Is the WNBA heading for a possible labor dispute? One of the league's biggest stars, the Minnesota Lynx's Napheesa Collier, hinted players would be willing to holdout for a better deal in a CBS Sports podcast, "We Need to Talk Now."
"I don't know, I mean, it's something that we're talking about internally like to, you know, be prepared for," Collier, who has ascended to one of the best players in the league, said on Wednesday.
The Women’s National Basketball Players Association (“WNBPA”) opted out of their collective bargaining agreement in October, 2024. Should players and the league not reach a new agreement by the end of the 2025 season, a strike could start in 2026.
The players’ union has been pushing for “transformational deal” with a rise in interest for women's sports, bigger ticket sales, bigger television ratings, and perhaps most importantly, an influx of stars including Collier and last year's rookie class led by Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese adding to the growth of the sport.
"Of course no one wants that situation to happen, but I do feel like there's some topics that we have in mind that, you know, we have to stand strong in what we believe in too," explains Collier. "We have to stand up for what we feel is right and what we feel we deserve. And so while we don't want that situation to happen, of course I think we're prepared for any possibility right now."
And Reese has recently been talking about a work stoppage as well, saying the players need to get their way.
“I need to be in the [players’ union] meetings because I’m hearing that if [the league] don’t give us what we want, we’re sitting out,” said Reese, who was speaking on her Unapologetically Angel podcast.
What the players believe they deserve is a bigger share of the pot of money the league makes. The're looking for a model more in line with the men's game. The NBA agreement calls for about 50% of all basketball related income to go to players.
The WNBA currently is well below that, with a former player telling CBS Sports it's more like 10%.
In 2025, the minimum salary for a veteran with three or more years of service is $78,831, while a regular max contract is $214,466 and a supermax, the most a player can possibly make, is $249,244.
Collier says the players are now in a position of more power in the sport and the "star power" of the league has grown tremendously. She believes now is the time to ask for more.
"It's like, you used to be like an avid team, like even in my household like the Giants for football, that was my dad's team, and you would follow teams like that and that's where the loyalty lies," Collier says. "But now it's really player-focused, so people are following players more than the teams. And so you're seeing the power shift to the players, and especially for us right now, it's such a power that we hold that I think we need to use correctly again in our CBA negotiations."
Collier adds that players aren't trying to make the same amount of money as the players in the NBA receive - their TV contracts and media revenue far exceeds the WNBA still. But she does say the sharing of revenue is something that has to get remedied as the league grows.
"We're not asking for the same salaries as the men. We're asking for the same revenue shares, and that's where the big difference is," says Collier. "We get such a small percentage of revenue share right now that affects our salary, so we're asking essentially for a bigger cut of that, like more equitable to what the men's revenue share is. So it wouldn't get us anywhere close to their salaries. We're not asking for the same salaries, we're asking for the same cut of the pie of what is made in our league."
Collier along with another WNBA star and a former UConn teammate Breanna Stewart are also now co-founders of the professional 3x3 women's basketball league, Unrivaled, which aims to provide WNBA players with a stateside offseason option.
For the first couple of decades of the WNBA, most of the league's star players made the bulk of their money by playing overseas in the offseason. Part of that of course came from not making as much in the WNBA, something Unrivaled is hoping to remedy for the league's biggest names.
Already, Unrivaled has been delivering high viewership and it has some strong financial backing including a new investment from NBA star Steph Curry. Unrivaled will wrap up their inaugural season this Sunday with semifinal games with Collier's "Luna Owls" in the mix. The championship game is Monday night. Those games are broadcast on TNT or TrueTV.
Next up for the WNBA is the draft on April 14. The regular season kicks off on May 16. The Lynx are coming off a runner-up finish to Stewart's New York Liberty which won the title last season in a thrilling - and controversial - five game series over Collier and Minnesota.