Year after year, the only thing that remains consistent is the lack of accountability from our leaders. Sorry, I had to walk you in my boot, I’ll cut it. The league has a buzzword that they’ve rolled out as talking points for the CBA as to why they can’t pay the players what we’re worth. When they say CBA, it literally is an acronym for the collective bargaining agreement. So it’s the contract that the players would have with the teams and the league itself of how much the minimum is and exactly what the cap is, and how much basically every player is going to be making inside of the WNBA.

So right now, the women are basically locked in with leadership in the WNBA because the actual league itself has never turned a profit. Let me say that again for the people in the back. The league itself has never turned a profit, and so the women are rallying together because they’re saying, well, the Caitlin Clarkson, the Angel Reese’s are lucky because they don’t have to worry about what their payment is on the court, and we shouldn’t have to get another job after only making $100,000 a year or $150,000, whatever the heck they make. Average salary in the WNBA.

So the average salary in the WNBA is approximately $102,000 per year. So they’re saying we should make more than $100,000 to get paid. Minimum salary, $66,000, maximum salary is $250,000. Average salary is about $100,000 per year, and so they want things more on par with the NBA’s minimum salary, which is $1.27 million per year. The WNBA operates under a hard salary cap with the 2025 team salary cap set at $1.5 million, and then the Caitlin Clarkson, the Angel Reese’s got a bunch of endorsements and stuff like that that’s outside of it, and so they don’t have to necessarily worry about that.

And so the players are complaining because the league has never, ever, ever, ever since this inception, ever been profitable, and the players are saying that we deserve more, and that the leadership is the problem with that. Inability. But what’s truly unsustainable is keeping a good product on the floor while allowing officials to lose control of games. Fans see it every night. Coaches both winning and losing point it out every night in pre-game and post-game media. Yet leadership just issues fines and looks the other way. They ignore the issues that everyone inside the game is begging to be fixed.

That is negligence. At unrivaled this past February, I sat across from Kathy and asked how she planned to address the officiating issues in our league. Her response was, will only the losers complain about the refs? I also asked how she planned to fix the… I wish I had my belt. Hey, that was a savage. That was a savage. 100% savage response. Hey, man, only the losers is the ones that’s complaining about the refs. Facts. Facts. That players like Caitlin, Angel, and Paige, who are clearly driving massive revenue for the league, are making so little for their first four years.

Her response was, Caitlin should be grateful she makes $60 million off the court because without the platform that the WBA gives her, she wouldn’t make anything. And in that same conversation, she told me, players should… See, this is why you can’t trust women. This right here is exactly why you cannot trust women. The reason that you can’t trust women is because they take off-court conversations where you thought that you was having a real conversation with somebody, and they start recording you and writing stuff down, and next thing you know, they’re saying it at a players’ conference.

And so what was supposed to be between me and you, and a real talk, now you taking it, and you saying it, and showing it to everybody else, and this is why we don’t trust you. If young Metro don’t trust you, I’m going to shoot you. I don’t like that. I don’t like that. I don’t like the fact that, and then y’all be supporting it. Y’all so weak. Any guy that’s in here supporting this pillow talk, in my opinion, is weak, bro. You don’t talk about things that we talked about offline online. What are you talking about? Between me and you, did I say that it was on the record? This is off the record.

This is how y’all be getting caught up, bro. This is not on the record. This is an off-the-record conversation. Why are you telling all of my business, bro? Why are you telling all of my business? Y’all love gossiping. Guys love gossiping. Y’all love being in a situation where y’all keep telling them. Y’all be telling all of the business, all of the business. See, the one thing that I know about women, not in the WNBA anyways, is that women tell other women what you’re doing. And that’s how guys get good advertisement, because women don’t understand that when they gossiping with their homegirl, all they’re doing is giving free advertising for the guy that they land with.

So you up there talking about, oh, girl, the ABCD and EFG, and then we did this inside of the bed, and your homegirl like, really? Wow, I never did that before. But really, she just advertisements. So girls don’t tell other guys things that they tell other girls, which is basically you, pillow-talking, so that she can come back and then discuss it with her girls on how it is that she needs to get her an anti, you know what I’m saying? And then they start talking about the money. Girl, he got real money. No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, it’s a lot of these guys that’s out here doing this and that, so on and so forth. No, no, no, no. He got real money. Now, it’s different over there. No, there ain’t no lack. Everybody got money over there. Everybody got money over there. Everybody getting paid over there. Ain’t no lack over there. You know what I’m saying? Ain’t no lack over there. It’s different. Let me get back to this. You know, I’ll be a millionaire more than showing the railroad. Be on their knees, thanking their lucky stars for the meteorite seal that I got them.

That’s mentality driving our league from the top. We go to battle every day to protect a shield that doesn’t value us. The league believes it succeeds despite its players, not because of them. I have the privilege of watching my husband run a league where he has to balance a hundred different things at once. I won’t pretend the job was easy, but even with all that on his plate, he always takes the time to reach out to players when he sees an injury, whether it’s unariled or even during the WNBA season. That is what leadership looks like.

It’s the human element. It’s basic integrity and it’s the bare minimum any leader should embody. This year alone, I’ve gotten calls, texts, and well wishes from so many players across the league. Those moments remind me that sometimes there are things bigger than the results of this game we play. But do you know who I haven’t heard from? Cathy. Not one call, not one text. Instead, the only outreach has come from her number two, telling my agent that she doesn’t believe physical play is contributing to injuries. That is infuriating. Women are such complainers and whiners, bro. Such complainers and whiners.

And it’s the perfect example of the tone-deaf, dismissive approach that our leaders always seem to take. I’ve finally grown tired. For too long, I have tried to have these conversations in private, but it’s clear there is no intention of accepting there’s a problem. The league has made it clear it isn’t about innovation, it isn’t about collaboration, it’s about control and power. I’ve run this platform and I’ve paid the price to get here, and now I have a responsibility to speak on behalf of the fans and everyone in this league that deserves better. I think that a lot of times women feel empowered to do this type of stuff because they always got a husband that made more than them, that’s backing them up.

Our leadership’s answer to being held accountable is to suppress everyone’s voices by handing out fines. I’m not concerned about fine. I’m concerned about the future of our sport. At some point, everyone deserves to hear the truth, from someone who I hope has the benefit of the doubt to fight for what is right and fair for our athletes and our fans. We have the best players in the world, we have the best fans in the world, but right now we have the worst leadership in the world. If I didn’t know exactly what the job entailed, maybe I would feel this way, but unfortunately for them, I do.

We serve a league that has shown they think championship coaches and Hall of Fame players are dispensable, and that’s fine, it’s professional sports. But I will not stand quietly by and allow different standards to be applied at the league level. Thank you. Nafisa, do you still read that statement if you’re celebrating a championship in two leagues? Yes. Again, I want to be clear, this is not about winning and losing. People, coaches, players, winning and losing are complaining of these same things. And again, the league talks about sustainability. This is about sustainability. How are you going to protect your players? How are you going to make sure that we have the best products on the floor night after night when it’s so inconsistent and people are getting hurt left and right? That statement that you just made, aren’t you fully expecting to find? I’m sure that they will find me.

I mean, it seems like anything with free sweets is fine now. Five minutes before you walked in here, the WNBA sent another press release announcing more money, more TV rights deals that they’ve just secured. Do you think it’s a little premature to announce all the money they’re making when they haven’t come to a deal with the people that play the game on the floor? I mean, it’s something that they continue to do. And, you know, but in the same breath, they cry that they don’t have enough money to pay the players, that they don’t have the sustainability to pay the players when they’re selling teams for three hundred million dollars from valuations are going up to almost half a billion dollars.

It doesn’t make sense to us. It’s why we’re fighting so hard in our CBA and nothing about business. At what point between, you know, the end of the season today, did you decide that was how you wanted to open this and, you know, you wanted to prepare something like that? You know, I think. Obviously, like this is something that we’ve been talking about for a really long time. But I think just seeing like the response as well, just hearing over and over and over again, we are the best parts in the world. We don’t have a problem.

You know, none of the injuries are due to physicality in the way that we’re wrapping. It’s an insult to my intelligence, honestly. This is so dumb. Anyways, listen, if they can get it, get it, if they can’t, can’t, it really don’t make no difference to me. Everybody should get paid from a business perspective. I don’t understand why she’s doing what she’s doing. It just doesn’t really make any sense to me. [tr:trw].

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