How do WNBA hardship contracts work?
The Indiana Fever has been hit hard by injuries and had to sign G Aari McDonald to an emergency hardship contract.
Video Transcript
When a WNBA team signs a player to a hardship contract, what does that mean?
So for the WNBA, each team has to have a maximum of 12 players or a minimum of 11 players on their roster.
But sometimes things come up like injuries where players can't play, and in order for a team to play, they must have 10 game available players.
And if they don't, that's where the hardship contract comes in.
The team has, for example, only 9 healthy players, they can go out and find a player to sign a short-term contract and have them immediately join the team.
Now, the unfortunate part to the situation is that once the original member of the team comes back from injury and the team has at least 10 healthy players, the player that was signed the hardship contract will either have to be given a standard contract or be waived from the team.
