Isaac
Years ago

Marbury earns double total WNBA, doing nothing

Here's something that just doesn't feel right at all. Spotted at SimononSports is mention of a WNBA team's salary cap - US$803,000. That's fine. Minimum wage for a player is US$35k, or around US$50k for someone with a bit of experience - I bet most of our WNBL players would love that.

Now, multiply that by the 13 teams in the WNBA and you have around US$10.5m.

Meanwhile, Stephon Marbury, doing bugger all, is earning US$21,937,000 this season. That's double what 130+ professional female basketball players get in a televised league.

Sure, the NBA players draw bigger crowds, sponsorship, TV deals and play more games (and I think the NBA funds any shortfall from the WNBA), but it just doesn't seem that wonderful that a supposed locker-room cancer can rack up that sort of cash to sit on his arse when an entire league of players in the partner league accumulate half that.

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DICKO
Years ago

Women's basketball sucks

*runs and hides*

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Black Dracula
Years ago

"We no can dunk, but good fundamentals. That more fun to watch."

*Uproarious laughter*

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Peter
Years ago

Ask an economist what Stephon Marbury is worth and they'll tell you - "whatever someone is willing to pay for it". Ask them what the WNBA is worth and you'll get the same answer.

The bottom line is that monetary values in no way reflect the true value of things - circumstances have a lot to do with it. I refuse to pay $3 for a bottle of water when I can get it free from the tap. But, if I'm in teh desert with $3million and no tap, you can have $3million if you give me that bottle of water.

So, Isaac, while I agree with your moral judgement on the relative values of the WNBA and Stephon Marbury (whom I don't know anything about, BTW), the economic fact is some fool is happy to give the latter all that money, so that's what he's worth.

Just quietly, my view is that it wouldn't matter if he was the nicest team player in the world, I wouldn't give him that much money unless I was back in the desert and he had the bottle of water.

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Isaac
Years ago

Peter - I do agree with all of that. I guess I was trying to highlight the crazy situation where someone can be paid so much money not to play while countless others are running around for far less - it's more a factoid than anything supposed to re-raise the earning in sport of men-vs-women.

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Peter
Years ago

Yes - it's really reminiscent of the discussion in Catch-22 about US farmers being paid NOT to grow alfalfa in the 30s. One has to read it to appreciate it but the basic tenet was a farmer was gettign paid not to grow alfalfa and used that money to buy more land, so he was not growing more alfalfa and got paid more moaney and bought more land and so forth!

Brilliant book - one of my all time favourites.

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Peter
Years ago

Another thought - could one look at the Marbury thing as a kind of golden handcuff? i.e., paying someone not to do something in order to keep them on your books and stop them doing it for someone else.

I know of one company (in Australia) that did this about 12 months ago when a group of their employees resigned to join a competitor. The company enforced its contractual right to keep those employees (on normal pay) for 3 months, I think it was, and paid them to stay at home doing nothing.

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Isaac
Years ago

In Marbury's case, I think the contract is just screwing his current team.

Bought Catch 22 the other month so will keep an eye out for that bit.

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jules
Years ago

It's entirely New York's fault, Marbury has done nothing wrong in my opinion

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twenty four
Years ago

Well your opinion sucks then...

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billo
Years ago

Peter, it's pretty common in the UK that a person gives their 4 weeks notice and resigns from their job but their employer doesn't want them in the office during that time so they get paid to not come to work. One condition, you're not allowed to start another job during that time. It's called gardening leave and it's my biggest non-sexual fantasy, closely followed by getting a fat redundancy payout when you've already got a new job lined up. Unfortuately none of these luxuries are afforded to a contracting gun for hire such as myself.

(Mod: "biggest non-sexual fantasy" - funny stuff.)

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Hoops

Marbury earns double total WNBA, doing nothing

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