PHOENIX Satou Sabally doesnt have to meticulously check the price tags while shopping at the grocery store. There is no mental calculator balancing nutrition needs with a strict budget.
Thats a privilege many arent afforded. Its one she didn’t have as a child growing up in a lower-income family. And its an understanding and empathy she keeps top of mind as not only the co-chair of the WNBA Players Associations CBA committee, but as a teammate.
She likes to treat her friends and teammates to gifts and dinners, particularly the rookies who made the rookie scale minimum $66,079. Sabally wants to see that number rise considerably in the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), even from what she says the Board of Governors offered.
I know the league came, but with like 300 [thousand], Sabally said after practice ahead of Game 2 of the WNBA Finals. Push it up. Push it up. Go up, especially if you want to extend the season [schedule]. And now were talking about extending the season, you need to go up with these numbers because honestly thats what they deserve right now.
It is the first time a player has given a hard number from either side of the bargaining table. A $300,000 rookie minimum would eclipse the 2025 player super max in the active CBA at more than four times the current minimum, and is closer in line with overseas salaries. Sabally said on Tuesday that players who go overseas make substantially six figures, high six figures numbers.
The WNBA Players Association opted out of the current CBA the day after the 2024 WNBA Finals and is actively negotiating a new deal in what has become a contentious labor dispute. The deadline is Oct. 31, though it can be extended, and the top priority for players remains salaries and a revenue sharing model that they feel better benefits the players as the business continues to grow.
The weight of that conversation revolves around the maximum salaries, which players have not put a specific number on, beyond saying that at least $1 million would be nice. The stratification below it is also critically important, after the last CBA squeezed out the middle tier by nearly doubling max salaries while increasing the team salary cap by only 30%.
“We saw a lot of people be out of the league who have been there a long time, veteran Sydney Colson said before an Indiana Fever game in New York ahead of All-Star weekend. But it was like it made more sense, business-wise, for people to keep rookies and pay them a few thousand dollars less than keeping a veteran.
Sabally earned $68,000 as a rookie in the first year of the 2020 CBA with pay bumps each season. The previous rookie scale ranged from $40K to $50K. She declared for the 2020 WNBA Draft early, citing a desire to give a better lifestyle to her family. Sabally grew up the third of seven children to a Gambian father, Jerreh, and German mother, Heike, and experienced many different cultures as a child that helped shape her adult activism. Her younger sister, Nyara, also plays in the WNBA for the New York Liberty.
It’s almost like survivor’s guilt sometimes, and I know that a lot of successful people struggle with it that come from low income communities, Sabally told Yahoo Sports after practice ahead of Game 2 of the WNBA Finals. But its also really having grace with yourself and knowing that Ive worked hard for it, I deserve it, but also still knowing where you came from and that there are so many other people in my previous position.
Sabally grounds herself in appreciation for the place shes in financially and focuses on giving back, choosing to donate to organizations and utilizing her Adidas partnership to help young girls receive sports-specific equipment they might not otherwise afford.
The Mercury roster is no different than many around the league in its sharp split between the high earners and low. Sabally made $215,000 this season, slightly above the league maximum and one of the Mercurys three players to earn north of $200K, according to the Her Hoop Stats salary database.
Dana Evans, the Las Vegas reserve guard who took over Game 1 of the Finals, is one of those lower-salaried players who still complements her earnings with overseas competition. (She signed to play with Unrivaled, the 3×3 league founded by Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart, this winter.)
Sabally reached out to Evans, a 2021 WNBA draftee, before the season to have her speak on behalf of the tweener players. Evans made $61,543 as a rookie, signed a one-year $89,000 deal with Chicago last year and landed in Las Vegas via a sign-and-trade. She is not an established veteran, nor is she a rookie who built major name recognition in college.
Even money wise, were still in that weird [place] where we missed NIL (name, image, likeness), Evans said before Aces practice on Tuesday, referencing the windfall of sponsorship dollars young WNBA players received in college after a change in law. So I feel like I can be a voice for our group.
Evans declined to give a salary number that would theoretically keep players from going overseas in their WNBA offseason, but said it would have to be a pretty, pretty high number and offered an estimate.
I would say at least around a million, Evans said. I feel like that needs to be the max. Im not saying every player should get that, but that should at least be around the max. And then we go from whatever else is the lowest.
In July, Sabally called the leagues initial offer a slap in the face before the sides met in person in Indianapolis at All-Star weekend. The players wore Pay Us What You Owe Us T-shirts, pushing for a percentage of the revenue sharing model they believe is fair. The negotiations grew contentious over the past few weeks when Collier took aim at commissioner Cathy Engelbert, calling the WNBAs leadership the worst in the world.
Players chimed in against Engelbert, who said at her annual Finals address that she would work to repair the relationships. Sabally said on Tuesday that an ideal commissioner in this situation definitely wouldnt budget that much of the percentage that were requesting. When asked how much that percentage difference is between the sides, Sabally side-stepped.
If you dont know that, theres a reason, Sabally said.