WNBA players sound off on CBA negotiations: ‘Give us what we want’

The CBA fight is, at its heart, a labor dispute. The WNBA and, more broadly, women’s professional basketball was a very different world the last time the league and the players inked an agreement in January 2020. In fact, Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball didn’t even exist (the league started up in 2022), and nearly all of the players on this year’s rosters are in the W. The players of the WNBA have never shied away from political fights — including their own.

Vets like Alysha Clark, who is competing in her second season of Athletes Unlimited, know what’s at stake. Though she’s still a relative newcomer to the league in Nashville, she’s a WNBA “old head,” Clark told The IX Sports Tuesday, and she’s one of the vice presidents of the union.

“I’m feeling hopeful,” after Monday’s meeting between the league and the players, she told The IX Sports Tuesday. “We’ve gone into these negotiations just really wanting to come to an agreement, and I think yesterday it just allowed both sides to be able to get in front of each other and hear each other and, hopefully, having player leadership there, kind of voicing why we’re standing so strong on the issue that we are, I hope, gave them just a little more insight, to want to reflect that in the new CBA and the proposals that they present.”

She continued: “Everybody wants to play, everybody wants a season, and the goal at the end of the day is to make sure that a deal gets done.”

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Tina Charles, who is an Athletes Unlimited rookie after spending a decade overseas during the WNBA’s offseason, also found reasons to be optimistic about the eventual outcome. “I just hope soon that both sides … that we can reach a deal,” she said. “I think that’s what everybody wants, that’s what the fans want, [and] supporters of the WNBA want.”

The CBA negotiations have offered a lesson of sorts to Te-Hina Paopao and Aaliyah Nye, who both played their rookie season in the WNBA in 2025 for the Atlanta Dream and Las Vegas Aces, respectively, and who will make their debuts in Athletes Unlimited this week.

Nye acknowledged that the negotiations are “new to me” as a young player in the league. “This is my first real job, so I’m just leaving it up to our presidents and the older vets to get the job done, and I support them [in] whatever they want.”

“That’s what I support,” she continued, “and I think that they should just listen to us and give us what we want.”

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Paopao was of the same mind. “I mean, we’re doing our job,” she said, “and I feel like we should get what we deserve, and our leaders of the league are doing a really great job voicing that, and voicing what we want.”

“We just need to support women,” she added, “because when we support women, we win. So, hopefully, we can get to something we’re satisfied with.”

Retirees are also on board. Kia Vaughn, who played one season for the Dream and enjoyed a lengthy career that included time spent playing overseas after she was drafted by the Liberty in 2009, threw her full support behind the WNBPA.

“Anything and everything the girls want, we’re all, myself, and every other vet, and every other retiree is beyond you all,” Vaughn said. “So, whatever’s written down, I’m here for it, no matter what it is.”