Aces owner Mark Davis says he agrees '100 percent' with Liz Cambage's WNBA criticism
Liz Cambage might not be a member of the Las Vegas Aces this season, but she's still a topic of conversation for the team.
The four-time WNBA All-Star raised plenty of eyebrows Tuesday with a cutting tweet about new Aces head coach Becky Hammon and her $1 million salary, a massive figure in a league where the supermax salary is less than a quarter of that sum and players often have to subsidize their own travel.
ahhh yes the @WNBA, where a head coach can get paid 4X the highest paid players super max contract. lmao and y’all think imma spend another season upgrading my seat on a flight to get to games out of my own pocket.
— Elizabeth Cambage (@ecambage) February 1, 2022
Cambage's tweet naturally came up during the Aces' news conference with team owner Mark Davis and star A'ja Wilson, who re-signed with the team at the beginning of WNBA free agency. Davis responded to Cambage's tweet by explaining that he hoped Hammon's salary would help legitimize the league's standing.
Davis also backed Cambage's complaints, which seem mostly directed at the WNBA, a league with notably lower salaries than foreign leagues.
From Sam Wilson of the Las Vegas Review Journal:
"We have to be paying these women commensurate to what their abilities are and what they're doing. On the front office side and the coaching side, there is no salary cap. Becky Hammon didn't want to be a million-dollar coach. But I wanted her to be a million-dollar coach. Because I thought that she would be, in a sense, when the American Football League started, they had a television contract. And they had Joe Namath. And Joe Namath had the $400,000 contract and he sparked the imagination of everybody that 'This league is real.'
"I felt that giving Becky Hammon the million-dollar contract ... would then show everybody that there is value here. Liz Cambage kind of came out with a statement, and I agree 100 percent with what she says. That the players do deserve more money. That they don't need to be flying on commercial flights. ... I agree with all of those things and those are things that the Las Vegas Aces are going to be champions of, and that we're going to grow for the good of everybody in this league."
Davis' Joe Namath comparison harkens back to a day when the Hall of Fame quarterback opted to sign a then-record $400,000 contract with the newer American Football League's New York Jets over the more established National Football League's Arizona Cardinals.
Even if Cambage is unhappy with the WNBA, at least one player was happy with what she was hearing from Davis.
Listennnnnn Mark was talkin that TALK in the press conference pic.twitter.com/xFXTshWHn6
— A'ja Wilson (@_ajawilson22) February 3, 2022
