WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert killed the Connecticut Sun and along with it any credibility she had left. Destroying the franchise means erasing its history and the contributions of all who made it. Everyone who ever played in a Sun uniform deserves to have their history preserved. So does the Mohegan Tribe, which twenty-three years ago rescued a WNBA franchise from folding—giving it a new home. On the cusp of its thirtieth season, the league deserves better than the slash-and-burn errors of the past that had the WNBA on the brink of extinction as little as ten years ago. The WNBA Board of Governors should not approve any deal that strips an entire region of a team. Removing a successful team with a strong fan base should be forbidden. So while people in this part of the country reckon with having a good thing destroyed as callously as the White House’s East Wing was torn down, The Hard Screen examined the whole shameful debacle in the four-part series Stripping New England of Its Only WNBA Team Doesn’t Grow the League—from the after hours announcement and burned bridges in Boston to possible motives and the red flags surrounding Tilman Fertitta, the franchise’s new owner. This is the third installment.
By Tamryn Spruill
Moving the Sun to Boston would’ve been an instant boon for the WNBA. In sticking it to Massachusetts with the same callous, flippant attitude that the players have cited, Engelbert has angered an entire region of fans, including Gov. Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Donnie Wahlberg.
“I’d love to see a WNBA team in Massachusetts and Boston,” Healey, who played for the Harvard women’s basketball team in her collegiate days, told The Boston Globe. “We’ve got the market, we’re a sports town, it’s clear to me it would do really, really well.”
“As a longtime Boston Celtics fan who attended countless NBA games in my lifetime, nothing would bring me more joy than to have a WNBA franchise in the city of Boston,” Wahlberg said in an email to the publication. “I look forward to the day I can walk into the Garden, along with thousands of the greatest (and most knowledgeable) basketball fans on the planet, to root for Boston’s hometown WNBA team.”
Wu championed the prospect as “amazing” and vowed that the city would work with the WNBA to make it happen. “We deserve a WNBA team here in the city,” Wu said.
That has been the case for more than thirty years, and will not change any time soon. Engelbert blocked the Pagliuca-Mohegan Tribe sale from going through, citing that “relocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams.” Those pedantic details on process do not justify cutting an entire region out of the league. The WNBA Board of Governors owes it the fans in New England to disapprove the sale to Fertitta, reinstate the agreement between Pagliuca and the Mohegan Tribe to bring the team to Boston, and allow Houston to separately resurrect the Comets.
But Engelbert blocked that road and Sun President Jen Rizzotti must’ve had flashbacks to her playing days after learning the franchise was heading to Houston.
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NEXT UP: Part IV. A 2020 Election Backlash, Political Retribution?