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.
Tiffany Hayes recently reflected on things that improve her spirits while playing abroad — something she’s done regularly in her WNBA offseasons since being drafted in 2012. Near the top of her list is relaxing by bodies of water. That’s one reason Hayes has a fondness for her current team this winter in Mersin, Turkey, by the Mediterranean coast. It’s why the former All-Star speaks glowingly about playing for America de Recife, a club on the eastern coast of Brazil. There, in 2014, she lived just a 10-minute cab ride from the beach. If money didn’t matter, she says, “That’s where I would go.”
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But supplementing her income was important to the 33-year-old guard when deciding after college if, and where, she would play internationally. Hayes won national championships at UConn in 2009 and 2010. As she’s watched the current generation of well-known Huskies financially benefit from their name, image and likeness while in college, she’s wondered how her career would have been different if she could have received those same benefits when she played. “It definitely would have changed a lot about how I thought about going overseas, the way I even played overseas,” says Hayes, who was traded last week from the Atlanta Dream to the Connecticut Sun.
In 2021, following a Supreme Court decision against the NCAA that stopped nearly all of its restrictions on athletes’ abilities to profit from their NIL, college athletes began legally accepting money for use of their personal branding. According to Opendorse, a leading NIL platform, women’s basketball players have been among those who have profited the most. Nearly 16 percent of NIL compensation is distributed to athletes in the sport, per its June 2022 report, behind only football and men’s basketball.
Thanks to NIL, Rhyne Howard, last year’s WNBA No. 1 pick, benefited financially during her final season at Kentucky. Yet, she is still playing abroad, like players decades before her. She’s competing in Schio, Italy, a quaint town in the northern countryside far from the limelight, where a recent census recorded a population of less than 40,000 people. By competing in the EuroLeague, on Italy’s top team, Howard makes the bulk of her yearly on-court income. She says she’s become more comfortable dealing with physicality, which will help her in the U.S., but notes that “not many rookies went overseas this year. And we only had that one year of NIL.”
Most WNBA first-round picks compete in America in their first season, making around $70,000 depending on where they are selected, while weighing what to do in the winter. Second-rounders, third-rounders and undrafted players make even less during their debut WNBA campaigns, and that’s assuming they don’t get cut. The league has, at most, 144 roster spots. More often, due to salary cap restrictions, only 134 to 138 are occupied at a given time. The reality is that for players taken after No. 12, a career as a professional women’s basketball player more often means spending time abroad, with perhaps occasional stints in the WNBA sprinkled in.
GO DEEPER
The offseason is a grind for WNBA players who compete overseas. More are deciding to stay home
Extended time away from family in unfamiliar environments can sway many from playing internationally. At the same time, overseas veterans cite the benefits of global travel and playing against high-level competition, along with the financial gains. The two conflicting approaches make the landscape of overseas basketball complex. Yet with the advent of NIL, the number of Americans who will choose to play abroad, and where they end up, appears ripe for change. Perhaps having earned money while in college, future generations of WNBA players won’t elect to travel for a second paycheck, and they’d get an offseason after all. “That,” Hayes says, “would’ve been huge for me as a person.”
Kiki Rice is still years away from deciding whether she wants to play in such places as Mersin or Schio, or just train stateside during a WNBA offseason. The UCLA freshman has always dreamed of playing in the W. Overseas basketball is something she says she can see herself trying, but it isn’t exactly a goal.
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Rice is Jordan Brand’s first NIL athlete. Speaking inside UCLA’s pristine Mo Ostin Basketball Center after a mid-January practice, she says that working with the renowned apparel company has been a “great opportunity,” and not just because of access to Jordan 1s and 4s — “they are pretty swaggy,” she says. She recognizes a stint abroad has been commonplace for WNBA players, but she acknowledges she could opt against overseas play if “I don’t feel like I need that extra money.”
NIL has changed numerous dynamics around the sport of college basketball. USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb says it adds another factor to the recruiting process. It also affects when a player might leave school. Unlike men’s players leaving college early for potentially lucrative NBA contracts, top women’s players might make more by staying put and collecting on their NIL deals.
Gottlieb says a number of WNBA coaches she has spoken with this year have “no idea who’s coming out or not, because now there’s a lot more decisions to make.” Some of the best juniors and seniors in college basketball, including South Carolina senior Aliyah Boston, could in theory elect to return to school for an additional year of eligibility because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Doing so would likely have financial benefits.
Boston’s NIL worth appears to be substantial, having worked with Crocs footwear, Under Armour and Bojangles, plus being part of a team-wide sponsorship with Slate Milk. While becoming the immediate face of the Indiana Fever (who own the No. 1 pick in April’s WNBA Draft) would surely present some additional marketing opportunities, the reigning national champion Gamecocks are unquestionably a bigger brand. UConn star Paige Bueckers, who has deals with Gatorade, StockX and Cash App, will face a similar calculus when it’s time for her to weigh whether to enter the 2024 draft. For both players and for countless others, there is much to be gained from a basketball perspective by joining the pro ranks and leaving March Madness behind.
GO DEEPER
UConn star Paige Bueckers could stay for an eventual fifth season or jump to the WNBA
UCLA coach Cori Close says she expects her players to average between $50,000 and $70,000 apiece in NIL deals every season. “That’s what we’re trying for,” Close says. It’s possible, then, that her star senior guard Charisma Osborne could profit more while in Westwood than in the WNBA, even if she is a late first-round draft pick. But with the advent of NIL, Osborne and her fellow potential 2023 draftees could also elect to enter the WNBA and then choose not to play abroad.
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“It gives you more options,” says UCLA graduate assistant Jaelynn Penn, who had a few NIL deals during her final season as a player last year. “There’s not just that one option of you having to go overseas.”
Gottlieb says “as college coaches we’re navigating a lot more” because of NIL. The Trojans coach is now accustomed to having conversations with seniors about what their WNBA prospects actually are, and what overseas basketball might be like for them. She tells them to reflect on their priorities, consider what kind of environment they want to play in, and think about if they would be making as much money as they can when deciding what club to sign with. She adds: “We talk a lot about using the degree, using the resources to make networking connections.”
Gottlieb often asks another question to her players turning pro: “Is (playing overseas) going to enrich my life or is it going to be a burden being away from family and friends?”
In the age of NIL, when athletes can save and earn money in college like never before, answers to that might be different than they once were.
Three-time WNBA All-Star Kayla McBride wants to open a restaurant when her playing career ends. Playing with Istanbul’s Fenerbahçe since 2020, she’s grown especially fond of Turkish tea, lentils, rice pilaf with chicken and a traditional Turkish breakfast — a spread consisting of cured meats, fresh cheeses, dips, sauces and jams, cucumbers, tomatoes and olives. Through her more than half-decade abroad, the 30-year-old Minnesota Lynx guard says she’s grown fond of food from various cultures.
McBride says that at the start of her career, “overseas was, for me, a way to make more money. But it turned into something bigger.” In addition to the sights she’s seen, she says she “wouldn’t trade” some of the high-leverage EuroLeague action she’s faced. McBride says her game has improved while abroad. All that plus the different languages, lifestyles and people she’s encountered have led to a largely positive review of her time outside the U.S. “For young players, I always tell them to come overseas because it’s uncomfortable,” she says. “But you get better from it, and not just as a basketball player, but as a person.”
What a player takes away from their playing experience abroad is deeply individual, however. And McBride says that had she been able to benefit financially from NIL while playing at Notre Dame from 2010–2014, she’s not sure she would have played in EuroLeague as long as she has. Suiting up year-round, season after season, takes a physical toll. Perhaps paychecks in college would have led to more rest down the line.
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Several pro players say they think that collegians with some money in hand might elect to stay home entirely when faced with an overseas choice. Or, they could go play half-seasons abroad, spending January through March there, much like what two-time WNBA Finals MVP Breanna Stewart did this winter. That could be a way to experience new cultures, get in game shape and earn money, all while trying to manage burnout.
Others might choose to play in different locations. Hayes wonders whether, had she been able to profit in college, she would have spent more than just a single WNBA offseason playing in Brazil, where she relished trying fresh coconuts and experiencing Recife’s carnival. “Places that are on the water, I would try all those places,” she says. “I would travel the world and not have to worry about the money. I’m going there to just play basketball.”
This story was reported from Istanbul, Turkey; Mersin, Turkey; Schio, Italy; and Los Angeles.
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: Katherine Lotze / Getty Images)
