South Carolina star center Aliyah Boston was taken by the Indiana Fever with the No. 1 pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft on Monday night in New York. The 6-foot-5 St. Thomas native led the Gamecocks to a 129-9 record and a national championship during her four-year career, and while she’s all but guaranteed to draw into the Fever’s lineup when the WNBA season tips off next month, the same cannot be said for all her fellow draftees.
There are three rounds in the WNBA draft with 12 picks each. But with only 12 teams and room for only 144 players in the league, the WNBA has a roster-spot scarcity problem that leaves even first-round picks without a guaranteed slot on the team that selects them.
It’s one of the reasons why many of the top draft-eligible college stars—to enter the WNBA draft, players must be 22 years old or have completed four years of college—are absent from the selection pool, like Virginia Tech’s Elizabeth Kitley and Tennessee’s Rickea Jackson. Both were projected to be top picks in this year’s class but opted instead to return for a fifth college campaign thanks to their extra COVID year of eligibility.
For those who did declare and do go pro, rookie salaries are determined by draft position. Players taken with the top four picks, Boston among them, will earn a salary of $74,305 in their first year under their rookie contracts. That base will reach $83,371 by the end of the standard three-year agreement, per the terms outlined in the league’s current CBA. The remaining first-round selections will earn between $71,300 and $68,295 in their rookie seasons; second-rounders will receive $65,290; and both third-rounders and undrafted players are in line for $62,285.
Eligible players also had to compare those potential rookie wages to the NIL earnings they could haul in during another NCAA season. Some of the sports’ top college stars, including Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese of national champion LSU, are earning six figures each year.
Monday’s draft comes shortly after many of those players, Boston, Clark and Reese included, found themselves in a magnified March Madness spotlight. Boston’s top-seeded Gamecocks dominated the regular season and early rounds of the tournament before falling to Clark’s Iowa in the Final Four in what registered as one of the tournament’s most-watched games ever. While Boston will move on to the pros, Clark and Reese, who both just finished their junior campaigns, will return for at least one more year of college hoops.
With expansion on the horizon, there should be additional WNBA roster slots available by the time they declare.
