8. In 2005–06 the maximum salary of professional basketball players with up to three years of experience in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) stood at $42,000, while the maximum salary for a WNBA player in 2005 was $90,000 (the average was somewhere between $46,000 and $60,000 (depending on whether one’s source was the Players Union or the WNBA league itself). The minimum salary of a (male) rookie professional NBA basketball player in 2005–06 was $398,762 (WNBA rookies earned only slightly more than $30,000 that year). The average NBA salary in 2005–06 was $4,037,899. Why was there such a large discrepancy?