What now for WNBA CBA talks? — Breaking down the Emma Meesseman signing

Basketball Wednesday

Presented by The BIG EAST Conference

Let’s start with what I’ve gathered since the weekend, one in which we saw the players wear their demands across their chests during pregame warmups, then held a sign at postgame. It was not only a successful public relations effort, it stood in sharp contrast to the private nature of these negotiations prior to the weekend.

Naturally, the inference for many was that there’d either been some sharp break in the negotiations, or one side or the other had indicated an unwillingness to move any further. But in speaking to a number of people from both sides of the negotiation, including many directly involved, that didn’t really happen. Nor were the Saturday shirts and signs a sudden response to Thursday’s meeting.

Instead, what continued to strike me in these conversations is how much closer the two sides are than, for instance, the U.S. Soccer negotiations with the women’s national team. Nancy Armour wrote a great column on how the WNBA doesn’t want to end up at that point, and she’s right. But there are some critical differences here.

For one thing, the women’s national team players had, in addition to the moral high ground, the law on its side. It had filed an EEOC complaint. The WNBA players have no such direct comparison to draw, and that rhetorical value to the USWNT was enormous — equal pay was an easy one, right? This is what the men make from the same employer to do the same thing.

Something the WNBPA does have is the ability to demand an equal share of revenue. But this is where everything gets tricky. The NBA players receive 50% of revenue, and that’s reflected in the salary cap. But Napheesa Collier said this past weekend that the WNBA’s current offer did not include revenue sharing, and was structurally the same as the last CBA. Those two things cannot both be true, since there is revenue sharing in the current CBA — it just sits at a level the league’s actual revenues did not reach, and wasn’t anything close to 50%.

Notably, though, the league’s revenue is changing considerably next year, with a media rights deal that will increase that pot alone by a factor of 8x to 9x. It would be fascinating to know — indeed, it is my biggest question — how much revenue the expected 2026 haul would provide the players.

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The WNBPA wants that revenue tied to the salary structure, ideally without a cap at all, but by the NBA model, it would be reflected in the following year’s cap. What’s fascinating is that at some level this is less ideal than the current means of payout, which would be sent as a surplus to the WNBPA directly, who could in turn pay it out in whatever structure it wishes — say, all going to players in the league’s middle class to bring everyone to the same salary level, or used in part to increase the league’s minimum by paying a disproportionate share of it to rookies. The WNBPA could put it all into a safe investment vehicle and use it to create a retirement fund for players. They could spend it all on Crumbl Cookies!

But, and this is probably a whole other newsletter, the PA probably doesn’t want to have to decide that itself.

Which brings us back to the league. Cathy Engelbert confirmed for me this past weekend that the rules around the new expansion draft will be collectively bargained. I asked this alongside the question of roster size because not only are we entering a period where virtually every player is a free agent, it is also a moment in which the WNBA teams are attempting to plan for a season that is roughly eight months away without knowing who they can protect on their own rosters or how big those rosters will be.

“On the first, obviously we’ll work through the expansion draft rules because it is something that is collectively bargained,” Engelbert said during her press conference on Saturday. “We hope that that collective bargaining process will be finished, then a two-team expansion draft with both Toronto and Portland.

“On roster sizes, certainly it’s something we’ll discuss with the players association. That’s also collectively bargained. That is certainly on the list, as well.”

Now consider what that means in terms of timing. The WNBA has a lot on its plate. The season ends in late October. Theoretically, there’s an October 31 deadline to reach a deal, but Engelbert pointed out that as long as both sides are making progress, there’s no reason they won’t keep negotiating, which is what happened last time around, a deal ultimately getting signed in January.

That offseason had a lot less activity in it, though! There weren’t two expansion teams coming in. There weren’t 15 teams looking to negotiate with an almost entirely full pool of players. There’s a pair of WNBA teams that need to be doing things to build out their presences that a lockout or strike would make exponentially harder. There’s a lot to do!

But finding common ground on revenue sharing, earning a significant jump in salaries and a chance at a lot more — just juicing the percentages alongside the vastly larger pot of money available will change the economics of the league without the players getting access to, for instance, a portion of the expansion fee money, something the NBPA wasn’t able to get, either — doesn’t seem that far out of reach once you drill down into these differences. There’s no binary here for both sides to either accept or reject.

And Engelbert, let’s just be real here, is no Carlos Cordeiro. I knew U.S. Soccer was out of its depth in its negotiations with the USWNT back in 2019 when I saw Cordeiro rise, walk to the podium at New York’s City Hall during the World Cup victory parade… and mispronounce Megan Rapinoe’s name.

Engelbert, at All-Star Weekend, was not some distant, aloof figure. Watching her with the players, there’s an ease of conversation. She’s built relationships. She isn’t, as Cordeiro did, quick to minimize their accomplishments. Quite the contrary. Her relentless positivity will only be as effective as it can be paired with coming to an agreement with the players, but it comes from a place of genuine building over her tenure as commissioner. It was easy to see during her time walking around WNBA Live how much a part of the league’s ethos she has become. She was on Studbudz!

Go ahead and hold me to this if I’m wrong, but my prediction: this deal gets done, the players get paid significantly better, and the tenure of Cathy Engelbert, which has been, to use the term so in vogue from both sides this weekend, transformational, continues with both sides in agreement on a lucrative, seven-year deal.

I have a lot of thoughts about Emma Meesseman, too, but I’ll let you hear the initial takes from the podcast and we’ll likely discuss it next week.

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This week in women’s basketball

Alissa Hirsh brings the heat in her piece on people who say the WNBA wasn’t ready for this moment.

Great Emma Baccellieri piece on the WNBPA’s Nobel Laureate in the hole.

Wayne Coffey on the last player from Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Academy is fantastic.

The Eberz sisters are coming!

Every word of this Madeline Kenney column on Emma Meesseman.

Maitreyi on the CBA talks is terrific.

Maggie Hendricks is right on Camp Day.

“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is available now!

Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible.

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Five at The IX: Talking Emma Meesseman