In No Offseason, The Athletic follows the paths of women’s basketball players after their WNBA seasons’ end and their travels begin. From Turkey, Israel, Italy, Czech Republic, Mexico and even here in the U.S., our reporters tell the stories of these players as they chase their dreams and try to shape the future of the WNBA.
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The topic is largely taboo. So unspoken that Erica McCall says she has never heard any of her closest friends tell her about it, nor has her sister, Connecticut Sun All-Star wing DeWanna Bonner, relayed exact specifics to her.
McCall, a five-year WNBA veteran, is reflecting on the lack of transparency about overseas salaries. “Like an unsaid rule,” she says. “You just don’t say what you make.”
Though WNBA player contract information is often annually reported, in a literal global marketplace, details about overseas contracts are largely shrouded in secrecy. In 2015, The New York Times reported that Phoenix Mercury star Diana Taurasi, a holder of an Italian passport, was paid close to $1.5 million annually by the Russian powerhouse UMMC Ekaterinburg. New York Liberty star Jonquel Jones, who holds Bosnian citizenship, told ESPN last year that she made her annual WNBA salary in a month playing for Ekaterinburg. But those details are outliers — in their public nature and amount. Almost no one in the WNBA, or on its outskirts, comes close to earning that much abroad, where many W players historically have competed in the offseason.
The most common explanation about why players go overseas in the first place is often distilled to three words: to get rich. It’s true players can substantially supplement their W income, which ranges from rookie salaries of about $62,000 to supermax deals worth nearly $235,000, by playing abroad. Yet multiple WNBA agents, granted anonymity in order to openly discuss details of overseas payouts, estimate only five to 10 players make more than $500,000 in a given season abroad, and that is when high-paying countries like China and Russia are fully accessible to WNBA players. “It’s always been a very small elite group that are getting paid like that,” one agent says. “And everybody else is getting paid OK.”
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Another agent agrees with that assessment, adding: “We’re in a different game than 10 years ago, even five years ago.”
Part of that change is due to various recessions across Europe. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the detainment of Brittney Griner removed China and Russia, respectively, as potential landing spots for the league’s biggest stars, at least for this past season. How players actually choose which team to play for is often more complicated than just bottom-line amounts, and what might keep players home in future years also goes beyond merely increasing WNBA salaries.
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Chelsea Hopkins went undrafted in 2013, despite receiving honorable All-America recognition and helping San Diego State win a school-record 27 games. That September, the 5-foot-8 guard saw action in four WNBA contests — all in a nine-day span — with the San Antonio Silver Stars. Upon the W season’s conclusion, she joined Bnot Herzliya in Israel. She made $2,700 a month.
Hopkins has now played professionally in Israel for a decade. Having won the Israeli league MVP in 2017 and a league championship in 2018, she says her salary peaked at around $12,000 a month — a low five-figure monthly contract is “pretty standard for a WNBA-like player at this point in time,” she adds. Hopkins says that amount has “always been sustainable” to live on. But she also acknowledges that she has made a second home in one of the world’s most expensive countries. Her money might have gone further elsewhere.
That ball on a string, huh?? 👀 https://t.co/hPwRY787Fk
— Chelsea Hopkins (@ChelseaHop1) January 23, 2023
Such as Turkey, for instance. There, $100 is currently equivalent to more than 1,900 Turkish Lira, with the recent series of earthquakes weakening an already struggling economy. When McCall left Stanford in 2017, she says she didn’t think much about salary conversions, varying tax regulations and global economic trends. Yet she has learned the impact of differing economic situations.
During the 2021-22 campaign, McCall suited up for the Turkish club Beşiktaş. This season, she opened by playing for the Spanish club Perfumerías Avenida. “I was playing in Istanbul before, and I was paying like $15 for a bunch of groceries, versus when I went to Spain for that same bunch of groceries I was paying like $60,” she says. “I wish I was definitely more knowledgeable about that when I first came out of college and going into professional basketball.”
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McCall began her professional career with KSC Szekszard in Hungary, making around $60,000. She spent the following three seasons with the club, and says her salary increased by about $10,000 each season. With Beşiktaş, she earned around six-figures. This season with Avenida and Turkish club Botaş, her contracts added up to around $110,000.
This past WNBA offseason, Turkey featured the most robust market for top players looking to compete abroad, with clubs like eventual EuroLeague champions Fenerbahçe and Çukurova Mersin rostering players like top WNBA stars Breanna Stewart, Chelsea Gray, Jonquel Jones, Emma Meesseman. Still, it is believed the country’s top clubs paid a fraction of what Ekaterinburg, which like all Russian teams was banned from EuroLeague competition this year, has usually offered the sport’s stars. In past years, China has been another country in which prominent international players have received salaries often in the $150,000-500,000 range per season. Part of that is because the WCBA is exclusive, however, allowing only two foreigners per team, driving up the price for highly sought after players. But China has remained closed to international players because of its zero COVID-19 policy, though multiple agents expect the market to return for next year’s overseas campaign.
Even the Russian market is not as lucrative as some might suspect. In addition to its advantageous salaries, Ekaterinburg, controlled by Andrei Kozitsyn and Iskander Makhmudov, the billionaire co-founders of a mining company, has treated its players to charter air travel, individual translators and lush living arrangements. “They pay you a lot of money. But they take care of you,” says Minnesota Lynx guard Kayla McBride, who played there from 2018-19. Rival teams Nika Syktyvkar, Dynamo Kursk and Nadezhda Orenburg are regularly among the top spenders too. Yet those teams “are not even in the same zip code (as Ekaterinburg),” says one agent.
Entering this season with a diminished overseas landscape, fewer teams were bidding on some of the world’s top talent so the market generally shrunk. A number of current or former WNBA All-Stars told The Athletic that their salaries, including bonuses, could have climbed to low six-figures this past overseas season. Some players said they were making half as much as in the past. “It’s just been a wild time since I entered professional basketball,” says McCall, who made her professional debut in the summer of 2017.
The realities of the market thereby prompt more answers to the question of what it would take for the WNBA to keep more players in the U.S. during the offseason. “It goes beyond just increasing wages,” one of the agents says. “There’s so many other things that have to happen for people to stay. It’s not just a financial choice.”
Potential CBA negotiations over the next 24 months likely will make those factors more evident, but some could range from the minute, such as year-round, team-supplied housing, to facets that are more broad, such as what opportunities players have to develop their games stateside. Decisions about where to play overseas are also often deeply personal, and some relish the competition or chance to travel abroad.
“I feel like I’ve always gotten better playing in EuroLeague,” McBride says.
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“I enjoy both things,” says Chicago Sky guard Marina Mabrey, who spent the winter playing for Famila Wuber Schio in Italy. “I know that one day I’m gonna get to tell my kids that your mom has been all over the world.”
In an era of prioritization, where players on non-rookie contracts will be punished for missing days during training camp starting this spring, the league continues to try and create reasons for players to stay year-round. Marketing opportunities are another factor that could lead to more players opting against winters playing overseas.
Ten players signed player marketing agreements this offseason, and although no player can make more than $250,000 from it, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said a player taking part in the league’s marketing agreements could earn as much as $700,000 in a season. (The Athletic reported in December that no player has reached that tier.)
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Additional team marketing agreements, where individual teams can spend as much as $100,000 per year and no less than half that, can provide more revenue streams to players, but that structure has another pitfall. Multiple sources told The Athletic that if a player changes teams in the middle of said agreement, whether that be via trade or free agency, the team marketing agreement is terminated.
McCall points to a different factor entirely when asked what beyond money could lead to more players staying in the U.S. “I think another issue is the league is only four months,” she says.
WNBA teams will play an all-time high of 40 games this year, and game. play can stretch into mid-October, depending on postseason performances. But a W campaign is still less than half the year, and by that point, players whose WNBA seasons have ended are starting to board planes to other countries. Another paycheck awaits.
The “No Offseason” series is part of a partnership with Google Pixel. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; Photo of Emma Meesseman: Courtesy of FIBA.basketball)
