In a perfect Title IX-Martha Burk kind of world, there would be two equal men's and women's professional basketball leagues in which both sets of players were paid the same gobs of money and drew an equal number of fans.
The women would demand raises and/or trades, hold strikes and, for good measure, get arrested for some occasional off-the-court incident. The women would be — and wouldn't this be great? — just like the men.
Reality is another story, of course. Too bad nobody told WNBA players.
In case you missed it — and judging from the interest in the WNBA, you probably did — the players of the WNBA are demanding pay raises and free agency and a few other things
besides, thus setting new standards in professional sports for cluelessness — and that's saying something.
The league is being directly subsidized — at huge a loss — by the NBA, yet last summer, with their collective bargaining agreement about to expire, a group of 100 WNBA players announced they were considering a strike. Great. The Hindenburg is in flames and they're demanding more legroom and an in-flight movie.
David Stern, the NBA/WNBA boss, told the players this week that they have 10 days to accept the contract offered by the league or they can forget the 2003 season.
"These players have no clue," says one former WNBA executive who requests anonymity.
So, here are the Top 10 Clues That It's Probably Not A Good Time For A Strike:
10. The league must be subsidized by the men's league just to exist.
9. You can shoot a shotgun into the stands during a game and not hit a single fan
8. Games are rarely on TV.
7. The average sports fan can't name five female players.
6. The league is so desperate for attention that it actually markets itself to lesbians and the Girl Scouts of America.
5. One franchise (Orlando) is bought by the Mohegan Indian Tribe with plans to play home games in the tribe's casino in Connecticut, allowing fans to play the slots and watch the floor show.
4. Franchises in Miami and Portland die and one in Utah moves to San Antonio.
3. Some teams lose more than $1 million a year.
2. The league is giving away thousands of tickets just to fill the stands and still can't do it, although they do claim inflated attendance figures.
1. Nobody cares if you go on strike.
Look at it this way: If someone gave you a Christmas gift, would you ask them to give you another one, too. These ladies would.
"They have no concept what a good deal this has been for them," says the former exec.
WNBA players think that because the men have million-dollar contracts, so should they, even though they don't generate money and their salaries are paid by the men's league.
Unlike the college ranks, Title IX and the courts can't force equality in the pro leagues or order fans to attend the men's and women's games equally or the networks to give them equivalent billion-dollar contracts. Not yet anyway. If the WNBA players get too problematic, maybe the NBA will decide they're not worth the trouble and drop the league altogether. Isn't this called biting the hand that feeds you?
As one NBA executive says, "It took the men 60 years to get where they are, and the women want the same thing overnight."
Among other things, the players want a $48,000 minimum salary for four months of work; the league is offering $42,000. The players want a salary cap of $10.5 million per team, the league is offering $8.6M. The players want unrestricted free agency for players with five years in the league, the league is offering unrestricted free agency after 10 years in the league.
"We discussed the idea of getting comfortable with a strike," players association president Sonja Henning said last summer. "Of course we love the game but understand it's a business."
Apparently, Henning doesn't understand this is a business. If a business isn't making money, then employees can't ask for raises. The ABL, which the WNBA drove out of business, paid an average salary of $90,000 — and lost $10 million in less than two seasons.
The league is already the beneficiary of special treatment. Name another men's league that pays for a women's league out of its own profits. And the media, which normally justifies its coverage of sports events based on interest, nonetheless gives the WNBA front-page coverage.
The attendance figures that the WNBA boasts are the result of smoke and mirrors. As a former Utah Starzz executive says, "We inflated the numbers. We would announce tickets distributed, not fans in the seats. We could distribute 1,000 tickets at the Boys and Girls Clubs, but they might not get used."
Nobody says this is fair. As Sterns puts it, "Many of these players are the most accomplished in their game. They see the men making so many times more than they make. But that's the nature of the world we live in."
E-mail: drob@desnews.com