What is Alyssa Thomas -- and the other players in the WNBA -- truly worth today?

It's more than $250,000!

In 2025, the highest paid player in the WNBA only makes $249,244.

In 1973 – or more than 50 years ago – the Buffalo Braves of the Men’s National Basketball Association (MNBA) signed Ernie DiGregorio to a contract that guaranteed him $500,000 per year.

In 2025 dollars (i.e. adjusted for inflation) that contract is worth $3.5 million. Of course, in 1973 dollars (i.e. the dollars DiGregorio actually saw) he was seeing twice as many dollars as any WNBA player today!

Soon after Ernie DiGregorio signed this contract, the Buffalo Braves went out of business. The MNBA soon followed. This explains why you have never heard of this contract, the Braves, or the MNBA!!

Okay, I made that last paragraph up. The Braves became the Clippers. Yes, very much around. And obviously the NBA is still doing amazingly well. Paying Ernie DiGregorio $500,000 in 1973 very much did not cause the NBA to go out of business.

The story of Ernie DiGregorio’s pay in 1973 makes it very obvious that WNBA players in 2025 are being paid very poorly. And because the NBA owns more than 60% of the WNBA, the NBA is primarily responsible for this outcome.

Or to put it plainly, the NBA is paying the women they employ to play basketball less than they paid men more than five decades ago. And the means the NBA has a massive gender-wage gap.

What would pay be, though, if the NBA decided to close this massive gender-wage gap?

In Slaying the Trolls – published in May of 2024 -- we tried to answer this question (given what we knew at that time about league revenues). And a few months ago, I gave a talk – which you can view on YouTube -- where I updated this answer.

Both sources – as well as this paper from 2024 -- explain how one can determine what players should be paid once you know league revenue. In the past few days, we have learned quite a bit more about WNBA revenue. And according to reports from Forbes and Sportico, WNBA revenue is now about $300 million.

If the WNBA were the NBA, about 50% of this revenue would go to the players. This means, the players would be splitting $150 million. What would this split look like for each individual player?

Because we haven’t even reached the halfway point of the 2025 season, let’s use player performance data in 2024 to think about player value today. More specifically, let’s imagine the 2024 players had $150 million in revenue to split. With 156 players logging minutes last year, average salary – yes, this is just average – would be $961,538. Or as I have said before, $1 million should be the average wage in the WNBA.

Of course, everyone can’t be average. Some players are only good enough to be paid the minimum. In the NBA, the minimum salary in 2024-25 is about 10% of the average. The WNBA salary scale, though, is far more compressed. The minimum salary in the WNBA is 54% of the average. If the WNBA continued with its current approach, every player would be guaranteed $522,004.

Imagine a world where the WNBA guaranteed all of its players $522,004 and then allocated the rest of the money according to how many wins each player produced. In 2024, the “rest of the money” (i.e. the $150 million in player money NOT allocated to minimum wages) would be $68.6 million. Given how many wins the players collectively produced, the value of each win would be $263,264.

Given all these numbers, determining the value of a player is fairly easy. For example, last year Alyssa Thomas produced 12 wins for the Connecticut Sun.

For those who are interested, wins produced is explained at Rod Fort’s Sports Business Page. One should note, though, that the calculation of Wins Produced in 2024 does include a measure of individual player defense (this is explained in that aforementioned YouTube talk).

Source of picture: https://herhoopstats.substack.com/p/wnba-trivia-challenge-alyssa-thomas

Given this production of wins – and the value of a win – the value of Thomas would be as follows:

Value of Alyssa Thomas = Minimum Wage + Value of Wins * Wins Produced

OR

Value of Alyssa Thomas = $522,004 + $263,264* 12 = $3,677,665

Thomas is a very big reason for the Phoenix Mercury improving in 2025 (and her departure is a big reason the Connecticut Sun are not very good!). For all she does for the Mercury, the team pays her $215,000. Once again, she is paid less than top NBA players were paid more than fifty years ago. And at that time, the NBA didn’t have $300 million in revenue (it only had about $30 million).

Obviously, Thomas is not the only WNBA player who is missing millions from their paychecks. The following table reports what the ten most productive players in 2024 would be paid if the WNBA was sharing 50% of its 2025 revenue today.

As you can see, Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson are both worth more than $3 million. And players like Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart are worth more than $2 million.

All of this assume the WNBA continues to compress wages. What if the WNBA decided to only give its minimum wage players 10% of the league’s average pay (like the NBA did in 2024-25)? If that happens, the WNBA minimum wage is $96,154 and the value of a win jumps to $518,332. Given these numbers, the value of Thomas is $6.3 million! And Clark and Wilson are worth more than $5 million per year.

The entire exercise is only looking at revenues right now. With a new media deal signed and more league expansion, WNBA revenues will likely be much higher by the end of the decade. So, what you see in these tables is very much below what WNBA stars will be worth in the next few years.

With the collective bargaining agreement now open, the NBA has an opportunity to truly treat the men and women they employ equally. This little exercise should give everyone an idea what equal actually looks like. And yes, closing the massive gender-wage gap requires a truly dramatic increase in the pay of WNBA players.

Will this happen? Well, last May ESPN argued that maybe the new maximum pay in the WNBA will approach one million dollars. One suspects the source for this number was someone in the NBA. If that is all the NBA intends to do, WNBA players will finally make more than Ernie DiGregorio saw in 1973. But they will make far less than what players like DiGregorio actually made once we adjust for inflation. And that means, if the NBA only intends to go this far, the massive gender-wage gap is still going to be alive and well.