Phee's time with Fener is done. Quicker than I thought it would be. But looks like Natasha Howard is there now.
They only signed Collier to keep Howard's spot warm until she was ready, but it is also apparently an audition for what to do since they do not have to keep Howard for the rest of the season either. If they do not end up bringing her back, it all seems like rather expensive paranoia, although they did almost lose Howard's first game.
Two more signings in Russia who dressed for today's games:
Tyler Scaife to Neftyanik Omsk
Monique Billings to Dynamo Kursk
The latter is very interesting for multiple reasons. There have been some people actively advocating that the WNBA refuse to sign any player opting to sign in Russia. I know some people were already ready for her not to be in the league, but she would certainly be projected to be on a roster next season. Nothing in the announcement from the team indicates that her contract does not run through the end of the season. They probably expect to make it to the finals and Game 4 is on May 1 so there are Prioritization concerns here. Even if there was a sweep, that would end on April 29, which would make reporting to a team on May 1 difficult. She may be on the level where she would be able to sign, but not at the level where she be able to wait until she is able to report to sign and know that the team will hold a spot for her as training camps are expected to open very early for an early May regular season start.
Also interesting in Russia today was Ekaterinburg losing to Nika Syktyvkar. You would think that Ekaterinburg would be fine even without WNBA stars because of domestic strength, but Maria Vadeeva is taking the season off due to pregnancy after getting married in the offseason and Evgenia Belyakova retired after getting married along with another retirement. Raisa Musina is also skipping the season for Nika Syktyvkar due to pregnancy, although she did make a recent exhibition game appearance.
Courtney Williams took the spot that Daneesha Provo was going to fill for Shaanxi and started playing immediately. Brianna Jones signed for Tianjin. I hope that they knew exactly who they were signing.
At no point was I thinking that I would need to write about a team scoring 200 points in a game this season.
What!? 43 steals between 3 players 😱201 point game!! How?!
They were dissatisfied with recent results and decided to full court press for 40 minutes. Whether this will help them at all on Wednesday is anyone's guess.
All those press practice did not prevent them from losing 87-43 in their next game. I wonder if Clay Travis will put up a million dollars to see what happens if Besiktas does a 40 minute full court press on Trencin.
The top division, which actually has a decent average attendance in the world of women's basketball, only expects 8% of revenue to come from fans, about $215,000 per team, while expecting 31% of it to come from government subsidies. Lyon is the big budget team at $5.2 Million total/$4.55 Million all salaries, but their men's team has a budget of $22.55 Million and salaries (players only) of $7.75 Million.