Yahoo Sports: WNBA star Kelsey Plum demonstrates a critical lack of understanding of tax knowledge, embarrassing herself and whatever representation she claims with her proud proclamation of avoiding a tax clause but being completely wrong about it

The fact that a brogger like me is once against writing about anything related to the WNBA at all goes to show how much the sport has risen over the last few years or so, but it should be noted that once again, it is about Kelsey Plum, whom I’m inclined to believe seems to have no idea of what it takes to be a professional athlete.

A year ago, she made the news because she crashed out on an autograph hound that was camping outside of her team’s hotel, and sure, the dude was obviously one of those cretin fans that just wanted autographs with the intention to flip and profit, but from what I saw, the guy wasn’t pushy, maintained a safe and respectful distance, was out in public, and it was during the daytime.  As far as anyone seeking autographs, this person was pretty respectful, and not necessarily deserving of the criticism and combative approach from Plum.

But frankly, my general take was that the fact that someone was there seeking WNBA players, kind of goes to show how much the awareness of women’s pro basketball has risen, and that at least to me, there’s a degree of “we’ve made it” that should be considered when autograph seekers start seeking their players out.  And that Plum had a poor showing on professional athlete conduct with how she basically verbally dunked on a fan just tryna get some autos.

And here we go again, with Kelsey Plum making some niche news again, and once again the Magic 8 ball says outlook not good.

TL;DR the WNBA renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement, and it was a huge win for all the women in the WNBA because it came with a massive pay bump, leaps and bounds better than the paltry $74,000 minimum salary that was in place prior to.

Kelsey Plum, being a good basketball player, somewhat still in the prime of her career, was eligible for a $1.4M supermax contract, which again, considering the top players of the league were making less than 90% that a year prior, was due to make some big bank.  However, she ultimately signed with the LA Sparks for an approximate value of $999,999, notably one dollar shy of a cool million bucks.

She would go on to boast about how that one dollar would prevent her from hitting a threshold that would make her eligible for what’s known as the California Mental Health Services Act, AKA “the millionaire’s tax.”  To her knowledge, signing for $999,999 instead of $1M meant she would save $13,000 in taxes.

However, tax experts were quick to correct and educate the rest of the viewing world that Plum’s belief on how the millionaire’s tax worked was not accurate, and that the tax would only affect any dollars that were $1M and above. 

Had she signed for a $1M, she would have owed 13¢ in taxes on that solitary dollar that pushed her to $1M.  Had she signed the $1.4M supermax deal with the Sparks that she was entitled to, she would have had to have eaten $182,000 in taxes, but if we’re doing math over here, she would have still netted $1,218,000, which is $218,001 more than the $999,999 she signed for.  Sure, she would have had to have eaten a tax hit, but it’s funny that in her belief she was saving $13K, she ended up losing $218K.

The best part about all of this was Plum’s sheer cockiness in her belief that she had gamed some system.  Because fewer things are more hilarious than someone being so sure that they’re right about something, only to be completely wrong about it.

That being said, I’m more inclined to believe that there’s no professional athlete more ill-suited to being a professional athlete than Kelsey Plum is, because she doesn’t seem to like autograph seekers, and whether she was using an agent or not, she completely bombed at playing the salary game, and these are just kind of things that seem to be everyday life for other professional athletes.

Act like you’ve been there before, not like you have absolutely no clue to how the culture of privilege works.