A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The WNBA season tips off this weekend, and there should be a lot of people watching. Ticket sales are up across the board, and that's after record attendance and viewership last year. Here to talk about the new season as Ben Pickman. He covers the WNBA for The Athletic. So, Ben, let's start off with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft - Paige Bueckers, Paige "Bucket" Bueckers, because she scores a lot. So what are the expectations for her highly anticipated rookie season?
BEN PICKMAN: I think there are pretty high expectations for Paige Bueckers coming off a national championship-winning season at UConn. I mean, she is a great passer and a great playmaker. And she goes to the Dallas Wings, a franchise that is looking to have a lot of sustained success. They have a new coach, a new general manager, and obviously, Paige as one of the stars. The thing that will help her, though, is she's playing alongside Arike Ogunbowale, a former Notre Dame star in her own right, and Ogunbowale is one of the best scorers in the WNBA. So Bueckers and Ogunbowale are already a backcourt to watch.
MARTÍNEZ: Cool. Any other rookies that you're going to really watch this year?
PICKMAN: She is the big one. But out in Seattle, there is someone named Dominique Malonga, and she is a French phenom. She's been dunking. She was in her teens. She's 6'6", super, super athletic, already playing for France on the Olympic team, someone who some executives around the league think could be the best player in the draft when we look back on it, you know, five, 10 years from now.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. For me, the biggest match of this weekend is the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark taking on Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky, both now in their second season. What makes games between them so compelling?
PICKMAN: They are two players who played in high-leverage games in college, so they have a lot of history just playing in big games against each other, and then they obviously have big fan bases behind them. And as a result, they have kind of become two of the biggest stars in the WNBA. I will actually be at that game in...
MARTÍNEZ: Oh, nice.
PICKMAN: ...Indianapolis this week, A, so I am very excited to see them kick off this season against each other.
MARTÍNEZ: So kind of like the track that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird went on, a rivalry in college, and now a rivalry in the pros.
PICKMAN: Yeah. I mean, I don't - I steer away from making it that simple because I think there are a lot of factors that go into that comparison. And I think right now, frankly, the players are at different tiers from each other. I mean, Angel Reese was an all-star last year as a rookie, which is super, super impressive, and she is set to have another big year. And Caitlin Clark, though, is currently in the MVP conversation. I mean, she was all WNBA first team last year as a rookie and is well-positioned to be in that kind of top five conversation again this year. So two very, very great players, but also two teams at different life cycles. The Fever are eyeing a championship this year. They're trying to put themselves in the championship conversation, whereas the Sky are much more just trying to get back into the postseason and establish themselves, reestablish themselves, really, as a franchise in the league.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. Now, maybe some dark skies ahead, Ben, because there might be a labor issue with the WNBA and the players' upcoming. The union opted out of its contract, the last contract, early, and the league just recently signed a lucrative TV deal. I mean, fair or unfair, Ben? I mean, fans do not side with players in labor disputes. Is the WNBA risking losing all of its positive momentum if there's a labor dispute that causes the league to somehow miss games, shut down or something like that?
PICKMAN: I mean, I think it is a really, really good question, and I would say it is particularly interesting on the side of the owners, where you have some of these owners who are worth billions and billions of dollars here. And they're - one of the big stopping points, or talking points, rather, is about salaries. And so the question is, hypothetically, say, the current maximum salary is around $250,000. If players want, say, around a million, is an owner who's worth 10, $11 billion, like, say, the Tsai family, for instance, who own the Liberty, are they really going to haggle over, you know, a hundred thousand...
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah.
PICKMAN: ...Dollars potentially being the sticking point?
MARTÍNEZ: That is Ben Pickman from The Athletic. A great basketball reporter name, too. Setting a pick. Ben, thanks for joining us.
PICKMAN: Thanks a lot for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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