Former UConn great Breanna Stewart's season-ending Achilles' injury has produced predictable prattle from the women's basketball intelligentsia, whose apocalyptic growls are bigger on rhetoric than practicality.

Stewart, 24, the reigning WNBA Most Valuable Player, was hurt playing in the EuroLeague Final Four championship game for Dynamo Kursk last week in Russia. Her injury has fueled more discussion about how paltry WNBA salaries force players to augment their bank accounts by playing overseas in the offseason, thus creating insufficient rest time and a greater risk of injury.

WNBA salaries should be higher, they claim. More money here means less of a reason to play overseas. More rest means a better quality of game.

A solid premise, except for one detail: Where is the money going to come from?

A legitimate query, given that NBA commissioner Adam Silver told ESPNW recently that the WNBA is projected to lose $12 million overall for the upcoming season.

The WNBA deserves mad props and bon mots for being the longest running women's professional sports league in the history of the world. It has grown in the last two decades through independent ownership, star power and corporate sponsorship. But it's still not anywhere near generating revenues that sustain more money for the players.

And yet that rather undeniable circumstance gets caught in the rinse cycle of the game's protectors, some of whom lean on that flimsy, yet familiar crutch of "fairness," or lack thereof.

They're right: It's not fair.

But then, this is business.

You just don't get to demand more money while unable to generate the means to acquire it.

I'm growing weary of the "it's not fair!" crowd, who get to hide behind a one-argument-fits-all warble every time circumstances appear inequitable. And if you don't agree, you are painted as sexist.

Want to call me sexist? Free country. It's just that 1) I've been around women's basketball since 1990 when my forever friend Margo Plotzke invited me into BC practices and taught me more basketball than anyone else; and 2) I still have a pending question: Where is the money coming from?

The WNBA's maximum salary for this season is $117,500. That's lunch money compared to what the men make, sure. But it's also for about four months' work. Life could be worse. Stewart, who made just under $60,000 in base salary last season, also drives a Maserati, indicating that she's not exactly a candidate for a telethon.

There's no denying last season was a disaster. The schedule had to end in September before the start of the FIBA Women's Basketball World Cup, presenting absurd travel issues for all teams, highlighted (or lowlighted) by Las Vegas' 26-hour travel day that prompted Bill Laimbeer to forfeit a game.

Charter flights, ever cost-ineffective, are verboten in the WNBA. Except this might be a more worthwhile fight in collective bargaining.

No one's saying a complete charter program should be implemented. But the opportunity to fly charter — maybe once a year — ought to be on the books to promulgate competitive balance. Example: The Connecticut Sun had to play back-to-back games last season in Seattle and Phoenix. They played at night in Seattle, awakened at 4 a.m. to take a three-hour commercial flight to Phoenix (at 6 a.m.), all for the right to play Diana Taurasi and Britney Griner at night.

Too bad we didn't have sports betting. I'd have bet Phoenix with both hands.

A charter, however, would have landed the Sun in Phoenix at around 2 a.m. providing the chance to sleep through the night and rest all day.

That's an example of more practical and productive collective bargaining. And while, yes, charter flights aren't cheap, they at least strike at the core of competitive balance. Flying at 6 a.m. the day of a game after playing the night before is absurd. Far more absurd than making $117,500 for four months' work.

We as a society must be mindful that inequity exists and vigilant to protect against it. But inane rhetoric that's a byproduct of a knee-jerk reaction to an unfortunate injury gets us nowhere. No, the salaries for WNBA players aren't fair. But WNBA players just aren't in a place yet to do anything about it.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro