For six weeks, the phone just rang.
It wasn’t a technical glitch. It wasn’t a holiday break. It was a message. In the high-stakes world of professional sports negotiations, silence is rarely just silence—it is a weapon. And for 42 long days, the WNBA owners wielded it with brutal efficiency against the Players Association (WNBPA).
After submitting a proposal around Christmas, the union leadership waited. They texted. They emailed. They rallied their members. And in return, they got the kind of radio silence that usually signals a breakup, not a partnership. Then, just days before Valentine’s Day, the league finally hit “send” on a counter-proposal.
But the timing wasn’t accidental. It was a calculated maneuver designed to remind everyone exactly who controls the clock, who decides what is urgent, and who ultimately holds the leverage when the rubber meets the road.
The Strategy of Silence
Collaborative negotiations are messy, loud, and constant. You trade drafts, you argue over clauses, you clarify language. You keep the line open. The only time one side disappears for six weeks is when they are trying to reset the room temperature. The owners’ silence was a cold, deliberate pacing tactic. It said, “We are not operating on your timeline.”
While union leadership spent January traveling to players and projecting confidence, the league sat back. They let the anxiety build. They let the calendar turn. And now, with the season opener on May 8th looming like a storm cloud, they have re-engaged—but on their terms.
The proposal they finally sent back reportedly isn’t a complete overhaul. Sources suggest it feels less like a fresh counter and more like a dusted-off document with a few tweaks. It’s a move that screams confidence. The owners believe they have already offered enough, and they are daring the players to say no.
The Offer on the Table
It is important to clarify what “enough” looks like in this context. We don’t have the full text of the new proposal, but we know the baseline of the previous offer. And by any historical standard, it was significant.
The owners had already put a structure on the table that would take maximum salaries into a completely different universe—potentially reaching millions over the life of the deal. They offered to codify charter flights, ending the embarrassment of commercial travel for professional athletes. They included “life protections” like better terms for pregnant players and the ability to refuse certain trades. They even offered to expand rosters by adding developmental spots, a crucial move for keeping talent in the ecosystem.
This wasn’t a “take it or leave it” insult. It was a transformative package. And that is exactly why the owners felt comfortable ghosting the union for a month. Their position is simple: “We have addressed pay, travel, and lifestyle. What are we still fighting about?”
The Sticking Point: Gross vs. Net
The fight has narrowed down to one specific, complicated, and deeply unsexy issue: revenue sharing. specifically, the difference between “gross” and “net.”
The players want a model similar to the NBA, where they get a guaranteed split of “basketball-related income” (gross revenue). It sounds fair—a true partnership. But the WNBA is not the NBA. The NBA prints money. It has massive surpluses to distribute. The WNBA, despite its recent surge in popularity, is still dealing with the heavy machinery of startup economics.
The league’s argument is that expenses—arena costs, staffing, marketing, production, insurance—must be paid first. That is “net” revenue. The owners are arguing that you cannot demand a share of the whole pie before the kitchen has even paid for the ingredients. If the league is still operating at a loss (or close to it) after expenses, a gross revenue split essentially asks owners to subsidize a guaranteed profit for players out of their own pockets.
To the players, this feels like accounting tricks to hide value. To the owners, it feels like the players are ignoring the math of running a business. And this disconnect is threatening to derail the most important season in league history.
The Cost of Uncertainty
While the two sides argue over spreadsheet formulas, the real world is moving on. And it is getting expensive.
We are approaching a critical window. Free agency was supposed to be a frenzy. With 80% of the league’s players technically free agents, this offseason should have been a non-stop headline machine of player movement and super-team building. Instead, it is frozen.
Players can’t sign deals because they don’t know what the salary cap is. Teams can’t build rosters. Expansion franchises in Toronto and Portland are trying to launch operations in a fog. Marketing plans are on hold.
Uncertainty is a tax on momentum. The WNBA just had its “Caitlin Clark year”—a massive spike in ratings, attendance, and cultural relevance. The iron is hot. But instead of striking, the league is stalling. Every day the headlines focus on labor drama is a day they aren’t focusing on the game. Casual fans, who just started tuning in, have short attention spans. If you give them drama instead of basketball, they will change the channel.
The Leverage Has Shifted
This is where the owners’ “ghosting” strategy becomes clear. They know something the union doesn’t want to admit: the owners can afford to wait. They have diversified portfolios. The WNBA is not their mortgage payment.
The players, however, have a short earning window. Careers are finite. A lost season, or even a shortened one, is money that never comes back. The threat of a strike sounds powerful in a press release, but in practice, it hurts the workers first and hardest.
Furthermore, the “solidarity” argument is being tested. If a strike happens, would every basketball player in the world really sit out? Or would the hundreds of talented women grinding in overseas leagues jump at the chance for a WNBA roster spot? The owners know that the “replacement player” threat is real, even if it’s unspoken.
The Final Decision
So here we are. The silence is broken, the proposal is in, and the clock is ticking. The union has to decide whether to keep fighting for a revenue model that the current economics might not support, or to bank the massive wins—salary hikes, charter flights, better benefits—that are already on the table.
It’s a choice between a perfect theoretical future and a vastly improved actual present. The smart move is often to take the win, keep the momentum, and build leverage for the next round when the league is financially stronger. But emotions run high in labor fights, and the desire to “win” the argument can sometimes overpower the need to secure the bag.
The next few weeks will define the future of women’s basketball. The WNBA is ready to launch into the stratosphere, but it needs a cleared runway. If the players and owners can’t clear the debris of this negotiation soon, they risk grounding the flight right when everyone is watching.
