The StudBudz Are Just Getting Started

The StudBudz are thinking more about the future. Just a year ago, the former Minnesota Lynx teammates and viral livestreaming sensations competed in a league with a maximum salary of $249,244. Now, thanks to the WNBA’s latest collective bargaining agreement, players are signing multi-million dollar contracts for the first time in its 30-year-history.“It changed my life. My mama, she’s able to retire now,” Courtney Williams, who reportedly signed a two-year, $2.4 million max contract with the Lynx this April, tells me. “It just feels like whatever I want or whatever they want, we could just get now.”“I feel like now, with the money that I am getting, it’s helping me with my goals in the future,” Natisha Hiedeman, who signed with the Seattle Storm in April on a two-year, $1.5 million contract, adds. “In the past, they maybe seemed far-fetched but now it’s like, no, I could do that.”But practicality aside, what did they splurge on with their new salaries? Hiedeman bought a chain and Williams admits she may be spending some of her money on girls. “Money makes these women go. That’s all I’m going to say,” she laughs. “I was kind of wondering how these NBA dudes was doing it, but now I completely understand.”If you’re a newer fan to the WNBA, you might think it’s long been like this — a place where two gay, masc-of-center women can make millions playing ball, and be as outrageous as they are out. But in a league with a more heteronormative past than its current reputation might suggest, Williams and Hiedeman represent a new era of inclusion and authenticity — one they have helped build, one livestream at a time.It’d be a wildly impressive accomplishment by any standards — even more so when you consider they’ve only been the StudBudz for a year. Bobby RogersIn 2019, after initially being drafted to the Minnesota Lynx, a young rookie from Marquette University named Natisha Hiedeman eventually ended up on the Connecticut Sun.