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, 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 rapidly. Carter-Williams bought related with Donnie Wahlberg, a Boston-based actor and producer, and the 2 collectively launched the Boston Ladies’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 Yr in 2014 and performed within the league for practically 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, you already know?” 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 was 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 mentioned. “We all the time 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 fitting folks and fashioned a bunch, and one factor led to a different, and also you’re in a sensible place to a minimum of put collectively a bunch 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 yr 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 turn out to be the league’s sixteenth workforce in 2028.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert mentioned final yr she’d prefer to get to 16 groups by 2028. However, the demand has far outpaced that preliminary projection. A protracted record of cities have expressed curiosity in bringing a WNBA workforce to city, a listing that features Charlotte, Austin, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Houston, Milwaukee, Nashville, and Detroit.
Due to Carter-Williams and Wahlberg, Boston is now the most recent to enter the fold.
Might Carter-Williams and Wahlberg purchase an current WNBA workforce?
Whereas growth has been on the forefront of dialog, it’s not the one means a WNBA workforce might find yourself in Boston.
The Boston Ladies’s Basketball Companions can also be open to buying an current franchise, if one had 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 presently New England’s WNBA workforce however are based mostly in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Final yr, Solar gamers overtly expressed a need to play in Boston. After taking part in one sold-out sport 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 mentioned 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 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 workforce presently 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 presently taking part in in Unequalled, knowledgeable 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 personal apply facility.
“They’ve the whole lot you probably want right here,” Thomas mentioned final month of Unequalled’s apply facility, a number of days earlier than her resolution 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 isn’t in promoting the workforce (nor seeing a WNBA workforce come to Boston).
Carter-Williams mentioned that if the Solar had been up on the market sooner or later, they’d be curious about buying the franchise.
“I believe we’re open to all prospects,” he mentioned. “That might be nice if that would occur. The principle aim is to only get a workforce to Boston. And I believe there’s many alternative avenues [through which] that would occur. That’s the aim — it doesn’t matter what highway we have to journey to get there, that’s what we wish 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 awesome sports activities city — it’s a championship metropolis,” he mentioned. “I simply assume that the quantity of assist that these girls will obtain from the folks 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 could assist generate new rivalries.
“Rivalries are an enormous factor in sports activities,” Carter-Williams mentioned. “And, there’s no rivalry larger 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 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 folks,” Carter-Williams mentioned. “We’ve been in contact with the town. We’ve been in contact with folks relating to venues, they usually’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 individuals are selecting 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 mentioned. “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.”
