Ukraine are out. But Russia's war on the Ukraine's going to change the balance of women's basketball from these intermediate term, at least because who knows.

Who knows before the status quo returns in Russia. Who knows when these women who make their livelihoods where they make the majority of their dollars in the offseason will be able to play there again.

on the WNBA to pay equitably. Now that overseas cash cow has fallen to Putin's ill timed, ill planned moves, Which brings us to the real story, the real huge story, something that's been hiding in plane sight boom, airplanes, charter planes to be exact, all right, So sports illustrated just randomly on a Monday, just a random Monday, two days ago, drop one of the biggest stories to be about the WNBA, maybe ever one league handed out record fines against the

New York Liberty. Not only did they do that, the WNBA threatened to take the Liberty's draft picks away, and they even floated the idea of not only making the owner, Josi, same guy who owns the Brooklyn Nets, sell the team, but also folding the entire franchise together. It was fucking serious.

What could have been so gregious that they would fold an entire WNBA team where there's not that many be the first one to contract to have to just close up shop go home in the biggest market in the country. What could he have done? It was so terrible. Was there some sort of some sort of pizza ring, underground pizza ring going on in some basement? What could have been happening?

wine tasting. You mean to tell me that that was so egregious that he would be possibly forced to sell a team and fold the entire New York Liberty as a whole, All because Josi wanted to take them on a team building trip, All because he wanted to treat his players like male players are treated, All because he didn't want the New York Liberty to fly Southwest next to Fred and Karen and their little baby Eli on their way to some family trip in Phoenix. All because

of that. Mostly, when you go bird's eye view, it's because Josi, the owner of the New York Liberty and the owner of the and the Brooklyn Nets, same vibes, same intentions, same mentality. Josi is willing to do what so many other owners are not willing to do. Do whatever it takes, pay whatever it takes to show your players you invest in them, and you're willing to do whatever it takes to compete and win, like he's doing with the Brooklyn Nets. You cannot make that shit up.

Here's what happened, Josi. Here's the backstory. Josi, billionaire owner of the Brooklyn Nets but also the New York Liberty, wanted to give the Liberty a team building trip to Napa, so he charted a plane and sent them off the Wine Country. Why you don't say star player Dede Richards, rook a rookie said at the podium. Randomly, they asked her what her favorite off the court moment was, and she said, NAPA. NAPA was just so much fun. NAPA was an opportunity for us to get together as a

team and just be beautiful. And you know what, I love that. I was just planning for days what I was going to war. Where to NAPA? Once they told us, Josi, you monster, shut the league down, Shut the team down. Force this man out, Get on the fuck out of here. Liberty guard Jasmine Jones said that the team owners treat us like they treat an MBA team. That is fucking awful. You don't say, folks, what's the problem here, what's the

problem here? The problem is that it violated the WNBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, which constrains the benefits that you can give players. Is that not the stupidest fucking thing you've ever heard in your life? There should be. Well, it's just hold that thought for later. But it gets even more stupid. The Liberty chartered flights for each road game of the seasons second half, beginning in August, with the trip to Minnesota and the WNBA was fucking pissed Cauz.

Right now, they're using commercial flights like Southwest with Brian and Karen and Eli on their trip to Phoenix. You'd be on the same fight with Brian and Karen and their little baby Eli, crying and screaming when you're trying to get your mind right for your game. That's what's happening now. Josi was like, this is ridiculous, especially when there's issues with weather, issues with plane delays, issues with everything that comes with being just a normal traveler, which

these people are not. Josai Apparently the punishment that WBA was floating around was upseed, and Josi was like, you know what, I don't care. I'm gonna continue to do it anyway. You can tell me not to, but I'm going to. In fact, he doubled down stating that WNBA athletes should be treated like the elite players that they are, and then he went public on Twitter over the fact that he can't fly his own team via charter because

he has a lot of money. Josi, as an aside, is the co founder of Ali Baba, which is the Google in China. So then he does the most extraordinary thing. He was like, well, because they said, well, this is this is a competitive balance issue. If your team can fly charter and which is against the law or the rules of the CBA, and all the other and all of the other teams cannot, that gives you an advantage.

It's not correct, that's not right, and it's cost too much money for these other non quote unquote non billionaire team owners, so it's wrong. And then he does this, He found a sponsor to fly all the WNBA teams for three years for free.

multi billionaire. And when he was told he couldn't do that because it gave him a competitive advantage, he found a way for everyone to have the same exact thing. Which he thought was the bare minimum for travel for an elite athlete, and the Board of Governors said no. According to s Y. If you are wondering why that might be, according to them, quote, here's where it gets fucking crazy. Some owners worried that the players would get used to it and there would be no going back.

Others wondered whether players might prefer a salary hike instead. That's not how this works. You can't just say, uh, I'm sorry, net Jets, I would prefer that money go into my pocket instead of just you giving us planes. Excuse me, pause, let's just say, let's just bring this all back. They didn't want players to get used to what to get used to being treated like professional athletes, the elite athletes that they are. They wanted them to be seen and felt as just regular joes on a

Southwest flight or a Delta flight flying commercial. You cannot make this shit up, dog the WNB. It is absolutely bonkers. And here you are, here, I am thinking that Major League Baseball had a monopoly on being cheap billionaires. Here I am thinking like it's just them. No, No, cheap bastards are found in every corner of the world.

dollars per year. That is the supermax for a WNBA player, And you wonder, you have to wonder why Mark Davis, who also co owns the Raiders, owns the Aces, why he decided to pay Becking Hammond a million dollars to coach Because he can. Because that's the thing that he doesn't have any restraint over. He can, he wants to, and he thinks that it's going to help his team win. That's how you think like a real billionaire who wants to win games. It's also the only salary that's not

capped in the CBA. The WNBA is in grave danger. I would say, you've got issues with players who are not not making money in Russia any longer, they're going to put pressure on the WNBA. The WNBA has been inflexible, even when there's free stuff that gives them an ability to grow the game, and the CBA will do nothing to pay these players what they are worth. And the CBA is in place until twenty twenty seven. That is an eight year long CBA. They got that deal done

twenty twenty and it does not end. It does not expire until twenty twenty seven. So what does that all mean for me? It means I've come to the reality and I've come to the conclusion that professional sports is broken. I mean, it's just just up in front in the last month. You've got the Olympics, you've got baseball, you've got the WNBA. There are let's just break down how this works. Very very very rich people get to a level in their life and then the status where they

get in ced into a fraternity. Thirty teams in the WNBA, it's way less. So you get invited into this fraternity, you go through all the hoops and you have billions of dollars at your disposal. You've made a killing in your life and this is one of those final little infinity stones in your glove where you feel like you're a real person. Now, something to complete you, something to

go off and tell your friends about. Something where you get free this and free that, box seats and charter flanes and free shit, and people oohing and awing over you because you own a sports team. Whatever sports team it is, doesn't really even matter, and that is you and those people, as my grandma would say, they don't get rich by giving it away. They don't get rich

by giving it away. And even when they are worth five six seven billion dollars, that mentality sticks, that cheap ass, poor me mentality, despite them being worth literally more money than they could ever spend no matter what they wanted. Not even Phil Mickelson could spend five billion dollars, and that is something that he probably would get close to

given his gambling issues. If you're a billionaire and you own a team and you're not willing to do whatever it takes to get that team to win, which is the entire point of owning a team, competing and playing to win. That's literally the only goal of a sports team is to win, and to win at the highest level. And you're not, and you're against the free market of paying players the elite of the elite. As much as it takes for you to collect the team that will win.

You're fucking cheap ass, and you don't deserve to own a team winners, which apparently you are not winners, do whatever it takes to win no matter what. There's billionaires owning teams that would rather cheap out, cheap out on everything on their team, on how it's ran, on what their players make, on what their coaches make, because they

still make enough money anyway. That to me is a problem. That, to me, is a gigantic problem that hampers the growth of a game that is struggling to get new consumers, get new eyeballs.

the own WNBA teams that have gotten walled off. When they're trying to do whatever it takes to win, they're running into like, well, I want to pay Liz Cambridge X and I can't. And now Liz Cambridge Cambage, Cambage has left, and this is what he says. More. There's more resources available in and around women's sports, but the league's conservative mindset is keeping it closed off to lots of potential growth. The WNBA has been so focused on mere survival for so long that it's unable to pivot

into an expansionary strategy. The conservatism of the league is baked hard, crusted onto the WNBA, to the point where money bag investors like Josi and aces Mark Davis are unable to break the status quo. Fuck that, fuck that He proposes the wa NBA adopt a similar structure as the EPO, where rich owners spend as much as they want to build a sustainable powerhouse, and then the rising

tide lifts all ships. Who cares if a few teams in this league are killing, absolutely destroying investing in marketing and branding and events and trying to make this as most the most sexy team, most sexy league as possible. That tide lifts every single w NBA team up with Mark Lore Who's going to own who is currently owning the Links? Josi, Mark Davis. They are begging, salivating as owners of other businesses. Who knows what it takes to grow something from scratch. All they want to do is

do what it takes to grow the game. And the w n b A won't let them draconian rules that don't make no sense. So what we do know is the way that the w n b A has handled this is a nightmare. It's got to change because the league itself is growing. Ratings are way up over the last two years despite the pandemic. The league has new equity owners that include Condoleeza, Rice and Nike. The valuation of the league and its franchise is supposed to be

around a billion dollars right now. Gross. And because we're pushing p because we're pushing pe, we're wanting to try to pivot hard away from hating the powers structures of the WNBA and Major League Baseball and the Olympics. We're gonna get away from that and just tell you about really fast this very side road about Don Staley, who could have been the coach of the Portland Trailblazers if they would have done the right thing. Same thing with

Becky Hammond actually, but no shade to Chauncey Bullops. There's a terrific story on an scape which you should be called the undefeated. They've changed names about her incredible influence on the world of women's basketball and in this case

black female head coaches. Back in twenty fifteen, Staley received a piece of the net cut down by Carolyn Peck, head coach of the Purdue boiler Makers who won the title in nineteen ninety nine, making her the first black head coach in history to win a title in the nc DOUBLEA. And that act of kindness doing what the WNBA should be doing, which is literally pulling people from behind up to lift them to see what's possible, to make sure that you're making the world a better place

for the generations after you. That act of kindness influenced Don Staley to the point where she cut her own NCUBA championship net from twenty seventeen into ninety pieces and sent them to black female head coaches in basketball. This move, she said, connected them all together in an unbreakable bond. That's what we need more in sports is for people to know how they fit into the greater puzzle of things.

How great is that? Nicole Powell, a young black Head coach at UC Riverside, said, Don Staley's move is getting me to think bigger. We all need as people, and especially in these leagues that think bigger. How can we support others, other coaches, other people younger than ourselves at whatever level. Veteran coach Diane Richardson of the Tauson Tiger

summed it up best. She says, I carry this piece of the net in my backpack as a reminder of the generosity of Dawn, but also the vision and for us to aspire to do things like this, lift the people below you up and they will do the same. She said. It was emotional for me because I know how important it is to hold on to the nets and all those things for your championship. She felt strong enough about us and this fight to hit her to cut it up and share it with us. And that's

the legacy. That is the legacy that the WNBA needs to impart. That's the legacy that a team like that even other leagues that are not related to basketball need to think about doing that. And it also, slightly in the midst of all this craziness, gives me hope that despite how broken things are now, things can change with

one or two people. The number of female black coaches and women's basketball has doubled in the past twenty years, and the game is better for it, because these days, with all this shit happening, we need a symbol of hope that tomorrow is going to be better than today, even if it's something as small and simple as a piece of a championship. Note that's all the time that we have for the Heat Check. We will be back Monday with a new episode. Do not forget to download, subscribe.

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