Flau’jae Johnson thought about leaving college early for the WNBA. In a league where most domestic players spend four years in college, her relatively early birthday (Nov. 3) would have allowed her to enter the draft after three seasons instead, a decision that she faced last spring. She weighed her options. But she did not weigh them very long before deciding to return for her senior year at LSU.
The decision was partially financial. Johnson figured there was zero upside to going pro when she had considerable NIL income at LSU and the WNBA was in the middle of negotiating a transformative collective bargaining agreement: “Why go, when I could make a lot of money in college, and just wait for them to figure it out?” Johnson mused back in August, seven months before the league announced that it had indeed figured it out, with a new agreement that roughly tripled minimum salaries for incoming rookies. But she had plenty to consider beyond the money.
