Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll play a game of basketball with leaders of community groups at the kick-off the Summer Nights Program at Martini Memorial Shell Park in Boston in July 2023. Photo by Sam Drysdale | State House News Service / File
Gov. Maura Healey reiterated recently that she is “not giving up” on landing a WNBA franchise for Massachusetts and described her personal involvement last year in unsuccessful efforts to relocate the Connecticut Sun here.
After a chorus of support for bringing women’s basketball to Boston grew last summer in the midst of high turnout at TD Garden for Connecticut Sun games and franchise sale rumors, the Sun announced in March that it will move to Houston, Texas, next year, The Associated Press reported.
Healey previously said she told the WNBA’s commissioner she was “really disappointed with the decision they made to move the team to Houston and an NBA owner.” Appearing on a podcast last week with former TV sportscasters Mike Lynch and Bob Lobel, Healey said she was not the only one disappointed the Sun will not be coming to Boston.
“I was trying really hard last year to get the Sun. The Sun – the tribe was going to sell the Sun, and, you know, it was disappointing. The tribe wanted the team to come to Boston. The Sun management wanted the team to come to Boston. The players wanted to be in Boston. But it ended up going to Houston, and that was disappointing,” she said, referring to the Mohegan Tribe which moved the team from Orlando, Florida to Connecticut in 2003.
Healey added that she does not “want to wait for more expansion teams,” which the WNBA has suggested it would prefer for its entrance to the Boston market. She also had insight into the politics at play with the WNBA.
“Part of it, it’s the W for years was subsidized by the NBA. I get that, right? And, you know, I think there’s a feeling among NBA owners that they want to own the NBA team, the W team, and the arena. And so when independents are moving and being sold, that’s going to be where they’re going to try to push,” she said. “But I still think there’s a way to get a W team here, and we should have a W team.”
Even if a Boston WNBA team didn’t build its own home arena, the team’s arrival could directly lead to a big real estate development. When the Sun was in talks to move to Massachusetts, bidder and former Boston Celtics owner Steve Paglicua pledged to spend $100 million to build the team a new practice facility here.
Healey’s push to bring a WNBA team to Boston occurs amid speculation that the Boston Celtics are in the market for their own venue. The team’s longtime home, the TD Garden, is owned by concessions giant Delaware North, which shares owners with the Boston Bruins, meaning the Celtics’ new majority owner doesn’t get revenue from non-Celtics events at the arena. The latest site mooted for such a location: an area next to South Station currently occupied by a U.S. Postal Service sorting facility, according to The Boston Globe.
