For players like Wings' Alysha Clark, WNBA's new landmark CBA could be life-changing

Life-changing money

Salaries for Wings players under contract entering 2026 have been scaled up, with Bueckers set to make $500,000 in her sophomore season. Center Awak Kuier will make $525,000 and forward Maddy Siegrist will earn $501,080. “I always say that I think I got in at a really great time,” said Siegrist, a first-round pick in 2023, after practice in Arlington on Monday. Under the new CBA’s Exceptional Performance on Initial Contract (EPIC) provision, Bueckers could fast-track her way to a maximum-level contract while still on a rookie deal. The provision allows top-performing players to renegotiate the final year of their rookie contract as part of a multi-year extension if they earn All-WNBA or MVP honors within their first three years. Bueckers earned WNBA Rookie of the Year honors in 2025 and picked up All-WNBA Second Team honors. The Indiana Fever’s Aliyah Boston, drafted No. 1 overall by the team in 2023, signed the WNBA’s first-ever EPIC provision agreement. She became the league’s highest-paid player by signing the groundbreaking, 4-year, $6.3 million deal. That kind of money was unheard of when the Wings, then the Tulsa Shock, drafted Odyssey Sims in 2014. Sims, who recently signed with Dallas, said on Monday after practice in Arlington that the league is “way different now.” “I’m happy that women’s basketball is evolving,” Sims said. “I’m excited to still be playing.” Clark pointed out that the new CBA honors the league’s veterans, which used to be replaced when new talent came into the WNBA. “We’re not being punished for our experience,” Clark said. “[In the past], you were being phased out and pushed out for younger players because they were cheaper.” Today, some of the top young players enter the league with significant capital as a result of the NIL era. Bueckers reportedly had an NIL valuation of $1.5 million when she finished up her career at UConn, telling *The News* last season that without NIL she wouldn’t have been able to start building wealth. “... Building your networking, the relationships that you have. It would start at a later date,” she said. Generations of women’s basketball players went without that opportunity. And while players such as Bueckers and Fudd have large sponsorship portfolios, many across the WNBA do not. For them, the new CBA is life-changing. “There are pioneers that came before us to start this league and keep it where it was,” Clark said. “It was our duty to carry that. To be here now, it’s amazing. These players, we don’t ever want them to have to know and feel what not being treated as a professional is or looks like.”