NBA players have been swimming in cash for years, but the same cannot be said about their WNBA counterparts. The women earn a small fraction of what the men do, and the situation was even worse a couple of decades ago. How bad was it? Well, Candace Parker revealed on her Post Moves podcast that she got a check of $12.34 from the league once during her rookie season after she had been involved in an on-court brawl.
“That first check I got, though, I’m not going to lie,” Parker said. “When I got to the WNBA, I was like, ‘Who the hell is FICA?’ Because FICA taking way too much money… When we got in that fight in Detroit, and I was suspended for the Connecticut game the next day, I wish I would have had a camera phone or take a picture… My check was $12.34.”
Co-host Aliyah Boston hilariously stated that the WNBA shouldn’t have bothered giving that check. Parker thinks of it as a funny story now, but you’d imagine she wasn’t all too happy at the time.
The Los Angeles Sparks had selected Parker with the first pick of the 2008 WNBA Draft, and to say she didn’t get a lucrative deal would be an understatement. According to Andscape, she signed a $44,000 rookie-scale WNBA contract.
For comparison, Sportac states that Derrick Rose, the first pick of the 2008 NBA Draft, signed a two-year, $10 million deal with the Chicago Bulls that year. Now, of course, there is no insinuation here that Parker should have gotten a similar amount. The NBA was and is a much bigger league, but this shows how vast the monetary gap was.
Parker then did her pockets no favors by getting embroiled in an infamous brawl during a game between the Sparks and the Detroit Shock on July 22, 2008, at The Palace of Auburn Hills. You can check it out below.
It’s unclear what fines were handed out for this, but 11 individuals were suspended. Shock’s Plenette Pierson got the biggest suspension of four games. Parker, meanwhile, was gone for a game. So, she wasn’t going to be paid for that one. Add in a potential fine, and you get $12.34.
Parker would end up playing 16 seasons in the WNBA, and while she has gone down as one of the highest earners in league history, she didn’t make as much as you’d imagine. According to Spotrac, she made $1,062,500 over her last eight seasons. We’re talking about a player here who won three titles, one Finals MVP, and two MVPs in her career.
The situation is better now, but the WNBA players still want more. That is why we might be headed to a lockout.
In the 2025 season, the minimum salary in the WNBA was $66,079, while supermax was $249,244. As for the salary cap, it was $1,507,100.
According to ESPN, the WNBA’s last reported offer in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) negotiations was to increase the minimum salary to more than $250,000 and the max to over $1.3 million. It would grow to nearly $2 million over the life of the deal. The salary cap, not including the revenue-sharing payouts, would be $5 million in the first year and would grow in line with revenue growth in the years after.
The players’ union, on the other hand, put up a proposal on Nov. 28, 2025, with a projected salary cap of approximately $12.5 million. They wanted the max salary raised to $2.5 million.
More recently, the union proposed a salary cap closer to $10.5 million, but no deal was struck by the Jan. 9 deadline. The two sides have now reached an agreement on a moratorium for league business.
