You want to know the problem with the WNBA? Here it is... the league fined the Liberty $500,000, down from an originally proposed $1 million, for chartering flights for their players rather than force them to fly coach.
Howard Megdal, in this week’s cover story for Sports Illustrated, describes how the Liberty (and Nets) owners, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, were fined because they had “violated the WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement, a benefit that vastly exceeded the allowable compensation to players.” In other words, for “treating their players too well,” as Megdal writes.
The trips included one where Clara Wu Tsai and Liberty alternate governor Oliver Weisberg chartered a jet so the team, in the middle of a losing streak, could visit a weekend at a toney resort in California’s Napa Valley for some needed R&R.