☀️ Layup Lines: What a time to be alive

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to Layup Lines, your quick recap of what’s going on in the WNBA. The players unanimously voted to ratify the new CBA yesterday, which means we’re officially back in business after the Board of Governors also approves the deal.

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✍️ 7 interesting CBA details

Go deep on the new CBA with ESPN, The Athletic, Yahoo and this press release. Here’s what I think you should know:

1. The easiest way to contextualize the WNBA’s remarkable 2026 salary jumps: The new minimum ($270k) is higher than the previous max salary ($249k).

2. A’ja Wilson reportedly became the first player to sign the new $1.4M supermax contract with Las Vegas. Did the Aces even need a meeting for this one?

3. The salary cap increase by almost 5x to $7M is good business for everyone. Players get more money, owners get more games (52 over the course of the CBA, up from 44 in 2025 and 36 in 2022) and broadcast partners get more live sports.

4. For almost 30 years, the best women’s basketball players in the world went to places like Russia and China in the winter to make significantly more money than they did in the U.S. over the summer. Now, if players don’t want to play in the off-season anymore, they won’t have to. Hard to overstate how big of an impact that will have on the league’s culture.

5. Just one man’s opinion but the players did a great job negotiating 20% of total revenue (up from just 9.3%). That’s not nothing when you consider the new 11 year, $2.2B media rights deal that begins this season.

6. Yes, one of my worst takes of 2025 was fading Golden State in the first-ever Layup Lines, but I still think that new expansion teams Portland and Toronto are going to struggle this year. These front offices have until April 6 to prepare for an expansion draft with a limited player pool (everyone is a free agent) and reportedly don’t even know who is picking ahead of the other with the 5th and 6th picks of the draft yet.

7. My favorite aspect of the deal: Roster sizes increase from 11 to 12 plus two spots for developmental players. That really opens things up for teams to take chances on talented, raw prospects.

🧑‍🍳 Take of the day

• There are going to be some very, very dumb decisions made by front offices juggling an expansion draft, rookie draft and this wild free agency period at the same time. Even though players drafted in the last four years, ala Bueckers and Clark, are still on rookie contracts, the best veterans in the league are almost all free agents. Front offices are going to lose their minds.

  • We’re looking at likely more than 20+ supermax or max contracts of $1.4 million, several of which will be 2nd or 3rd options getting paid like a 1.

  • It feels like a lot of these players will just return to their teams, but there’s also a scenario where we witness the wildest free agency in the history of modern sports. Buckle up!

💸 Card to go

• According to Sports Illustrated, this 1/1 of Caitlin Clark and Maya Moore that sold for $15,250 in January is the most expensive WNBA card sale of 2026…so far.

Layup Lines is written 100% by a human being. Claude helps with the visuals. Thanks for reading!

— Everett Cook, Founder & Editor