Major League Pickleball Owners Clash Publicly Over Team Spending and a Proposed Salary Cap
Pickleball.com reports that St. Louis Shock owner Ross Chaifetz and California Black Bears owner Ritchie Tuazon traded pointed posts Tuesday over whether Major League Pickleball should adopt a salary cap and floor, after the Shock spent about 1.55 million dollars on their roster while the Black Bears spent 85,000 dollars in the draft. Chaifetz argued every team had equal opportunity to invest and opposed forced redistribution of top talent, while Tuazon and Black Bears president Jimmy Miller pushed for a cap set at twice the floor to level the playing field.
Read at Pickleball.com →USAP Fixed the Spin Test, but the Bigger Certification Problem Remains
In a guest column for The Dink, 11Six24 founder David Groechel argues that USA Pickleball's new 2,100 RPM Spin Rate Test, effective October 1, adopts the same output-based approach UPA-A already uses but leaves larger gaps in the certification system. He notes that USAP paddles are judged by the standards in place when they were certified with no expiration, unlike UPA-A's two-year recertification and destructive break-in testing, and points to reporting on the OWL paddle's undisclosed provisional approval as evidence that the testing method matters as much as the number.
Read at The Dink →
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