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 workforce to Boston?
Now, just some months later, the 33-year-old former NBA participant is main the cost to make that dream a actuality.
Every thing got here collectively rapidly. 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 growth bid to deliver 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 almost a decade, investing in girls’s basketball has lengthy been a no brainer.
“I used to be at all times sort of tapped in with girls’s basketball, so I used to be at all times a supporter earlier than it was cool, you realize?” 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 finally changed into MCW Starz, an AAU membership primarily based in South Hamilton, Massachusetts that features 14 women’ basketball groups.
“We’ve been concerned in girls’s basketball for about 12, 13 years now,” Carter-Williams stated. “We at all times had plans and desires and talked about how cool would it not be to have a WNBA workforce in Boston. After which we began speaking to the suitable individuals and shaped a gaggle, and one factor led to a different, and also you’re in a practical place to a minimum of put collectively a gaggle that would make a run at getting a workforce of Boston.”
The WNBA is within the midst of a speedy and unprecedented growth
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 hitch in 2026, in Toronto Tempo and Portland, and Sports activities Enterprise Journal reported that Cleveland is predicted to grow to be the league’s sixteenth workforce in 2028.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated final 12 months she’d prefer to get to 16 groups by 2028. However, the demand has far outpaced that preliminary projection. An extended listing of cities have expressed curiosity in bringing a WNBA workforce to city, an inventory that features Charlotte, Austin, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Detroit.
Due to Carter-Williams and Wahlberg, Boston is now the newest to enter the fold.
Might Carter-Williams and Wahlberg purchase an present WNBA workforce?
Whereas growth has been on the forefront of dialog, it’s not the one manner a WNBA workforce might find yourself in Boston.
The Boston Girls’s Basketball Companions can be open to buying an present franchise, if one have been up on the market, Carter-Williams confirmed to SB Nation. Probably the most intuitive choose for that sale can be the Connecticut Solar, who’re at present New England’s WNBA workforce however are primarily based in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Final 12 months, Solar gamers brazenly expressed a want to play in Boston. After enjoying one sold-out recreation at TD Backyard in opposition to the Los Angeles Sparks in August, DiJonai Carrington was blunt in expressing her want to play in entrance of an even bigger crowd.
“It felt nice,” she stated of the environment at TD Backyard. “It felt like what each evening ought to really feel like.”
DiJonai Carrington requested what the environment 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 workforce at present 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 present enjoying in Unequalled, 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 in every of solely two WNBA groups that haven’t introduced plans to assemble their personal observe facility.
“They’ve every part you probably want right here,” Thomas stated final month of Unequalled’s observe facility, a couple of days earlier than her determination to go to the Phoenix Mercury was introduced. “They don’t actually have loads 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 isn’t in promoting the workforce (nor seeing a WNBA workforce 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 potentialities,” he stated. “That might be nice if that would occur. The primary aim is to only get a workforce to Boston. And I believe there’s many various 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 proper location for a WNBA workforce.
“Boston is such an important sports activities city — it’s a championship metropolis,” he stated. “I simply suppose that the quantity of assist that these girls will obtain from the individuals in Boston can be nice.”
He additionally maintains that the existence of a Boston workforce would profit the league as a complete, from the standpoint that it will 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 at all times concerned, the Lakers and Celtics, Boston is at all times concerned in these large 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 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 finally elevate the variety of whole groups past the present projections of 16 franchises.
“I believe individuals are selecting up on making an attempt to get growth groups, sort of placing stress 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.”