The Women's National Basketball Players Association isn't letting the NBA off the hook for leaving WNBA players out of a joint memo on betting-related harassment.

WNBPA executive director Terri Carmichael Jackson didn't mince words after the omission became public, given how well-documented the harassment problem has been for her members. 

"It is deeply disappointing that, given the very public and troubling incidents of b******-related harassment experienced by our members over the past several seasons, the NBA determined that WNBA players did not warrant inclusion in a joint position statement intended to address this very issue," she said in a statement, as posted on X by @colincsalao.

The letter in question came from the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and MLS, along with their respective players' unions, sent Tuesday to state gaming regulators. It described an "escalating threat" of harassment and violent threats aimed at players, coaches, officials, and their families from b***** upset over losses. 

The letter referred to its signatories as the "five largest professional sports leagues and players associations," a framing that left no room for women's leagues, including the WNBA.

The WNBPA didn't learn about the memo until after it went public, as is evident from the X post by @colincsalao. The National Women's Soccer League Players Association said the same thing, only hearing about it through media inquiries. 

That detail has raised broader questions about whether women's leagues are getting genuine consideration when major sports organizations coordinate on player protection issues.

What the leagues are actually asking for

B******-related abuse has become a persistent issue as legal sports gambling has expanded, and WNBA players have spoken openly about receiving threatening messages, especially tied to player-prop bets built around individual performance. 

The leagues asked regulators to require sportsbooks to impose lifetime bans on people found engaging in abusive harassment or making threats, along with a streamlined system for leagues and unions to submit evidence to regulators and law enforcement, as per Deseret News. 

Beyond lifetime bans, the memo calls for sportsbooks to proactively flag abusive accounts as a condition of keeping their licenses, along with shared exclusion lists across states so a ban in one jurisdiction actually carries weight elsewhere. 

Some states already allow for permanent exclusion of problem bettors, and the leagues want that approach adopted more broadly.

However, for the WNBPA, the issue comes down to being left out of a conversation their members clearly belong in. Jackson's statement makes clear that the visibility of these incidents should have made inclusion obvious from the start. 

Do you think the NBA's close ties to the WNBA make this exclusion harder to justify?

Written by

Zaid Quraishi