Who Is The Lowest Paid NBA Player? Caitlin Clark’s $338,056 WNBA Contract Brings Up Pressing Question

Following a sensational end to college basketball, Caitlin Clark finally leaped into professional basketball. The WNBA side, Indiana Fever, picked Clark as the #1 pick of the 2024 draft. While the draft pick went as expected, it left the sporting world to scratch its head with the contract value. Despite turning the hoops community’s attention to her side last month, it left her with a humble four-year contract worth $338, 056. It boiled down to one question. Did she at least get paid more than the lowest-paid NBA player?

The answer is a Big No! Currently, the lowest-paid NBA star is the Atlanta Hawks‘ Mouhamed Gyueye. He has a $7.6 million rookie deal. The Senegalese entered the league as the 39th pick and will earn $1,119,563 this season. Unfortunately, Caitlin Clark’s $300k contract didn’t match up to Gyueye’s rookie season’s annual pay.

The Charlotte Hornets initially drafted Mouhamed Gyueye. He later moved to Atlanta, after the Hawks roped him in from the Boston Celtics. This season, he has played 6 games, averaging 4 points in his 12-minute stay per game. Notably, the rookie forward could get the opportunity to play postseason in his very first season. But this is something we’re currently not so concerned about. While the Senegalese player deserved the pay for his talent, Caitlin Clark’s meager paycheck puts the spotlight on the gender pay gap again. As of 2020, an average NBA player took home $5 million, whereas the WNBA players’ average annual salary was stuck at $120,000, as per Forbes.

While in her first year as a rookie, she will make $76,535, she will be making $78,066 and $85,873 in the subsequent years. Now, surprisingly, the first four WNBA drafts are being paid the same amount of money. So, Clark, along with Cameron Brink, Kamilla Cardoso and Rickea Jackson will all share the same figure. When compared to the NBA players’ salaries, this is, of course, a major bone of contention. After looking at the post shared above, people can’t stop commenting how “atrocious” this whole scenario is. NFL star, Russel Wilson says, “These ladies deserve so much more. Praying for the day”.

Speaking of the disparity, Las Vegas Aces star Kelsey Plum said, “We’re not asking to get paid what the men get paid… We’re asking to get paid the same percentage of revenue shared.” The general argument around the gender pay gap revolved around the footfalls and views that NBA players generated compared to the WNBA players. However, Caitlin Clark beat both Stephen Curry and LeBron James in that argument as well.

Caitlin Clark put the NBA to shame

The NCAA sensation flipped the whole stereotypical narrative with her final season. A preconceived notion always existed in the sporting world, stating that women’s sports attract fewer eyeballs. Even though it wasn’t true, Caitlin Clark broke the narrative with her recent games. The rising superstar garnered 18 million views on the NCAA Championship game, with a high point of 24 million watching at one instance.

Moreover, it became the most-watched women’s basketball game of all time. Along with that, she also put the NBA to shame. While she garnered 18 million views in the Finals, the NBA Finals couldn’t achieve that figure in the last five years. In the last five years, the average views for the NBA Finals series was 11.56 million.

Notably, both global superstars LeBron James and Stephen Curry played in two of those five Finals. Interestingly, LeBron James garnered the lowest views of 7.66 million during the NBA bubble. It became the least-viewed NBA Finals in history. The bottom line is that Caitlin Clark received a humble paycheck despite garnering enough views on the big stage. For the world, it seems it does not do justice to someone who’s Indiana Fever jerseys with her name on them get sold out in just an hour of her draft announcement. Plus, for someone was a college basketball player, now with partnerships with Nike, Gatorade, State Farm and Buick, speaks volumes of the situation. Of course, people are going to be furious.

What do you make of the gender pay gap in sports, especially in WNBA and NBA? Let us know in the comments below.