Sports Odds & Ends
Travel woes remain a priority for the WNBA that needs addressing ahead of later. The Minnesota Lynx was the newest club to come across travel problems, of their case attempting to get from Minneapolis to a game out east.
The longstanding issue was brought up on the All-Star Game in Chicago earlier this month. WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert told the media, including the MSR, that if needed charter flights could also be arranged for playoff teams. Otherwise, all 12 clubs must fly industrial, perhaps the one major league that doesn’t use charters regularly to get forwards and backwards to games.
The WNBA in February boldly announced it had raised $75 million from investors. Engelbert said in a release that the cash is “unprecedented…to speculate within the players and teams.”
What about that $75 million? Where has it gone? Surely a few of it, given the very fact of rising inflation and fuel costs, could go to improving travel conditions for the players and teams. Why can’t the NBA teams which have private planes not getting used throughout the summer make them available to their poorer sisters?
During Englebert’s visit to Minnesota earlier this month, the MSR asked her in regards to the so-called recent money and where it’s going. “Remember, Charles,” Engelbert said, slyly referring me back to the wintertime press release, “we talked about this. Player first, stakeholder success—and that features media and owners and teams—after which fan engagement. All those touchpoints are a very important a part of the deployment of the capital.”
I did look back on the official mumbo-jumbo. The next are her words: “Our strategy is to deploy this capital to proceed to drive the league’s brand as a daring, progressive entertainment and media property that embodies diversity, promotes equity, advocates for social justice, and stands for the ability of girls… We’re setting the WNBA up for a successful future, and it represents an indication and signal of the long run direction of girls’s sports as an entire.”
Did you get all that? Translation: No travel money.
Former ABA players awarded advantages
A brand new program by the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) announced earlier this month that they are going to jointly fund pension payments for roughly 115 former American Basketball Association (ABA) players who played at the very least three seasons but didn’t qualify for pensions from the NBA when it merged with the ABA in 1976.
An IndyStar story published last yr found that 80% of former ABA players who’re financially struggling are Black. The ABAers have been arguing for the reason that 1976 merger that only took in 4 ABA clubs that too a lot of them were essentially iced out of future pension advantages.
“All of us imagine it’s appropriate to supply financial recognition to this group for his or her impact,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver in an ESPN article. He added that each the league and the players “felt a have to act in behalf of those former ABA players who’re aging and, in lots of cases, facing difficult economic circumstances.”
Under the brand new program, the qualified former ABAers will receive an annual “recognition payment” of $3,828 per yr of service. Please note that these usually are not being called pension payments.
“We have now all the time considered the ABA players an element of our brotherhood, and we’re proud to finally recognize them with this profit,” said NBPA Executive Director Tamika Tremaglio in a released statement.