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.
All the things got here collectively rapidly. Carter-Williams received related 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 12 months 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 type of tapped in with ladies’s basketball, so I used to be all the time a supporter earlier than it was cool, you understand?” 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 become MCW Starz, an AAU membership based mostly 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 goals and talked about how cool would it not be to have a WNBA workforce in Boston. After which we began speaking to the best folks and shaped a gaggle, and one factor led to a different, and also you’re in a practical place to no less than put collectively a gaggle that would make a run at getting a workforce of Boston.”
The WNBA is within the midst of a fast 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 into the league’s sixteenth workforce in 2028.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert stated final yr she’d wish to get to 16 groups by 2028. However, the demand has far outpaced that preliminary projection. A protracted listing 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.
May Carter-Williams and Wahlberg purchase an current 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 also be open to buying an current franchise, if one had been up on the market, Carter-Williams confirmed to SB Nation. Essentially the most intuitive decide for that sale can be the Connecticut Solar, who’re at present New England’s WNBA workforce however are based mostly in Uncasville, Connecticut.
Final yr, Solar gamers brazenly expressed a want to play in Boston. After enjoying one sold-out sport at TD Backyard towards the Los Angeles Sparks in August, DiJonai Carrington was blunt in expressing her want 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.”
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 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 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 Unmatched, knowledgeable offseason 3-on-3 ladies’s basketball league in Miami, has criticized the Solar’s lack of funding of their infrastructure. Connecticut is one in all solely two WNBA groups that haven’t introduced plans to assemble their personal follow facility.
“They’ve the whole lot you probably want right here,” Thomas stated final month of Unmatched’s follow facility, a couple of days earlier than her resolution to go to the Phoenix Mercury was introduced. “They don’t actually have lots of these issues in Connecticut. I’ve been attempting to soak up as a lot data as I can.”
Nonetheless, the Mohegan Solar tribe that owns the Connecticut Solar shouldn’t be in promoting the workforce (nor seeing a WNBA workforce come to Boston).
Carter-Williams stated that if the Solar had been up on the market sooner or later, they’d be taken with buying the franchise.
“I feel we’re open to all prospects,” he stated. “That will be nice if that would occur. The principle aim is to only get a workforce to Boston. And I feel 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 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 a terrific sports activities city — it’s a championship metropolis,” he stated. “I simply assume that the quantity of help that these ladies 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 an entire, 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 Pink 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 feel the WNBA is lacking that.”
Carter-Williams wasn’t capable of 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 folks,” Carter-Williams stated. “We’ve been in contact with the town. We’ve been in contact with folks 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 feel persons are selecting up on attempting to get growth groups, type of placing stress on the WNBA, and I feel they’re beginning to have some good issues,” Carter-Williams stated. “So, I feel they’ll make some changes, and I feel we’ll see growth groups coming at a quicker tempo than we’ve been seeing them.”
