UNCASVILLE — The Connecticut Sun season wound down to a merciful end Wednesday night. The players, young and old, gave the first-place Atlanta Dream a fight, but couldn’t emerge from the 24-point hole that was dug and lost, 88-72.
Nor could the Sun find daylight over the newly expanded 44-game season, after losing 16 of the first 18 games. The final record, 11-33, is the worst winning percentage ever for a franchise that has put a good product on the court for most of its 22 seasons at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“This is the end of the season, but the beginning of our future,” coach Rachid Meziane said, who promised, sort of, that things would be better in 2026.
CT attorney general seeking info from WNBA on its role in potential Connecticut Sun sale
UConn’s Tina Charles, the team’s oldest and most illustrious player, took the microphone and thanked the 7,508 fans, about 100 below the average for the season, for continuing to come out and fill the 8,000-seat arena.
Simply, the persistent narrative that players don’t like playing at the casino has caught up with the Sun, who lost all five starters after last season, leaving them to rebuild from scratch. What no one in the organization’s basketball operations, or anyone else can predict is just where the Sun’s future lies, geographically speaking, beyond next year. For that matter, not even next year is really guaranteed.
This franchise-relocation drama keeps turning and churning. It’s as if the WNBA ate something that disagreed with it, and that something is success. New stars, and their powerful brands have made the league more popular than ever, it’s franchises skyrocketing in value and threatening to become profitable.
But the WNBA’s fault lies not in its stars, nor in its Sun, but in itself. (Shakespeare, more or less).
“The kinds of interference that we’re seeing from the WNBA are blocking and obstructing, potentially, the State of Connecticut’s well-founded efforts to keep the franchise here could well be in violation of these antitrust laws.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said last week.
Even as the life was draining from the Sun’s season, state Attorney General William Tong was preparing a follow-up and scheduling a press conference, during which he unveiled his own letter to the WNBA asking for information on the league’s rules and practices, hinting that legal action is on the table.
“I’m commencing this inquiry, the state is commencing this inquiry because I’m concerned about reports in the press that the WNBA may be wrongfully blocking the sale of the Connecticut Sun that would keep the team here in Connecticut. I hear they’re blocking the sale to a Connecticut-based owner, and for what it’s worth, a Boston-based owner. And I’m concerned that they’re doing so in a manner that might be anticompetitive, and may violate state and federal laws.”
Before the day was out, House Republican leader Vincent Candelora (North Branford) weighed in, admonishing Tong to instead “scrutinize the Governor’s plan to use state employee pension funds to make Connecticut part owner of the franchise. That’s what residents actually care about — the risk to state finances, workers, and taxpayers.”
This refers to Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposal that includes the state buying a stake in the team from the Mohegan Tribe, which has owned it since 2003, purchasing it for $10 million, and has been offered $325 million from Hartford- and Boston-based groups.
“Ask Mohegan Sun whether it was a good investment they made 20 years ago,” Lamont told reporters Wednesday.
Now that this drawn-out drama has pulled politicians into it, this kind of sparring is to be expected and will get worse. The next uninvited guest could be something the NBA and WNBA needs even less, the courts. Even if the WNBA’s assertion that it can control who buys its franchises and where they play is upheld, it will be messy, time-consuming and expensive for all.
Readers speak: Certain politicians should stay out of Connecticut Sun issues
All of this could have been avoided, if NBA commissioner Adam Silver and WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert allowed things to run their course a little longer. That they allowed the owners to consider the Boston and Hartford offers and did not come off as determined to abandon an existing fan base in New England, something for which The W was long-starved, and try to revive a business model that failed the first time.
But having worked for 25 years to get people to tune in, the WNBA continues to do things bound to turn people off. Every signal of increased interest, from Caitlin Clark’s arrival to labor negotiations to expansion, plays out like a new opportunity to shoot itself in the sneakers in front of a growing audience.
Let me repeat my position on this much: I draw a red line at the state buying a piece of the team, a concept that has already incurred blowback and will be hard to sell. The Green Bay Packers are not a model for this. They are a not-for-profit corporation owned by community shareholders, not by the state of Wisconsin or city of Green Bay. If the state gets involved here, it should be to help the effort to keep the team in Connecticut without buying a chunk.
Keep in mind, too, the very reason astute business folks in Boston and Hartford, namely Marc Lasry’s group, have been willing to pay over $300 million is to realize the potential of playing in larger arenas. To pony up that kind of coin and keep the team in the 8,000 seat venue is to limit the return on that investment.
The WNBA’s positions throughout this mess do, in my nonlegal opinion, constitute a restraint of trade, bad business, double standards and laughably flawed logic. To wit:
*Not an eyebrow was batted when the Liberty relocated twice within its own territory, first from Madison Square Garden to Westchester, then to Brooklyn. (Nearby, you say? Try driving from White Plains to Brooklyn at rush hour.) But the Sun can’t move from Uncasville to Hartford? What, did Brooklyn put in an expansion bid no one knows about?
*Yes, the original WNBA plan was to have its teams paired with NBA franchises, but this did not work. Teams in Orlando, Detroit, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Cleveland, Miami, Portland, Sacramento and MSG proved unsustainable.
*The NBA is in all the major markets, but has also found success in some smaller markets it does not have to share with MLB or the NFL, such as Sacramento, Utah, Memphis, Oklahoma City. Couldn’t Hartford align with this model?
*So Houston came up short in the bidding for expansion teams that are starting as far out as 2030. Why should they now get a franchise immediately, while folks in Philly who played by the rules and won have to wait five years?
Sun conclude franchise-worst season with 88-72 loss to Atlanta Dream in finale
There are those who believe the team will eventually settle in Hartford, without a court battle, where the franchise could increase in value playing in front of larger crowds at refurbished PeoplesBank Arena. No matter what the league says now, the team would not be relocating any more than the Liberty going to Barclays Center did. More winners than losers with this outcome; Boston would still be open for future expansion, and Houston can stay at the front of the line for the next new franchise, no worse off than it is now.
And let me add, since sports, after all, is my bailiwick, that my takes are not based on the “Basketball Capital of the World” slogan. The number of NCAA titles won by UConn has nothing whatever to do with the WNBA leaving or staying, nor should it. It has to make sense from a business standpoint. But what exactly makes sense to the WNBA, one just can’t fathom.
Dom Amore: Geno Auriemma, Donny Marshall coming out to support basketball at Southern Connecticut
