The WNBA is losing control

Good morning. We're going to talk about the WNBA being positively Sternian with the Connecticut Sun as well as bid adieu to John Wall. Let's basketball.

The WNBA has grand expansion plans in the coming years, building on the success of the past five seasons and the introduction of the Golden State Valkyries this campaign. The league has done expansion through some central planning: the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire will start play next year, and the cities of Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia have been awarded franchises that will begin play later this decade. If there's any question as to whether the league's expansion was overdue, the Valkyries' expansion fee was $50 million, agreed to in 2023. The expansion fee for the latest three teams, confirmed this summer, are $250 million a pop. Players and fans have built up the league; the investors, who have been and are necessary to get to this point, will reap the rewards since franchise equity does not figure into player salaries and certainly won't lower ticket prices.

An obvious outcome from booming franchise valuations is that lower-resourced franchise owners would seek and capitalize on the opportunity to get paid and get out. You see it happen in every North American team sport. There's a threshold at which even the most dedicated team owners realize it's time to pass the baton to the next level of wealthy person and cash out.

And so the Mohegan Tribe, owners of the Connecticut Sun for 22 years, decided to cash out by agreeing to sell the team to Celtics minority partner slash Celtics sale bridesmaid Steve Pagliuca for a record $325 million. Pagliuca immediately signaled that he planned to move the team to Boston to play at TD Garden. Except Boston is not currently on the WNBA's expansion list. The next city up is Houston.

There are a couple of ways this could have gone:

• The WNBA could have thanked the Mohegan Tribe for its decades of investment, acknowledged that its resources are no longer in line with the needs of a WNBA franchise and let them sell the team unimpeded, signaled to Pagliuca that any relocation would be subject to the approval of the WNBA Board of Governors
• The WNBA could put up a roadblock and try to pressure the Mohegan Tribe to do what fits the league's own grand plan

The league has gone the latter route. Alexa Philippou and Ramona Shelburne have an insightful write-up on ESPN. They report that the WNBA, knowing the Mohegan Tribe was seeking a buyer, tried to buy the Sun for $250 million so that it could pass the franchise off to Cleveland or Houston, allowing both cities to join the league. But then Pagliuca, who came a few hundred million short (and reportedly some bad blood) short of landing the Celtics, stopped by with a 30% higher price. So obviously the Mohegan Tribe went with that offer.

Philippou and Shelburne also report that the Mohegan Tribe have some ideas on how to solve the problem. One of them keeps the team in New England (Hartford) and one of which involves Houston (or whoever) ponying up $325 million to take the team away. That's certainly the most fair solution that gets the team what it wants, which is $325 million. But it's deeply unfair to Pagliuca and to deeply unfair to local fans who would be able to catch an occasional game two hours away in Boston but not a whole damn country away in Houston.

This is a serious growing pain for the WNBA. There's unbridled growth going on thanks to the Caitlin Clark phenomenon, the rise of the New York Liberty (actually playing in NYC now), superstars like A'ja Wilson and Napheesa Collier and the bursting fandom that's been more active than ever since the late 2010s. But the WNBA league office still wants full control of ... everything. It's hard to maintain control during a boom. The NBA experienced this. David Stern tried desperately to control his league in the 2000s; it ended up with him helping Oklahoma City poach the Sonics from Seattle and then the league buying the post-Katrina New Orleans Hornets to make payroll and prevent them from relocating (and also to prevent them from trading Chris Paul to the Lakers).

In the end, who got screwed? The city that didn't bow to the commissioner. Kinda like Boston in this case, huh?

The WNBA knew the Sun were in trouble and that this was the time for a cash-out. That they didn't solve this problem before announcing the three expansion clubs two months ago has created a bigger problem for them. There is no justification to deny the sale to Pagliuca, who checks all the boxes of a potential franchise owner as far as any civilian can tell. (He remains a minority partner in the Celtics.) The WNBA Board could absolutely deny relocation and keep the team in Uncasville, or clear the path for a move to Hartford only, not Boston. But then Pagliuca would and should have the right to try to flip the team to Tilman Fertitta and the Houston ownership group. Unless the WNBA is willing to expand again past 18 teams, the movable Sun become the most prized possession available. Maybe the Mohegan Tribe can get their $325 million from Pagliuca, and Pagliuca can soak Fertitta for another $100 million or so. And if we end up with the Comets again, that's a win. It's a disgrace that the Houston Comets – the signature franchise of the league's first decade – don't exist right now. It'd be like if the Lakers didn't exist! (Well, now that you put it that way ...)

There are also huge political tangles here. The Mohegan Tribe is a sovereign tribal nation. The WNBA player and fanbase are largely liberal if not straight-up progressive. Pagliuca ran for Senate 15 years ago (unsuccessfully) as a Democrat. Fertitta, the WNBA's apparent preferred bidder who didn't actually seem to bid, is Trump's ambassador to Italy and has a questionable (at best) history of employee relations. And the WNBA is embarking on the most consequential collective bargaining period in its existence. Fun times for tumult over control of the league's teams!

Cathy Engelbert missed a real opportunity to solve this problem before it blew up, and now she's dragged her bosses (the 13 franchise owners) and herself into a total mess. Sometimes an organization grows too big or too fast to be controlled. Such is the WNBA right now. Good luck untying this knot.

What Subscribers Have Been Reading

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• I wrote about the three possible outcomes for next year's Cavaliers based on the epic season and more epic flame-out we just watched.
• I broke down the 2025 NBA Cup groups. One group stands out.
• I wrote about how the new salary cap environment has created the Extension Era and may turn unrestricted free agency into something like restricted free agency.
• I wrote my annual lament of FIBA's destruction of meaningful summer basketball.

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Happy Trails, John Wall

John Wall has announced his retirement from pro basketball. He was a symbol of 2010s basketball and culture, one of the fastest and most athletic point guards in the league's history and a winning player for the few seasons the Washington Wizards built a decent team around him. He was leaping up the Wizards' record books and hit both the All-NBA team and the MVP ballot (finishing 7th) in the 2016-17 season, signed a huge extension ... and then start having serious knee problems. He only played half of the 2017-18 season, and even less the following season after suffering a torn Achilles early in the 2018-19 season. He never played for the Wizards again, and barely played at all since (40 games for the Rockets and 34 games for the Clippers).

Russell Westbrook (traded for Wall in 2020) was my absolute favorite of the troika of ultra-athletic point guards of the 2010s, but Wall was right there. (Derrick Rose was not particularly for me, and this isn't just a post-career edit. My writing oeuvre would confirm that I liked writing about Russ and Wall way more than Rose, even at their peaks.) Wall had this amazing way of driving establishment sports journalism to their worst instincts; Colin Cowherd's infamous and stupid rant about Wall doing the Dougie before his first home game continues to occupy a couple nooks in my brain. That Wall could be an excellent basketball player, even by the standards of NBA excellence while having fun on the court and outside of work shorted out some brains. (Wall's excellence is evidenced by the five All-Star teams, four of them as reserves, which means he was elected by coaches. Argue with them, Cowherd.)

That's what John Wall really meant as a basketball player: coolness and joy. The assists, the steals, the open-court breaks, the drives into traffic. Just a lovely exhibit of what a point guard could be in the 2010s. Happy trails, John Wall.

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