The Athletic: Q&A with Lindsay Whalen

Ignatius L Hoops

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When you heard the USA Basketball-WNBA training program Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird helped put together, what were your initial thoughts?

I thought that if anybody’s gonna pull something like that off it would be Sue and Diana. They’re really great thinkers, really, really progressive in their thought process, very in-depth, analytical individuals. I can see where they were really wanting to go out with a bang with USA Basketball. It’s going to be their fifth one, and, well, shoot, maybe they’ll play six, I don’t know, at this point, you can’t count them out.

I think that’s one thing that the last couple of seasons, I would have loved it … if somebody would have came up with this idea maybe four years ago, because the offseasons get long when you start going overseas to Europe (to play). It’s a long offseason, you’re by yourself, you’re working out, you maybe have your workout coach, and you maybe have a group, a small group that can come and work out you’re playing against practice guys, but you’re basically by yourself.

I’m just so happy they did it because I think it’s going to only help USA Basketball get better. It’s gonna help those athletes because a lot of those athletes now are at that point where they don’t want to go overseas as much because it’s a lot on your body. It’s a lot mentally.

Taurasi did an interview with ESPN about WNBA salaries and you had some reactions to it on social media. What did you want to get across after reading that? What did you want people to know about the salary conversation?

When they figured out that we got a 1.5 percent raise over 10 years, I mean, when you get off your rookie contract, and then you’re a max player, you get a 1.5 percent increase for 10 years, I’m not gonna lie, that really hurt because we gave everything we had to the game and the league.

More or less, my reaction after reading Diana’s interview was I wanted to, hopefully, now that I’m away from the game for a year, have it be so our next generation can do better and we can have more than a 1.5 percent pay raise throughout a career of a player.

That struck me and I was just like, I have to say something. It’s been on my chest for a while, because I go to all these AAU recruiting events and I see all these great young players and there’s 144 jobs in the WNBA. It just has to be better. We have to get more, we have to do more.

Diana is a great leader and I felt like I wanted to piggyback off of what she said a little bit and hopefully add to it. Hopefully these next CBA negotiations can kind of reflect some of the hard work that a whole generation of players did. Like I said, Dawn (Staley) and Lisa (Leslie) and Rebecca (Lobo), they started it, and they got us off to a great start.

And then we tried to hopefully progress it. I feel like the play has progressed, and the players have progressed, but the off-the-court, pay and revenue hasn’t reflected that. Hopefully it does, hopefully they can figure it out. I know there’s a lot more to it, ticket sales and sponsorships and all that. But hopefully they can do it so the players can be compensated better.

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What are you hoping for Minnesota for this coming season?

Boy, I’d love to stay healthy, that’d be great. Stay healthy, get healthy. And then, we have a lot of seniors that really want to make the NCAA Tournament, so I’d love to do that for them. A lot of work has to go on before that’s even a possibility. But of course, that’s everybody’s goal. So we’ll see. But I think if we’re I think we’re healthy and we come in with good enthusiasm and energy for the season, we’ll be alright. We’ll be in the mix in the Big 10.
 




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