Stewart earns approximately $1.5M per season overseas, while the WNBA supermax salary for the '22 season is $228,094NBAE/GETTY IMAGES
Seattle Storm F Breanna Stewart said that she is "concerned about the future and how her WNBA career can coexist with playing overseas," according to Mechelle Voepel of the ESPN.com. Stewart has had "success overseas," including playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg in Russia. The WNBA's most recent CBA, signed in '20, "seeks to make players prioritize the WNBA over other leagues." It will start to be enforced in '23 with "mandatory fines for players who are late to report to their teams' training camps." By '24, those players "will be suspended for the WNBA season." Stewart said, "Prioritization is, like, the biggest topic of conversation in the WNBA for me ... To be able to play overseas at UMMC Ekaterinburg, where basketball is very valued, we're treated really well and able to make a lot of money, it's just hard for me. With the prioritization, you're cutting off one of my sources of income and not substituting it." She added, "It's going to affect a lot more players in the WNBA than people think right now." Voepel noted Stewart earns approximately $1.5M per season overseas, and the WNBA supermax salary for the '22 season is $228,094. Stewart said of prioritization, "It's something that, if I'm quite honest, I'm not the happiest about in our CBA. Because it's just really limiting what professional women's basketball players can do in their offseason and their ability to make money overseas" (ESPN.com, 2/10).
DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: In Seattle, Larry Stone writes it is a "double-edged sword," because players have "complained for years about the wear and tear on their bodies caused by playing year-round." The WNBA is "trying to do something about that, but it might not be enough for the upper-echelon players such as Stewart." Stewart said, "There just needs to be like a little bit of a happy medium. ... For me it's, 'Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't we find a middle ground with this thing?'" (SEATTLE TIMES, 2/11).
