Brittney Griner Injury Reignites WNBA Roster Size Debate

The Phoenix Mercury started their game Friday night against the Indiana Fever with seven available players. By the time the game ended, they had five. After Brittney Griner left the game in the second quarter with a lower-body injury and with Rebecca Allen on a minutes restriction, Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts bemoaned the limited roster size in the WNBA.

“My hope is the [WNBA] in the new collective bargaining agreement will expand the roster sizes,” he said, per ESPN’s Michael Voepel. “I’ve heard coaches talk about it. I’m new to this league, but it can be better than what it is. It shouldn’t get to this point.”

The WNBA currently caps rosters at 12 players. With a hard salary cap of $1,463,200, however, many teams carry just 11. That makes the injury bug especially critical to WNBA teams.

In the Mercury’s case, they entered Friday without Diana Taurasi (leg), Natasha Cloud (knee), Sug Sutton (hamstring), and Charisma Osborne (leg). They signed Celeste Taylor to a seven-day contract on Friday to help fill the void.

“I’m thankful for my time in the D League, to be honest,” Tibbetts said. “Our roster size [there] was small, and there were some nights we had to play with eight. But not a lot of nights where you saw seven being rolled out there like we did tonight.”

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Brittney Griner Injury Prognosis

Brittney Griner entered Friday night’s contest with 13 games played after missing the Mercury’s first 10 with a toe injury. She showed no signs of struggle in her return, posting 18.5 points and 6.2 rebounds per game with 1.5 blocks.

She had four points and two blocks in 11 minutes against the Fever before the injury. The Mercury initially announced it as a right hip injury, before Tibbetts mentioned her groin after the game.

“What I’ve been told is a strained groin, so we will see,” Tibbetts said. “The medical staff decided to hold her out.”

The Mercury list her as day-to-day. Phoenix has two more games before the Olympic break, Sunday at Connecticut and Tuesday at Washington.

Phoenix didn’t provide a more detailed update on Griner’s injury after the game. With the WNBA vet heading to Paris as part of the USA Olympic team later this month, it might make sense for the Mercury to hold her out for these last two games.

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Cathy Engelbert Has Not Approached Roster Expansion With Urgency

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert as been primarily focused on expanding the WNBA from 12 to 14 (and soon 16) teams. With the Golden State Valkyries starting play next year and the Toronto WNBA franchise the next, the league will add 24 roster spots by 2026.

That means fewer talented players will be shut out of the WNBA, which has been another major problem. It does not, however, address injury concerns.

Engelbert addressed the roster size question at the 2023 WNBA Draft.

“We’re often asked about that roster size question. We think today our rosters are the right size,” she told the media. “I think for now the roster sizes are set for this season into next. But that’ll be for sure a discussion in the next round of collective bargaining, as will a variety of other issues.”

She continued, “All the discussion on roster sizes and expansion, but you want to make sure you’re doing it not in just adding, adding, adding, just because you don’t want to degrade the quality of the game. That’s one that’s important to protect. I don’t think the quality has ever been better in this game right now, the women’s game, both at the collegiate and at the professional level.”

The current WNBA CBA runs through 2027, but the players will likely opt out of it at the end of this season. Since the CBA went into place in 2020, the league has seen meteoric growth and some of the elements became almost instantly outdated.

Salaries grew from the last CBA to this one, but not at the rate the league has grown. Players will be paid a lot more on the next agreement. Charter flights, which the current CBA does not allow, have already been instituted league-wide. That will surely be codified as well.

With a new media rights deal coming, the money is going to grow even more, as Breanna Stewart pointed out.

In the Tubi documentary “Shattered Glass: A WNBPA Story,” she explained that the CBA, “ties directly to the media rights deal—it’s around the same timing. If we have games that are doing 18 million viewers, ‘Alright, let’s lift things up a little bit more.’ Salaries will go up, benefits will go up.”

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