Doyel: WNBA All-Star was like other All-Star games, but with demands — from players and fans

Indianapolis Star

4 days ago

INDIANAPOLIS – The drama, the fire, happened 20 minutes before tipoff of the 2025 WNBA All-Star Game. There would be no drama, no fire, during the game of course. We're talking about practice, I mean an All-Star Game, know what I'm saying? And the 21st All-Star Game in WNBA history bore no resemblance to drama, to fire — it bore little resemblance to basketball, frankly — which means it looked a lot like every NBA All-Star game you ever saw.
Kind of a bummer, really.
Honesty is OK, right? Treating WNBA players like the entrepreneurs, the social influencers, the budding business moguls they are — that's what they want, right? To be treated equally to the men?
Let's do that here, and while we're doing that — way up high in the story, before you get bored and start looking for that Kiss Cam video of the Astronomer CEO — let's note the most glaring problem with what we saw Saturday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. And it wasn't the basketball played by the WNBA All-Stars.
It was the shirt the WNBA All-Stars wore during warmups.
Well, hang on. That's not exactly right. The shirt wasn't the problem. Nor was the message. Now, some folks on social media — other influencers, the dumb kind, with their dumb followers — were attacking WNBA players for the message, even if the message provided the only drama, the only fire, of the night.
Here's the message, written in bright white letters on black shirts provided by the WNBA Players Association and worn by every player on each team:
Pay us what you owe us
As far as messages go, that's a strong one. Score one for WNBA players under the leadership of WNBPA president Nneka Ogwumike, an All-Star representing the Seattle Storm. Ogwumike and other players have used this All-Star Weekend, the most hyped All-Star Weekend in league history, to plant seeds for the coming labor fight with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, who seems outflanked at every turn but has been getting away with it because, let's be honest — that's OK here, remember? — people weren't paying that much attention to the WNBA before, oh, last season.
That was Caitlin Clark's rookie season with the Indiana Fever.
The world is watching the games now, and the world isn't watching to see how Cathy Engelbert's league will get outflanked next — that's just a bonus. The world is watching because WNBA players have a bigger profile, a bigger following, a bigger impact than ever before.
Pay them what you owe them.
This weekend has been fabulous for Indianapolis, and instructive for the WNBA.
Fabulous for Indianapolis? Check this tweet from Chicago Sky All-Star Angel Reese, who shook the social media world with an eight-word tweet your kids can translate for you:
we in indy but it feel like miami LMFAOOO
Put that on a billboard, Visit Indy.
Or run a clip of Caitlin Clark at a news conference Saturday night, less than two hours before tipoff, when she spoke about the way our city nailed this WNBA event.
'The weekend has been absolutely incredible,' Clark was saying, 'and I hope every player in this league, whether you're participating in the game tonight or were in the 3-point competition or skills competition or were just here to enjoy All-Star Weekend — I hope they felt the same and felt the love from the city. Pacers Sports and Entertainment poured in so much time and money and effort to really make this best WNBA All-Star (weekend) there's been in this league. And I'm pretty positive it's been that.'
Here in humble lil' Indianapolis, players had a blast partying. Well, it sure looked that way to anyone following Studbudz on Twitch. Do those last three words — Studbudz on Twitch — make no sense to you? Ask your kids. Or maybe their kids.
But believe this: Players were blown away by the turnout Friday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, which was almost completely full for an event that had no musical concert, no dunk contest, no game action, no Caitlin Clark, no real reason for fans to show up. But they showed up, just to watch a skills competition and 3-point shooting contest. And then, 70 minutes later, they were asked to leave.
You don't have to go home, WNBA folks were telling the crowd, but you can't stay here.
And boy did Cathy Engelbert hear about that from fans later.
'After the hour and 10 minutes (Friday) night,' Engelbert was saying during a pregame news conference Saturday, 'I was thinking, 'These fans want more.''
Was she really thinking it, or did the realization hit her later, when WNBA fans kept approaching her to deliver a message after the 70-minute event?
'We want more W,' fans kept telling her.
Pay them what they're owed, Commish.
So, about this game.
A single foul in the first quarter tells you all you need to know. A'ja Wilson of Team Napheesa Collier was dribbling up the court when she was met by Kelsey Plum of Team Caitlin Clark. Plum playfully puts her left shoulder into Wilson and starts pushing until Wilson is dribbling out of bounds, near the spot where Pacers guard Bennedict Mathurin is sitting courtside. Now a whistle is blowing and everyone's laughing.
So what's so special about that single foul in the first quarter? Only this: It was the only foul of the first quarter. This game had defense like the NBA All-Star game — most depressingly, the 2024 NBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis — which is to say, it had no defense. None.
The only people on the court I saw wiping sweat from their face with those Official WNBA Towels were the three game officials, and that's because they felt they had to run up and down the court. (They didn't, not really. One foul was called in the first quarter, remember?) The players didn't bother with all that running. On one possession, as Team Clark was heading up the court on offense, power forward Kiki Iriafen spotted one of those little red Nerf-like balls — a giveaway ball for fans — rolling onto the court. She stopped in the backcourt, picked up the ball and trotted it over to a fan in the first row. No, not to Bennedict Mathurin!
It's not like Team Clark missed her. While Iriafen was cleaning up the court, Gabby Williams was chucking a 34-footer.
This was a game like the NBA All-Star Game is a game. Meaning, it was a branding opportunity for the league and players. The league put four four-point spots on the court, well beyond the 3-point arc, with this fine little twist: The spots were marked by the AT&T logo. Every time a player made a 4-pointer, the AT&T jingle sounded on the scoreboard.
Yeah.
Angel Reese, meanwhile, used the game to debut her signature shoe, a pink pair of Reebok Angel 1 'Mebounds.' It's called 'Mebounds' because Reese leads the league in rebounds in no small part because she leads the league in offensive rebounds — in no small part because she keeps grabbing her misses until she scores.
Unveiling a shoe? That's great. That's also business, which is what WNBA players used this weekend to promote. They happily discussed with media the coming labor discussions with a league that has seen TV ratings and apparel revenue skyrocket in the past two years — that's since Caitlin Clark turned pro; there are no coincidences — but a league that has never shared much of its winnings with the players.
Put it like this: NBA players get 50% of the revenue generated in their league. WNBA players? They get half that — 25% — and that's only if the league hits its 'cumulative revenue target' for the season.
The super-max WNBA salary is $250,000, which is how much Shai-Gilgeous Alexander will earn for about 18 minutes of each game over the course of his super-max contract extension of four years and $272.4 million.
Do WNBA players generate the same type of revenue as NBA players? No. While the WNBA recently landed an 11-year, $2.2 billion media rights deal, more than triple its previous contract, the NBA will soon begin its gaudy 11-year deal worth, um, $76 billion.
Nobody's suggesting Sabrina Ionescu get the $829,000 per game Shai-Gilgeous Alexander will earn. But how about $829,000 per season? That too much to ask?
After this game — we were going to talk about the game, remember? — the fans who stayed for the whole thing at Gainbridge Fieldhouse began chanting in unison, a message for perennially outflanked WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert:
Pay them
Pay them
Pay them
'It was a very powerful moment,' Napheesa Collier said of those impromptu chants.
'I got chills,' said Kelsey Plum.
Well, they know this strange truth: WNBA players often earn more from their side deals than they earn for their life's vocation. Before the game, a reporter asked Clark how much more she earned from sponsorships — like her deal with State Farm — than her WNBA salary. Clark is way too polished to go there. But she went here instead:
"Honestly, I feel like that's where we're really fortunate — is that we have those other deals,' Clark said. 'And I think that's one of the things we're in the room fighting for. Like (Collier) said, we should be paid more, and hopefully that's the case moving forward as the league continues to grow.'
Growth is good, but can be painful. This All-Star Game, for example. It looked awfully familiar, emphasis on awful — Team Collier won 151-131, if you care, which you don't — with the teams combining for 120 attempts from 3-point range, compared to 91 inside the arc, even as players were making 75.8% of their undefended shots inside the arc.
What's the big deal? Well, NBA fans are growing tired of the apathetic NBA All-Star Game, same as NFL fans grew so tired of the apathetic Pro Bowl that the league scrapped it for some flag football nonsense, same as hockey fans grew so tired of the apathetic NHL All-Star Game that the league scrapped it for an international event.
The WNBA can't afford for its fans to get tired of the WNBA All-Star Game, you dig? The league doesn't have enough history, hasn't built up enough goodwill, to turn its midseason showcase into a joke. Unless the league is growing so large that it can survive just fine with an All-Star Game where players stop competing until fans stop watching.
And if the league is growing that large, well, it's like the T-shirts said.
Pay us what you owe us
And it's like the crowd here in Indianapolis said.
Pay them
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Threads, or on BlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.