From MVP to Mogul: How Candace Parker Is Winning After Retiring From Basketball

The Breakdown: Candace Parker has cemented herself as one of the greatest players the WNBA has ever seen. In over 15 years in the league, she’s amassed championships, Olympic medals, endorsement deals, and millions. She may have hung up her jersey, but her net worth still makes her a certified baller.

Candace Parker is an icon. At a towering 6'4", she has navigated basketball courts with an agility and finesse that made her one of the best in the sport. The star athlete has proven her skill with three WNBA championships, two Olympic medals, and multiple MVP titles. Parker is a winner, and she has a bank account to match.

Let’s take a look at Candace Parker’s net worth, the source of her millions, and her career plans now that she’s retired from the WNBA.

In professional basketball, player success is measured in points, blocked shots, rebounds, and other gameplay metrics. Money talks, too. Candace Parker’s net worth of $8 million (Per Celebrity Net Worth) reflects her dominance in the sport.

However, the WNBA only accounts for a fraction of Parker’s earnings. Thanks to the league’s salary cap, Parker only earned about $1 million in the WNBA over her 15-year career. In the earliest part of her career with the LA Sparks, she earned about $115,000 annually. A collective bargaining agreement in 2020 saw her income rise to about $190,000 when she joined the Chicago Sky in 2021.

Though WNBA salaries are limited, foreign leagues offer bigger paychecks. Like many other American players, Candace Parker played abroad. She shared that her contracts in Russia, China, and Turkey paid 10 to 20 times more than the WNBA, making them a major contributor to her overall net worth.

Parker scored big off the court, too. She had many lucrative endorsements with brands like Gatorade, CarMax, and Capital One. Parker has a long-standing deal with Adidas, and she was the first woman to have a signature shoe with the brand. That wasn’t her only boundary-breaking endorsement. In 2021, video game company 2K announced that Parker would be on the cover of NBA 2K22, making her the first female athlete to have the honor.

In addition to her endorsements, Parker also works as an on-air broadcaster with CBS Sports and NBA TV, though her salary is undisclosed. She also owns a $5 million dollar mansion in Tarzana, Calif., where she lives with her wife, retired Russian basketball player Anna Petrakova, and their two children.

Parker also has a daughter from her previous marriage to former NBA player Sheldon Williams. Although she was the breadwinner at the time of their split in 2016, she avoided denting her net worth with hefty alimony and child support expenses. The divorce was settled with a one-time payment of approximately half a million and shared custody.

Candace Parker announced her retirement from professional basketball on her Instagram on April 28, 2024. In the caption, she explained that her heart and body knew it was time. She mentioned an injury that pained her even after surgery and the challenges of playing on a “foot that wouldn’t cooperate.”

Still, she noted that she was grateful to have played basketball for a living and left the game better than she found it.

Looking back at Parker’s career, it would be impossible to argue that she hasn’t left a mark on the sport. Even before she joined the WNBA, she was breaking records. She was the first female high school player in Illinois to dunk in a game and the first woman to win the McDonald’s All-American Game Dunk Contest where she beat out future NBA stars like J.R. Smith and Rudy Gay.

She continued to dominate through her college career at University of Tennessee under legendary coach Pat Summitt. She entered the WNBA as the first draft pick in 2008 and ended that season as the first person to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same year. She also became the first woman to win WNBA championships with three different teams. Parker truly left it all on the court.

In her retirement post, Parker shared that she plans to pursue private equity, ownership and business, and to continue her work as a sports broadcaster. She’s also continuing her advocacy for equity in sports. Fittingly, she is now the president of Adidas Women’s Basketball, a role “with a focus on access, increased representation and breaking down barriers on a global scale.”

We suspect Parker will also continue her advocacy through production. She’s already got one producer credit under her belt with Title IX: 37 Words that Changed America, a documentary about the legislation that prevented gender-based discrimination in federally funded education programs.

Wherever her post-retirement career takes her, we’re sure Candace Parker will continue to be a game-changer.