00:00You make what your league affords basically. So the WNBA has not been a profitable league or a highly profitable league over the course of the last decade or more. And that needs to change. But in order for that to change people will need to go to the games and they'll need to watch them on television.
00:21A week ago when it was revealed what Caitlyn would be making, I think around $78,000, there was a lot of outrage. And my response to that is, OK, go to games. Go to games and the numbers will go up.
00:35But the problem that I pointed out relative to Caitlyn Clark is also a problem in the NBA where they make a lot of money and the NFL where they make even more than that, which is the rookie salary scale in all of those sports is odious.
00:51It's the worst thing ever introduced in any of those sports. It was conceived by gutless NBA owners back in the 90s who were afraid of paying Glenn Robinson and other players like him a lot of money on the off chance they might not become stars.
01:07Very few of the players, including Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway and Jason Kidd and Grant Hill, failed to become stars. It was a very productive time for players entering the league, but the NBA got scared. And so they introduced the rookie salary scale and players made less money, but they also had less incentive to be great.
01:28They had less incentive to enter the NBA as great and ready NBA players. So you know what happened, Scott? Players got worse. They got worse. They weren't as good over the next several years. They haven't been as good entering the NBA over the course of the last 30 years as they were during the period when players like Shaq and Penny and those guys were going into the NBA.
01:53They cut off their nose to spite their face. And so what did the NFL do? They decided to do the same thing. The WNBA, same thing. Now, it doesn't hurt those leagues as much in terms of the development process because they have restrictions on when you can enter, but it's still a bad look for a player like Caitlin Clark to not be able to negotiate a salary that she is worth, but to be stuck with whatever they assigned.
02:18She should be coming into the WNBA making the WNBA's max because she is going to pay for her salary. This is true, Scott. She's going to more than pay for her entire salary in one home game. One home game and relative to Caitlin Clark, the Indiana fever will already be well into the black. That's absurd. She should be able to earn what she's worth relative to the salary cap fine.
02:45The max contract, I think, is $240,000, $248,000. That's what she should be getting.
