Most Public Pontificating About Caitlin Clark's WNBA Salary...
Inevitably Relies on Multiple Layers of Pretending and Denial
As expected, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was the first pick—by the Indiana Fever—in the 2024 WNBA draft, an event that was the most-watched of its kind in WNBA history. This is all good for both Clark and the future of the WNBA, of course, and yet, it also brought out the progressive memes about gender and pay. Clark will start her professional career with a modest-ish $76,535 salary, a number that could progressively increase to as much as $97,582 in a potential fourth season. These are the facts, but what follows the facts on places like Instagram tend to be incredible acts of dishonesty, predicated on pretending not to understand basic facts about biology and economics and the like.
This issue is one of several that highlight the tensions someone like me has with contemporary Democrats and the people who line up to vote for them, even though I have been a women’s basketball fan at least since the Notre Dame women won the NCAA Championship in 2001. I was thrilled to get on the Clark bandwagon at the end of her college career, and I want there to be a thriving women’s professional league. I am, in other words, the choir for the kind of person you would want on your side if you were really going to advocate for the game and its players. All you would need from me is basic intellectual honesty. But apparently that’s too much to ask.
The arguments that get put forward publicly with straight faces by people who know better depend heavily on a kind of social shaming that aims to prevent people from stating the obvious. Right or wrong, to say these things is mean. Well, I happen to think the degree we can get to fairness and justice is the degree to which we can be honest about the actual situation and to consider the complexities of nature, so I am going to say these things even though I am not supposed to say them. So here is a brief list of the obvious problems with supposed claims that we’re supposed to accept in order to get on board with the idea that Caitlin Clark should basically earn the same amount of money as this year’s first pick in the NBA Draft:
Clark’s basic condition is that of the victim, the oppressed, and it’s somehow representative of the larger situation. Never mind for now that this woman earned more than three million dollars in NIL money as a college student, and that her actual earnings as a pro will be way higher than $76K (due to endorsements). Or that Ice Cube is offering Clark $5 million a year to play in a short 3-on-3 league.
Let’s pretend, though, for now that $76,000-97,000 really is the situation. Who among us wouldn’t take that salary to play the game of basketball for a living? My god, many of us—myself included—are way older than Clark and have more formal education and haven’t even come close to those numbers. Why is the NBA player the comparison point? If you want to start a political movement with real economic consequences (as opposed to inflating a lot of people’s sense of righteousness) what you would do is start looking around at the entry-level workers in this country, particularly ones who stay there for a long time. What do they need? I don’t happen to be someone who thinks the role of public policy is to engineer “equal” outcomes in all situations (what would be the point of ambition or innovation at that point?), but I do think one of the things government can (and should!) do is establish and elevate the floor for people’s quality of life (which is different than decimating potential ceilings).
The word “equal” sure does a lot of work these days, and rarely with careful definitions and distinctions about how the word is being used. But when the memes compare Clark’s salary with that of an NBA player, they are taking two things that are literally not equal, pretending they are, and daring you to say out loud that which is obviously true. Like, you know, the NBA and WNBA aren’t the same products. They don’t play against each other. And there is a very good reason that they don’t: they aren’t on the same level. As just one obvious example, the U.S. women’s soccer team—which has been another symbol for gender pay arguments and politics—once lost a preparation match against a U15 boys team.
It’s okay that U.S. women lost to the younger boys! The reason for it is rooted in biology—not chance or hard work—which athletically advantages males (in most instances). Clark shouldn’t be mocked or mistreated because she couldn’t hack it in the NBA, but we shouldn’t be asked to pretend this isn’t true either. And when we’re talking about equality, we should be comparing apples to apples, not apples to oranges.
Now the biggest denial in the silly arguments—and this is not the only issue for which progressive types try to pretend it away—is the presence and workings of economics. Where does money come from? Do we just will it into existence? Well, I suppose the government could print it, and send it over to the WNBA, and then the rest of us could pick up the slack in our taxes. But we would probably see some (reasonable!) resistance to that solution to cash flow problems for WNBA teams. I’ll also confess that I’m not currently looking at the Fever’s budget, and maybe there are areas and places to wiggle some things around, but you’re probably talking at that level about $5,000 extra dollars somewhere for the team’s future star rather than five million.
So what else could we do? Well, the NBA currently subsidizes the WNBA, and perhaps it could do more of that. But this is not U.S. men and women’s soccer in terms of money coming from the same organization. So it’s nice that the two organizations have chosen to work well together out of goodwill, but they’re competitors as much as they are partners. And, well, due to TV viewership and butts-in-seats, the NBA has a lot more money than the WNBA. But the NBA was not always cruising along financially. It was struggling, for example, in the late 1970s. We’re not entitled to professional sports leagues! Not as fans or for players. These leagues actually have to make their numbers work, and that’s as it should be. In this sense, it was very good for the NBA to suddenly have Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and Michael Jordan, players that—some argue, anyway—saved the league. Oh, and by the way, Indiana Fever ticket prices are doubling in anticipation of the Clark effect, and the Las Vegas Aces have moved their game against the Fever to a larger stadium in the hopes of selling more tickets. This is the kind of thing that could move the needle on WNBA salaries! I don’t know if Clark will be the female Michael Jordan, but it sure would be fun if she is.
Short of making the WNBA a public expenditure or an NBA charity, the biggest con of all this virtue signaling is the clever way it leaves ourselves out of the equation. Can’t believe all the bad guys won’t pay Caitlin Clark! ‘Hmm. And when’s the last WNBA game you went to? And bought lots of hot dogs and popcorn at?’ ‘Well, umm, yeah, but…’ We are the consumers! The customers. And the beautiful thing is that we get choices in the matter. I don’t think we should be coerced by shame or law to support anything we’re not that interested in, but if so many people feel this strongly about WNBA salaries, probably the best thing these people could do (way better than lecturing people on LinkedIn!) would be to buy season tickets for the closest WNBA team. And, when possible, to watch their games on TV when they’re playing on the road.