Claudia Goldin is best known for her research of gender wage gaps and labor force earnings in the U.S., for which she won the Nobel Prize in economics. The 79-year-old Harvard labor economist admits she doesn’t follow basketball closely beyond what her husband Lawrence shares.

Negotiations with the WNBA hit an early roadblock when the union rejected the league’s first collective bargaining agreement offer sent recently, according to Front Office Sports, and Sabally called it a “slap in the face” when addressing reporters Tuesday.