Liberty 89, Mercury 71: “World-class?”
New York dominated a Phoenix team suffering the injury bug — and repeated failures by the WNBA
17 people have died climbing Mount Everest so far this year. It’s easy to see the scale of something and fixate on the space it occupies over all else. Everest is nearly six miles high. Any dullard who’s ever silently cursed a flight of stairs grasps the challenge that scale presents. But what about time?
Time is the silent killer. Reaching new heights isn’t simply the isolated chase for the heavens; it’s about how long it takes you to get there, what’s lost along the journey and what endures to the end. It’s true when navigating the highest mountain on Earth. It’s true when navigating the failures of the WNBA.
Yesterday the New York Liberty blew out the Phoenix Mercury* 89-71. The asterisk is for the three Hall of Famers absent from the Mercury lineup: Diana Taurasi is dealing with a bad hamstring, Skylar Diggins-Smith is on maternity leave and Brittney Griner is suffering a hip injury. Without that troika of talent, the Mercury just aren’t up to the Liberty’s level. And not just on the court.
On the court, Breanna Stewart rebounded from the worst shooting performance of her career – missing 13 of 14 shots in Tuesday’s loss to Atlanta – to hit half her threes, most of her twos and 11 of 13 free throws in a 28-point, 14-rebound, seven-assist virtuoso performance. Jonquel Jones continued to play the best ball she has this young season with a double-double, and with Sabrina Ionescu still suffering from a subpar left hamstring the Liberty bench chipped in 22 on 57% shooting. It’s not complicated: the Liberty are a world-class organization. The Mercury, though shorthanded at the moment, have been one for years.
The WNBA? Not so much.
Griner missed the game with a physical ailment, though she just as easily could have missed the game for mental health reasons. The Mercury have flown three times since Griner was accosted and harassed last week at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Those details are undisputed. The fallout since, as her people and the league go back and forth about what was promised her, what was delivered — that remains in flux.
Why was Griner targeted for abuse? Because she was national news for nearly a year while imprisoned in Russia so one abusive government had some leverage in its dealings with another one. That’s the only reason the putz who came after her in Dallas even knows who she is. Why was Griner, a world-class athlete – a seven-time All-Star destined for Springfield – balling in Russia during her offseason? Because the world-class WNBA doesn’t pay its stars enough money not to.
Most of the league plays in international leagues because they need that money. The average NBA salary is around $9 million; that’s enough even for the plebes to spend their offseason resting, recovering and training full-time. Marine Johannès is making $60,000 this season. If she devotes her offseason to training and recovery, she’ll go hungry.
You can point out Griner is one of the W’s best-paid players, making more than triple what Johannès does. Again, let’s look at scale: Griner is a highly-paid WNBA player. That means her mountain of money is mere molehill compared to Joe Tsai, whose estimated worth nears $8 billion, or 4,000 times what Griner will make this year. Why bring up Tsai in relation to Griner? Wait for it . . .
Griner spent 10 months trapped halfway around the world, in a region where racism against Black bodies and misogny against non-cis het women runs rampant. She was there because her league didn’t pay her enough to avoid the risk. If that sounds like I’m advocating for some sort of potentially unequal treatment of the W’s star players, I am. That approach is neither unprecedented nor unproven. Late in the 1980’s, the Chicago Bulls were playing the Atlanta Hawks when official Darell Garretson called a questionable foul on the Hawk defending Michael Jordan. The man complained Garretson only blew the whistle because it was Jordan.
“That’s right,” Garreston said. “Without the stars, we’re all out of business.” To which Dominique Wilkins, the defender’s teammate, chimed in, “Damn straight.”
World-class leagues protect their stars for the same reason families protect the kids over everything else: because without them, there is no future. The WNBA counts several billionaires among its owners, including Tsai. There’s no good reason why they can’t figure out a way to create a superfund for money reserved for the best of the best, monies that either don’t count toward the payroll or are accounted for in a way that let’s the teams remain flexible and competitive while also assuring they treat the best in the world like that’s what they are. It’s hard to imagine a world-class league accepting as inevitable that its players, its very lifeblood, have to work year-round just to afford the luxury of playing part-time in that world-class league.
But the W, to this point, shows no interest in protecting its stars. Tsai was fined $500,000 two years ago by the WNBA for flying the Liberty on private charters. The league punished him because, by its logic, no team can fly private until all teams can fly private; otherwise it’s unfair. I wonder, while Griner and her teammates were being screamed at by a lunatic, if any of them offered a silent prayer of thanks to commissioner Cathy Engelbert for keeping everything so nice and fair.
Griner is allegedly permitted to fly charter, separate from her teammates, though the details and truths of that story change over time, depending who you ask. Here’s what we know: a woman who was jailed overseas for nearly a year because her league doesn’t pay her enough to live and work in the U.S. year-round, a woman who likely came home with a lifetime of trauma to unpack from those months, was subjected to verbal assault and a violation of her sense of safe space – all because her league doesn’t value its employees enough to put their safety first.
Engelbert says it’d cost $25 million to afford charters for all its teams. That’s 1/320th of Tsai’s net worth. Take out a loan from him, if you have to. Or every NBA team could donate less than a million each to make it happen. Or the W could literally crowdfund the money: you know everyone from fans to corporations would jump at the chance to make that change happen.
Imagine three children standing in front of a fence. The children are 13, 9 and five. The fence is so high none of the kids can see above it. Give each of them the same stepping stool. Now the 13-year-old can see above, though the other two can’t. That’s equality. Instead, give the 13-year-old that first stepping stool, then give the others whatever size they need to see over the fence. That’s justice. The WNBA is so worried about the former it’s failing its workers and fans on the latter.
