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 group 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.
Every little thing got here collectively shortly. Carter-Williams acquired linked with Donnie Wahlberg, a Boston-based actor and producer, and the 2 collectively launched the Boston Girls’s Basketball Companions, a gaggle that goals to submit an enlargement bid to convey a WNBA franchise to Boston within the coming years.
For Carter-Williams, who was the NBA Rookie of the Yr in 2014 and performed within the league for practically a decade, investing in ladies’s basketball has lengthy been a no brainer.
“I used to be all the time form of tapped in with ladies’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 became MCW Starz, an AAU membership primarily based in South Hamilton, Massachusetts that features 14 ladies’ basketball groups.
“We’ve been concerned in ladies’s basketball for about 12, 13 years now,” Carter-Williams stated. “We all the time had plans and desires and talked about how cool wouldn’t it be to have a WNBA group in Boston. After which we began speaking to the appropriate individuals and fashioned a gaggle, and one factor led to a different, and also you’re in a practical place to at the least put collectively a gaggle that would make a run at getting a group of Boston.”
The WNBA is within the midst of a fast and unprecedented enlargement
The league included 12 groups final 12 months and is including a thirteenth, the Golden State Valkyries, forward of the 2025 season. There are already two groups slated to affix in 2026, in Toronto Tempo and Portland, and Sports activities Enterprise Journal reported that Cleveland is predicted to change into the league’s sixteenth group in 2028.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated final 12 months she’d wish to get to 16 groups by 2028. However, the demand has far outpaced that preliminary projection. A protracted checklist of cities have expressed curiosity in bringing a WNBA group to city, a listing that features Charlotte, Austin, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Detroit.
Because of Carter-Williams and Wahlberg, Boston is now the newest to enter the fold.
Might Carter-Williams and Wahlberg purchase an present WNBA group?
Whereas enlargement has been on the forefront of dialog, it’s not the one method a WNBA group may find yourself in Boston.
The Boston Girls’s Basketball Companions can also be open to buying an present franchise, if one have been up on the market, Carter-Williams confirmed to SB Nation. Essentially the most intuitive decide for that sale could be the Connecticut Solar, who’re at the moment New England’s WNBA group however are primarily based in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Final 12 months, Solar gamers brazenly expressed a need to play in Boston. After taking part in one sold-out recreation at TD Backyard in opposition to the Los Angeles Sparks in August, DiJonai Carrington was blunt in expressing her need to play in entrance of an even bigger crowd.
“It felt nice,” she stated of the ambiance at TD Backyard. “It felt like what each evening ought to really feel like.”
DiJonai Carrington requested what the ambiance was like at TD Backyard:
“It felt nice. It felt like what each evening ought to really feel like.” pic.twitter.com/U481e4NU2W
— Noa Dalzell (@NoaDalzell) August 21, 2024
Since then, Connecticut has skilled huge 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 have been traded to Dallas. The one top-six participant from final 12 months’s playoff group at the moment on subsequent 12 months’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 the moment taking part in in Unmatched, an expert offseason 3-on-3 ladies’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 personal follow facility.
“They’ve every little thing you probably want right here,” Thomas stated final month of Unmatched’s follow facility, just a few days earlier than her determination to go to the Phoenix Mercury was introduced. “They don’t actually have numerous 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 shouldn’t be in promoting the group (nor seeing a WNBA group come to Boston).
Carter-Williams stated that if the Solar have been up on the market sooner or later, they’d be keen on buying the franchise.
“I believe we’re open to all prospects,” he stated. “That might be nice if that would occur. The primary aim is to only get a group to Boston. And I believe there’s many alternative avenues [through which] that would occur. That’s the aim — it doesn’t matter what street 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 right location for a WNBA group.
“Boston is such a fantastic sports activities city — it’s a championship metropolis,” he stated. “I simply assume that the quantity of assist that these ladies will obtain from the individuals in Boston could be nice.”
He additionally maintains that the existence of a Boston group would profit the league as an entire, from the standpoint that it could assist generate new rivalries.
“Rivalries are an enormous factor in sports activities,” Carter-Williams stated. “And, there’s no rivalry greater than the Crimson 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 huge assist from policymakers within the state. The Boston Globe’s Gary Washburn reported that Mayor Michele Wu and Governor Maura Healey have each provided their assist for the bid.
“We’ve been in contact with a number of individuals,” Carter-Williams stated. “We’ve been in contact with 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 elevate the variety of complete groups past the present projections of 16 franchises.
“I believe persons are selecting up on making an attempt to get enlargement groups, form 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 enlargement groups coming at a quicker tempo than we’ve been seeing them.”
