Benoit Bailey

RYAN RUOCCO HAS SEEN CAITLIN’S SIGNATURE SHOE AND HE SAYS IT’S AMAZING “When they come out they are gonna be incredible. Everybody who’s been anxiously waiting…your anticipation will be met with big time delivery.”

"The technology we’re putting into my shoe isn’t anything Nike has ever put into a basketball shoe before." - Caitlin Clark on the New Heights Podcast with the Kelce Brothers

Several reasons 1. From a bird's eye perspective, the players just fought and nearly cancelled the season for a CBA that afforded them a ton more money, with the slogan "pay us what you owe us". They won. They fought for every single cent that new CBA affords them and for Stewie (or anyone else) to walk away from even one cent of what was fought very hard for devalues and disrespects all the hard work that was put into those negotiations, and also makes it that much harder the next time around for the players to fight for even higher wages, because the argument will be "why do you even want higher wages if the top players are willingly walking away from the max deals you currently have?" 2. The top wage getters set the benchmark for how the entire rest of the league is paid. If NYL can get Stewie for, let's just say a max deal instead of the supermax deal she is worth, that's 18% of the cap instead of 20% of the cap. So if Stewie is willing to take that paycut, what message does that send to, let's say Nyara Sabally, who also is in line to get paid not at a max rate but at a significant percentage raise from her previous contract. Does she too need to take a 2% pay cut? Terrible precedent to set 3. One of the biggest reasons stars should always cash in - careers are inherently short and every player is one injury away from them having played their last game. Every dollar Stewie leaves on the table is a dollar she can't get back once her playing days are done and the whole point of the CBA was to give players the opportunity to build financial security not only for themselves but generationally. Walking away from that again is counterproductive and bad 4. It sends the wrong signal about the league’s value. We’re in a massive growth moment. If the best players keep signaling “eh, the money isn’t that important,” it gives sponsors, owners, and media an easy out to keep treating WNBA salaries as secondary. The league needs stars to demand (and take) every cent the CBA allows so the market keeps rising for the next generation. 5. Loyalty shouldn’t have to mean self-sacrifice. Stewie has already taken multiple haircuts to keep the Liberty competitive. That’s admirable, but the new CBA exists precisely so teams can afford to pay their best players full value and build contenders. Players shouldn’t have to keep subsidizing rosters out of their own pockets—owners and front offices should figure out cap management without asking stars to eat money. 6. (And this is the big one in my opinion) The entire WNBA economy and team-building model shouldn’t depend on stars voluntarily taking less than they’re owed. That’s exactly the broken system we just escaped. Under the old tiny cap (~$1.5M per team), teams could only compete for titles if superstars routinely took pay cuts or left money on the table to fit better supporting casts. It forced elite players to subsidize poor roster construction and kept overall salaries artificially suppressed. The new CBA was negotiated specifically to end that era. It gives teams real flexibility to pay stars their full value while still building competitive rosters through proper cap management. Going right back to “stars must sacrifice for the greater good” undermines the whole economic reset the players fought for and risks normalizing the old underpaid, unsustainable model instead of letting the league grow properly on fair market value. There are other reasons but those are off the top of my head

3 YEARS AGO TODAY Caitlin Clark became the first person with a 40-point triple-double in NCAA tournament history! 41 Points 12 Assists 10 Rebounds 8 Threes 3 Steals

Port Ellen in the pink for a while after the sun had gone down.

Go Hawks? 😅🖤💛

In 1993, a local Chicago reporter covering the St. Patrick's Day parade spotted Tommy Lee Jones filming a movie amidst the festivities and stopped him for a quick interview. The movie was THE FUGITIVE 🔥