WNBA star Liz Cambage has requested a trade from the Dallas Wings, the team announced on Tuesday. Wings President and CEO Gregg Bibb said Cambage “communicated through her representation her desire to play elsewhere during the 2019 season.”
WNBA superstar Liz Cambage requests trade from Dallas Wings
An already busy WNBA offseason is about to get a whole lot busier.
Photo by Jono Searle/Getty Images
Cambage’s trade request comes days after news of an impasse between star Maya Moore and the Minnesota Lynx. Sylvia Fowles and Elena Della Donne are two other WNBA superstars who have forced trades in recent years, with Fowles going to Minnesota in the middle of the 2015 season and Delle Donne going to Washington before the 2017 season.
Cambage is a two-time all-star who was the WNBA’s scoring leader in 2018, averaging 23 points per game on 58.9 percent shooting from the field. She nearly decided not to return to the WNBA after playing in China during the offseason, in large part because WNBA players get paid more overseas than in the United States.
“We sign million dollar contracts in Asia and Russia and get treated like royalty,” Cambage said on a WNBA conference call in July alongside fellow Wings star Skyler Diggins-Smith. “But when we’re here in America, we’re back of the plane, playing back-to-backs.”
“I’ve said this many times: [The WNBA] doesn’t pay my bills ... playing here doesn’t pay my bills,” Cambage also said, via ESPN’s Sean Hurd. “We make more money overseas. I’m ready to have next summer off and focus on getting a European contract where its 10 seasons here worth the pay.
Cambage has suggested ways the WNBA could improve its relationship with its players for the better, even though speaking out cost her sponsorships back home in Australia. Those five ways, she told SB Nation’s Matt Ellentuck, are more pay, better marketing — for both players and teams — better travel conditions, and more days in-between games.
One potential new team for Cambage that would rock the WNBA is the Los Angeles Sparks. The Sparks hired Derek Fisher as their head coach this year, and shortly after, LA hired former Wings head coach Fred Williams as their lead assistant. Cambage is a big fan of Williams, and has reportedly wanted to play for the Sparks since she was a teenager.
If she goes to the Sparks, Cambage would join Candace Parker in forming a super-team on the West Coast.
