All of it started with a Thanksgiving dialog between Michael Carter-Williams and his mother, longtime basketball coach Mandy Carter-Zegarowski.
What if we introduced a WNBA staff to Boston?
Now, only a few months later, the 33-year-old former NBA participant is main the cost to make that dream a actuality.
All the things got here collectively rapidly. Carter-Williams bought related with Donnie Wahlberg, a Boston-based actor and producer, and the 2 collectively launched the Boston Girls’s Basketball Companions, a bunch that goals to submit an growth bid to deliver a WNBA franchise to Boston within the coming years.
For Carter-Williams, who was the NBA Rookie of the 12 months in 2014 and performed within the league for almost a decade, investing in girls’s basketball has lengthy been a no brainer.
“I used to be all the time sort of tapped in with girls’s basketball, so I used to be all the time a supporter earlier than it was cool, ?” Carter-Williams informed SB Nation in an unique dialog on Wednesday.
It’s how he was raised. His mom Mandy based a complete AAU program greater than 20 years in the past. That enterprise in the end become MCW Starz, an AAU membership based mostly in South Hamilton, Massachusetts that features 14 ladies’ basketball groups.
“We’ve been concerned in girls’s basketball for about 12, 13 years now,” Carter-Williams stated. “We all the time had plans and goals and talked about how cool wouldn’t it be to have a WNBA staff in Boston. After which we began speaking to the fitting individuals and shaped a bunch, and one factor led to a different, and also you’re in a practical place to a minimum of put collectively a bunch that might make a run at getting a staff of Boston.”
The WNBA is within the midst of a speedy and unprecedented growth
The league included 12 groups final yr and is including a thirteenth, the Golden State Valkyries, forward of the 2025 season. There are already two groups slated to hitch in 2026, in Toronto Tempo and Portland, and Sports Business Journal reported that Cleveland is predicted to turn out to be the league’s sixteenth staff in 2028.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated final yr she’d prefer to get to 16 groups by 2028. However, the demand has far outpaced that preliminary projection. An extended checklist of cities have expressed curiosity in bringing a WNBA staff to city, an inventory that features Charlotte, Austin, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Detroit.
Because of Carter-Williams and Wahlberg, Boston is now the most recent to enter the fold.
May Carter-Williams and Wahlberg purchase an present WNBA staff?
Whereas growth has been on the forefront of dialog, it’s not the one method a WNBA staff might find yourself in Boston.
The Boston Girls’s Basketball Companions can be open to buying an present franchise, if one had been up on the market, Carter-Williams confirmed to SB Nation. Essentially the most intuitive choose for that sale could be the Connecticut Solar, who’re at present New England’s WNBA staff however are based mostly in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Final yr, Solar gamers brazenly expressed a need to play in Boston. After enjoying one sold-out recreation at TD Backyard towards the Los Angeles Sparks in August, DiJonai Carrington was blunt in expressing her need to play in entrance of a much bigger crowd.
“It felt nice,” she stated of the ambiance at TD Backyard. “It felt like what each evening ought to really feel like.”
Since then, Connecticut has skilled monumental turnover: head coach Stephanie White left for the Indiana Fever, Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, and Brionna Jones departed as free brokers, and Carrington and Ty Harris had been traded to Dallas. The one top-six participant from final yr’s playoff staff at present on subsequent yr’s roster is Marina Mabrey, who has requested a commerce (a request that Solar president Jen Rizzotti has denied).
Thomas, the Solar’s longtime franchise participant who’s at present enjoying in Unrivaled, an expert offseason 3-on-3 girls’s basketball league in Miami, has criticized the Solar’s lack of funding of their infrastructure. Connecticut is one among solely two WNBA groups that haven’t introduced plans to assemble their own practice facility.
“They’ve every part you presumably want right here,” Thomas said last month of Unequalled’s follow facility, just a few days earlier than her determination to go to the Phoenix Mercury was introduced. “They don’t actually have plenty of these issues in Connecticut. I’ve been making an attempt to soak up as a lot information as I can.”
Nonetheless, the Mohegan Solar tribe that owns the Connecticut Solar is not interested in promoting the staff (nor seeing a WNBA staff come to Boston).
Carter-Williams stated that if the Solar had been up on the market sooner or later, they’d be all in favour of buying the franchise.
“I believe we’re open to all prospects,” he stated. “That might be nice if that might occur. The primary aim is to simply get a staff to Boston. And I believe there’s many alternative avenues [through which] that might occur. That’s the aim — it doesn’t matter what highway we have to journey to get there, that’s what we need to do.”
Carter-Williams, who’s from 40 minutes north of Boston, believes Boston is the proper location for a WNBA staff.
“Boston is such an incredible sports activities city — it’s a championship metropolis,” he stated. “I simply suppose that the quantity of help that these girls will obtain from the individuals in Boston could be nice.”
He additionally maintains that the existence of a Boston staff would profit the league as a complete, from the standpoint that it might assist generate new rivalries.
“Rivalries are an enormous factor in sports activities,” Carter-Williams stated. “And, there’s no rivalry greater than the Purple Sox and the Yankees, proper? Boston is all the time concerned, the Lakers and Celtics, Boston is all the time concerned in these huge rivalries in sports activities, and that’s what makes them nice. I believe the WNBA is lacking that.”
Carter-Williams wasn’t in a position to share specifics relating to which particular venues the possession group is exploring, however did share that he’s seen monumental help from policymakers within the state. The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn reported that Mayor Michele Wu and Governor Maura Healey have each provided their help for the bid.
“We’ve been in contact with a number of individuals,” Carter-Williams stated. “We’ve been in contact with the town. We’ve been in contact with individuals relating to venues, and so they’re actually enthusiastic about it.”
He additionally believes that the WNBA will in the end increase the variety of complete groups past the present projections of 16 franchises.
“I believe individuals are choosing up on making an attempt to get growth groups, sort of placing strain on the WNBA, and I believe they’re beginning to have some good issues,” Carter-Williams stated. “So, I believe they’ll make some changes, and I believe we’ll see growth groups coming at a sooner tempo than we’ve been seeing them.”
