WNBA thread… 28.5 ain’t your pay cut

Interesting. I know the WNBA players have long played overseas during the offseason to supplement their income, but is there a market for a second women's league in the USA?

https://www.si.com/wnba/uconn-star-paige-bueckers-inks-nil-deal-with-unrivaled

 

It's a 3x3 league outside of the WNBA schedule. I guess a lot of these players were already playing "sanctioned" 3x3 events. Maybe this is just a more organized version.

 

The men's Olympic 3-on-3 uses a slightly smaller ball than the pros do. I would guess that makes it a complete non-starter for any player still chasing a traditional pro basketball career. I have no idea if it's different for the women.

 

I cannot eyeball a difference between a men's ball and a 28.5 women's ball. You have to look at the label on the ball. I have seen a high school boys' game stopped a minute in once when it was somehow realized they were playing with a 28.5 ball.

 

Chiming in to agree with MileHigh - If you play a lot of hoops, it's noticeable almost immediately. Much easier to palm and to shoot, once you get used to the slight difference in feel.

 

I coach my kid's rec basketball team in a pretty loosey-goosey league, and we sometimes wind up playing against girls teams when they need us to for scheduling purposes. Usually they match boys teams up with older girls to make it a little more fair, but it was a same-age matchup and we were clearly going to beat them down, so we used the girls ball to at least throw them some kind of a bone.

I had one ringer-type player, my kid's best friend, who plays on an AAU team and played for the middle-school team last year. I actually pulled him after he took a couple of jumpers in the first quarter, and when he came to the bench I said, "Stud Player, you know good and well your AAU coach doesn't want you taking jumpers with a girls ball. Get to the rim."

 

WE BACK BABY

 

I've watched a lot of the Indiana Fever this year, and I am pretty convinced that Clark would be averaging one more assist per game, and one less turnover per game if Katie Lou Samuelson wasn't on her team.

 

Katie Lou Samuelson had a DNP CD tonight, and 6 scoreless minutes the prior game. I could maybe be a WNBA coach.

 

The Fever sit at 16-16. Bringing the White Sox up to a .500 record might be more impressive, but not by much. They have been wretched for almost a decade.