Kelsey Mitchell's Cryptic Post About Pay Raises Eyebrows Amid Free Agency Chatter
The free agency status of Indiana Fever star guard Kelsey Mitchell has been one of the hottest topics throughout the WNBA offseason to this point.
Recent comments that Fever President of Basketball & Business Operations Kelly Krauskopf made about her team's desire (and apparent intention) to "core" Mitchell this season raised questions about what it means to give a WNBA player a core designation.
In short, the answer is that despite Mitchell entering free agency this offseason, the Fever can elect to hold on to her for another year by giving her a "core" designation this winter (which a franchise can only do for one player each free agency period).
In doing this, the Fever are subject to giving Mitchell a super-max contract next season, which will be $249,244.
While all of this chatter about her future is underway, Mitchell is playing for the Shanxi Flame of the Women's Chinese Basketball Association (WCBA).
And money is clearly on Mitchell's mind at the moment, as she made a cryptic post to her Instagram story on Thursday that is raising some eyebrows about her intentions.
The post is captioned 'When somebody asks me what I like about my job...' and featured a video of Whoopi Goldberg saying, "Getting paid... I do enjoy a paycheck, not gonna lie."
Then Mitchell added her own caption to the story that wrote,
"pay=play
"no pay = no play.
"only one motto over these waters. 😂🫠".
wtf does this mean @Kelz_Hoop pic.twitter.com/FZbfqOaH8w
— offseason and cbb lana🤞🏻(fever AND uconn fan) (@iheartwbb225) November 15, 2024
There's no way of knowing what Mitchell meant by this post and this caption. But judging from her mention of "over these waters," she could be alluding to a pay issue she's experiencing overseas at the moment.
Regardless of whether it has anything to do with the WNBA or free agency, this post is likely something that will remain on the radar of Fever fans.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the New York Yankees, and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.