The Athletic has stay protection of the 2025 WNBA Draft.
As Sarah Sturdy dominated the South Carolina frontcourt throughout UConn’s nationwide championship victory, gobbling up rebounds, defending the rim and scoring from all over the place on the courtroom, it was straightforward to think about her additionally doing so on the subsequent stage. WNBA executives needed to be drooling over the thought of drafting the subsequent Huskies star.
However they’ll have to attend one other three years. Beneath the collective bargaining settlement, which expires on the finish of the 2025 season, American-born gamers are eligible to be drafted after finishing 4 years of faculty. The one exception is that gamers can declare after their junior seasons in the event that they flip 22 in the course of the calendar yr of the WNBA Draft. Since Sturdy has a February birthday, that received’t be an possibility.
As girls’s basketball booms, gamers have extra decisions in shaping their careers, whether or not that’s in faculty through the switch portal or professionally with new leagues. Nevertheless, that is one choice that continues to be out of their management.
“I positively assume we should always have the choice,” USC star JuJu Watkins mentioned on the “Good Recreation with Sarah Spain” podcast. “There’s simply been such a development in faculty basketball, the place it’s like, why would you need to depart? Since you’re in a position to have that have and construct your model right here in faculty as effectively. I’d say we should always positively have the choice, however I believe faculty is a technique to put together us for the professionals as effectively. … It’s a sensitive topic, however I’m for it.”
Though a change to permit gamers to declare early is unlikely, sufficient underclassmen are tempting professional prospects proper now, headlined by Sturdy. Watkins, who has two remaining years of eligibility, could be a no brainer lottery decide, even with a torn ACL that might preserve her sidelined for this upcoming WNBA season. Madison Booker of Texas has a WNBA physique and pull-up recreation, and her fellow SEC gamers Ashlyn Watkins (South Carolina) and Talaysia Cooper (Tennessee) additionally could possibly be pro-ready.
There’s a world the place JuJu Watkins decides to take a seat out the upcoming season, utilizing each of her remaining years of eligibility, and enters the 2028 WNBA Draft that options Sarah Sturdy.
When you have been a GM with the No. 1 general decide, who would you select? pic.twitter.com/AUixhKz3oc
— I discuss hoops 🏀 (@trendyhoopstars) April 11, 2025
The concept of the age restrict has traditionally benefited most events, even when it diminished particular person participant company. The WNBA is already the toughest league on this planet to make and earn a second contract in, and it doesn’t behoove the present participant pool so as to add extra rivals for the restricted roster spots.
Till lately, participant expertise was higher in faculty than within the WNBA. It usually didn’t make sense for athletes to sacrifice the power to earn a university diploma to pre-emptively be part of a league that didn’t pay that effectively. Sure gamers nonetheless took benefit of the chance to go professional after three seasons, together with No. 1 picks Jewell Loyd and Jackie Younger. Satou Sabally, the No. 2 decide in 2020, cited funds as the explanation she left Oregon early, as she was in faculty earlier than athletes may make cash.
International-born athletes don’t should cope with the identical age-related constraints as their American counterparts. Gamers born outdoors the U.S. can declare for the draft the yr they flip 20, supplied they don’t attend faculty within the NCAA system, presumably as a technique to incentivize expertise world wide to play within the WNBA. These concessions have by no means been made for American gamers, who already develop up dreaming of taking part in within the league.
Now the WNBA has higher lodging, extra profitable salaries and the next profile, however faculty sports activities additionally supply cash from collectives and the power to revenue from NIL offers. Athletes are now not lacking out on their incomes potential by being denied early entry into the skilled ranks.
The league advantages from the age restrict as effectively. Along with rookies being extra bodily fitted to the professional recreation, the NCAA is a unbelievable advertising instrument for the WNBA. Gamers come into the league with 4 years of nationwide publicity and oodles of title recognition. Although informal NBA followers battle to determine one-and-dones, most WNBA followers are intimately accustomed to the likes of Paige Bueckers, Aneesah Morrow and Hailey Van Lith earlier than they even play their first skilled recreation.
Because of this, though a brand new CBA is being negotiated, don’t count on the age restrict to be a degree of competition.
“It has been talked about; I don’t assume it’s a excessive precedence,” Seattle Storm guard Lexie Brown mentioned on “The Ringer WNBA Present” final month. “Going out into the world at 18, 19 years previous as a younger lady with no diploma to go play a sport with nonguaranteed contracts, it’s type of a recipe for catastrophe.”
There’s a cheap dialogue available about whether or not Bueckers could be the No. 1 decide if each participant in faculty this season have been draft-eligible. Sturdy’s general recreation, mixed together with her youth, in a league that also runs by way of the publish, makes her a tantalizing choice. Watkins’ prodigious talent and star energy put her in that hypothetical dialog as effectively.
For now, this train stays theoretical. Faculty basketball remains to be a extra common product, and the WNBA can afford to stay unique and shut its doorways to youthful gamers with the entire expertise that already exists inside its ranks. The subset of gamers who may realistically make the leap early is restricted — too small to rewrite a complete algorithm for.
(Pictures of Madison Booker and Sarah Sturdy: Alex Slitz / Getty Photographs, Joe Buglewicz / Getty Photographs)