Legend rips record-breaking media deal

Basketball Hall of Famer Cheryl Miller is back around the WNBA and Phoenix Mercury this weekend as the coach of the All-Star team. But she isn’t there to play nice.

In a pregame media availability on Friday, Miller ripped the league’s record new broadcast rights package and the negotiators who put it together.

Miller called for a number four-times higher than the reported $2.2 billion over 11 years that the WNBA reportedly will receive starting in 2025 . The new deal could be as much as six-times higher than the current deal struck in 2016.

“I’m not great with numbers,” Miller told reporters in Phoenix. “That’s a lowball.”

Miller referenced record viewership for the NCAA tournament this past year and so far during the WNBA regular season, as well as future stars in college basketball like Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins still to come. In the USC legend and longtime basketball voice’s view, the NBA and its broadcast partners undervalued the WNBA in negotiations.

“We certainly have come a long way, and I’m not about gauging, but it’s a long time overdue,” Miller said. “Women’s basketball is in a great place right now.”

The NBA negotiated the new deals on behalf of the WNBA, as they have with each package since the women’s league was created nearly three decades ago . While the process of valuing the WNBA is murky, the league came out with a significant explosion in its media rights revenue.

To Miller, the league needed someone at the table to push even harder.

“We need tough and fair negotiators and visionaries,” Miller said. “And we need a bully, we need a bully behind the table that’s willing to say we’ll break up the pieces and go from there. But there’s a certain number bigger than 2 that we want.”

Miller’s words echo those of WNBA players’ union lead Terri Jackson, who called for greater transparency and valuation in a statement to The Washington Post this week.

Whether it was a strategy among the league’s current and former players or simply a genuine expression of their frustration with the package, the initial response to the record deal from the league’s loudest voices has been quite negative.

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