thelesterlee
Last season marked the 25th anniversary of the WNBA and you can really see how much the game has developed and continues to grow. There is more skill on the court than ever and more eyes on the product than ever.
As the sport is growing, the way these players are treated has also changed. Last season, the New York Liberty were treated to a charted flight to Napa purchased by team owner, Joe Tsai along with arranging charter flights for the team traveling to away games.
A move that should be celebrated is somehow being punished by the WNBA with a $500,000 for violating the collective bargaining agreement under the guise of creating an ‘unfair advantage’ for the Liberty because they’d be…happy(??)
We get how silly this shit is. You don’t need me to stand on a soapbox shouting about workers rights and blah blah. But we as sports fans need to demand more of these owners.
The WNBA doesn’t allow players to take charter flights because it would give an advantage to the owners who can afford it but if you cannot afford to accommodate your employees’ needs then you should not be allowed to own a team.
I don’t think we truly understand how frustrating it must feel for these players to have to sit at the fucking gate after just putting their entire heart and lungs into a professional basketball only to wait a couple hours next to crying babies and the Potbelly Sandwich shop. Imagine dropping 40 points in a nationally televised game, your name is trending on Twitter and you’re stuck in an airport terminal because the next flight from Connecticut to Minnesota isn’t until 1am.
These owners will invest in companies that literally kill people as long as it puts an extra $1.50 cents in their bank account but they have no understanding of the value of owning a WNBA team.
It’s the biggest women’s sports league in North America and with only 25 years under their belt, you are approaching an upswing in popularity and money coming one of these days and you can directly aid in that growth if you simply treated these players correctly.
So many more young women would exclusively focus on making it to the WNBA if these players were paid more and treated like true professional athletes. The next Steph Curry could be chucking up 3’s in her driveway right now and instead of giving her something to aspire to, they are telling her to put the basketball down because she’ll get to the WNBA and have to bring her own basketballs to practice because the owners are too cheap to buy some for the facility.
Billionaires purchasing sports franchises and then running them like local home furniture stores that are one bad sales week away from a going out of business sale is disgusting. Please take your broke asses elsewhere and let guys like Joe Tsai fly their players on charter flights to Napa.
