Not much more news on the WNBA labor situation. There have been a bunch of articles, like this one and this one, criticizing the players.

This criticism has been repeated so frequently now that it's practically boilerplate. It goes: the league loses money, no one really watches, the players therefore have no leverage or bargaining power, and therefore they are stupid (selfish, arrogant, etc.) for complaining and asking for more money.

I'm getting tired of this nonsense. These players are giving a lot for not much in return. Suppose you play in the WNBA for 10 years, making $50,000 a year, not a bad salary, but not great. Maybe you pick up a few grand extra in endorsements, off-season play. It's enough to live, save a little. Then you retire at 33, and then what? What are your career options? Men's pro players don't need to worry about this stuff. If they play for a few years, then can be financially set for life.

The players don't get a great deal. Sure, the league could walk away and say: we're losing money and it's not worth the trouble. But the players too could walk away and say: I love basketball, but I need to plan a life and a career, and I'm not making enough here to make this all possible.

Plus, the league has generally done a bad job promoting the women's game. Sure, they have national TV ads. But what sells tickets is local marketing efforts. You need to have the team as an active and visible presence in the home market. This hasn't happened AT ALL in most of the WNBA markets. Most of the owners (who were practically forced into ownership by David Stern) don't have their hearts in it. Some of them (see Paul Allen) would prefer the league to go away. They don't give a crap about the players or the women's game at all.

It's good now that they have opened up ownership to non-NBA owners. Connecticut got a team, and Tennessee might get one soon. If anything will make the league grow, it's these new teams in new markets.

And if the league does grow, the players should get some of the upside. That's what was so bad about the deal offered by the league: the league was insistent that the players agree to a long-term deal for nothing, so that even if things do turn around, the players see none of the benefit.

So as far as I'm concerned, all of these stupid columnists -- those who have taken this opportunity to point out that no one likes women's sports, to revel in the sport's trouble, to say that the players are stupid, to cheer the decline (not that they ever watched to begin with) -- can go to hell. So can the league.