The 2024-25 basketball season is underway with the National Basketball Association and college men’s and women’s ball nearly a month into the Road to March Madness. One season, however, finished nearly three months ago: the Women’s National Basketball Association.
In the 28 seasons it has been in existence, the WNBA always has operated in the basketball off-season during the late spring, summer, and early fall months when the emphasis is on Major League Baseball and the beginning of football season. Not surprisingly, the WNBA has been a sports afterthought, with sparsely-attended games and a less-than-dynamic style of play. It is partially owned by the NBA, which subsidizes some of the multi-million-dollar losses that have accompanied every WNBA season.
This past year brought a huge change to the league with the arrival of Caitlin Clark, the all-time leading scorer in women’s college basketball, and a generational player who led the Iowa Hawkeyes to two consecutive runner-up positions in the women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. She was drafted into the league by the Indiana Fever, which had been a franchise with a losing record. Her appearance immediately was translated into sold-out arenas, high TV ratings, and a huge financial boost for the WNBA.
Anyone who has seen Clark play, both in college and the pros, is aware of her oversized court presence. She hits shots from about 30 feeet, throws pinpoint passes that made her a WNBA assist leader, and can easily take over a game. Her last two teams at the University of Iowa made it to the NCAA tournament championship game, losing in 2023 to LSU and in 2024 to South Carolina. However, the 2024 championship game outdrew the men’s NCAA final by four million viewers, the first time the women have outdrawn the men.
Lest anyone believe that the WNBA without Clark was doing fine, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver declared:
The tickets [of the WNBA] are very inexpensive, but even at low prices, we’re not selling enough tickets to run a viable business,” Silver told B/R Mag. “At the end of the day, the consumer always wins, and right now we don’t have a winning consumer proposition. In essence, we’ve incurred 70 percent of those losses [the WNBA’s total losses] over the last 22 years of operating the league. So it’s critically important from the NBA’s standpoint that we figure out a way to create a model that’s sustainable for the long term.
Her effect on the league led to her being named Time Magazine’s Athlete of the Year, the first time that a WNBA player has received this honor. One would think that those leading the women’s professional league would celebrate the honor. Instead, Sheila Johnson, the owner of the Washington Mystics, condemned Time’s choice altogether, claiming the entire league should have been recognized and she is not alone. Indeed, the league itself had no official response to Time’s decision.
Indeed, while basketball audiences and TV executives were ecstatic about Clark’s entrance into professional women’s basketball, fellow WNBA players and a number of media commentators were downright angry and hostile, making it clear that Clark was not welcome. Even though one economist estimated that Clark was responsible for about 26.5 percent of the revenue coming from ticket sales, merchandise, and television, none of that mattered to many of the owners, coaches, and players in the league.
Not only were players outspoken against Clark’s entrance into the league, but she also was the victim of harder (deliberate) fouls than any other WNBA player. For example, Chennedy Carter of the Chicago Sky is shown in this video screaming “B*tch” at Clark just before deliberately knocking her to the floor. The officials simply called a common foul before the league, after hearing protests, upgraded it to a Level One Flagrant Foul the next day, although Carter received no punishment for what she did.
Why the hate? Caitlin Clark is white and sexually straight, while more than 60 percent of WNBA players are black, and many of them lesbians. A’Ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, one of the top players in the world, complained after Clark signed a $28 million deal with Nike:
It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women; we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race—because it is.
Although Wilson later signed her own lucrative shoe deal with Nike, the narrative remained: Caitlin Clark was getting favorable treatment in the WNBA because she is white. In fact, after being silent about hot-button issues during the season, Clark told Time that her being white did, indeed, endow her with “privilege.” She said:
I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it’s very important. I have to continue to try to change that. The more we can elevate Black women, that’s going to be a beautiful thing.
Her former teammate for the Fever, Temi Fagbenle, complained to the media:
In a sport dominated by Black/African-American players, White America has rallied around Caitlin Clark. The support looks mostly amazing, sometimes fanatical and territorial, sometimes racist. It seems that the Great White Hope syndrome is at play again.
Larry Bird Wasn’t Treated This Way
Larry Bird came into the NBA in 1979, he had led his Indiana State team to the NCAA finals the previous spring, only to lose to Michigan State, which was led by Magic Johnson. Like Clark, he also was white in a league dominated by black players, yet his skill set was so outstanding that he quickly became a star and led the Boston Celtics to three NBA championships during his career.
While there was some talk of race regarding Bird, no one took it to the level that we have seen with Caitlin Clark. (Spike Lee in his movie “Do the Right Thing” had a white character portrayed as an interloper in a Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that mostly was black and wearing a Larry Bird jersey, but Bird was well-treated by his black teammates and competitors).
Why the difference? Some have attributed the treatment to “petty jealousy,” and others to race, and others to the “mean girls” syndrome. Austrian economics gives us another way to look at this situation and explain why Clark has received the often-violent treatment at the hands of other players.
Austrian Economics and the Valuation of Factors of Production
To better understand Clark’s situation, we look again at the NBA when Larry Bird was one of the best players in the league. His rivalry with the Los Angeles Lakers and their star, Magic Johnson, revived the NBA at a time when the league was in trouble:
When Magic and Bird entered the league in 1979, the NBA Finals were broadcast on a tape-delayed basis. You had to stay up until 11:30 p.m. to watch Brent Musberger call the play-by-game. The league was riddled with drug problems and attendance was sagging.
Bird and Magic revived the old Celtics-Laker rivalry of the 1960s when stars like Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor dominated the game:
With the NBA struggling for an identity (Julius Erving was viewed as a novelty), Bird and Magic gave the NBA star power. Jordan was still in college when Bird and Magic played in their first NBA Finals. The rivalry allowed the NBA to become a form of entertainment. The media loved the rivalry and the pair seemed to flourish in it, as well. They were loyal to their cities and their organizations, which played well across the nation. Neither player ever considered being traded and that allowed fans to root for teams they knew would mostly remain intact.
By reviving the NBA, they also paved the way for stars like Michael Jordan, who in the 1997-98 season was paid more than $33 million with the realization that Jordan really was “the rising tide that lifts all boats.” Without the influence of Bird and Magic, the NBA would not have turned into a super league with salaries that could not have been imagined a decade earlier.
In his 1871 Principles of Economics, Carl Menger, the “founder” of the Austrian School of Economics, noted that the factors of production—in the NBA’s case, the players—receive their value from the value of the final product. As the NBA grew more popular and profitable, the stars of the league saw their own compensation increase and, in turn, the regular players also saw their own salaries rise. As the final product grew in value, the players continued to prosper.
The popularity of the NBA exists because paying customers like the product they see, not only on the court, but also in the merchandise aisles, making it a multi-billion-dollar industry. Game tickets are expensive because people are willing to pay to see what they believe to be something special.
Fast forward to the WNBA, which until this past year had never been very popular. To be honest, women’s sports are much more political in nature, in part because of the role that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Unfortunately, the perception for a long time has been that Title IX is the only reason that women’s sports even exist today. While that view is overblown, there is an aspect of women’s sports that has been much more political than what we see with the men.
While the WNBA is not a creation of a government edict, nonetheless, it carries political overtones that the NBA does not. True, many black NBA players such as Lebron James and Stephan Curry have spoken out on racial issues or have injected themselves into politics, but the NBA is not profitable because of politics, but rather because people like to see high-level basketball. But the WNBA clearly reflects what we might call the Grievance Industry, in which certain groups primarily identify with what they believe to be people who are oppressed and treated unjustly.
The rhetoric we have seen coming from WNBA players in response to Caitlin Clark certainly falls into that category, and because the WNBA is not profitable, Clark’s presence to most of the players does not represent “the rising tide” as the presence of a new star selling out arenas would be to the NBA. The men’s league has a minimum salary of $1.15 million, while the WNBA’s minimum salary for the upcoming season is $66,079.
One can argue that Larry Bird’s entrance into the NBA, and the subsequent rivalry between him and Magic Johnson, translated into more dollars for everyone associated with that league. While Clark’s entry definitely has helped improve some things for other WNBA players, the league still lost $40 million this season. Caitlin Clark may be a superstar, but while the WNBA has some of the best basketball players in the world, it remains a political entity as opposed to existing for economic purposes.
Conclusion
If the other players could drive Clark from the league altogether, they would not lose much in personal compensation, which clearly would not have been the case had black NBA players banded together to injure Larry Bird or push him out of professional basketball. They would have paid a serious price for their actions. The women, not so much.
Because the WNBA is not a profitable entity, its survival owes more to feminist and racial politics than anything else and the response of the league to Caitlin Clark drives home that point. A male star like Clark who is so good that he is changing the game would be honored in the NBA. The WNBA, however, is looking more and more like just another part of the modern Grievance Industry. As long as the league is heavily-subsidized, don’t look for that part to change.
