The WNBA timeline is never just a moment — Live inside the WNBA expansion announcement

I spent Monday at the WNBA league offices hearing something revolutionary. If you’d shared this news, that three owners are paying a reported $250 million apiece for an expansion franchise in the WNBA anytime before, say, this calendar year, even those who most believe in the promise of women’s basketball would have thought you were crazy.

But that is the time we live in, and these are not fly-by-night operators. Not only are the three cities selected places with well-capitalized ownership groups and clearly demonstrated fan bases — for Detroit, the history of the Shock alone suffices, for Cleveland, the 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four was proof positive, and in Philadelphia, the biggest market without a team, blessed with existing regional rivals in New York and DC and a rich history of basketball, the payoff could be bigger still. (I also have a strong memory of Philly ranking in the top ten of markets for 2024 WNBA Finals ratings, but I cannot find this info anywhere to link to it. Several of our readers can tell me if I hallucinated this or not, you know how to reach me.)

There are other elements linking these three cities, too, and they serve as useful reminders to anyone who gets so lost in evaluating the WNBA in its current state that the broader range of possibilities can get lost. Josh Harris spent $250 million to bring the WNBA to Philadelphia, after years in which multiple people familiar with the Philly landscape described a lack of interest from Harris’ ownership group as the primary barrier to an expansion franchise in the city.

Cleveland’s NBA team, the Cavaliers, are no longer owned by Dan Gund, who folded the Rockers. Dan Gilbert clearly views WNBA economics differently (to be fair to Gund, the economics are different.) And the Detroit Pistons are no longer owned by Karen Davidson, who sold the Shock to owners who moved them to Tulsa — see Rare Gems for just how callous this move was — but rather Tom Gores.

I also think, when the history of this league is fully told, that the capital raise of $75 million back in 2022 will be endlessly debated. There are those WNBA owners who believed that $75 million for 16 percent of the league would be a bargain for those putting up the money. That’s clearly turned out to be true, with single franchises now worth many times that amount just three years later.

But the WNBA has now stuck the landing on a media rights deal worth many times its previous deal. It’s added $750 million in value overnight through three expansion franchises alone. All that’s left is to strike a deal with the WNBA Players’ Association that leaves both sides happy — clearly, that’s not done yet, but there’s plenty of new capital to help ensure it happens — and the WNBA can begin moving toward a future that’s defined and filled with possibilities unlike any era that’s come before it.

The extent to which the $75 million — coming at the time it did — made this possible should not be overlooked.

Timing is everything.

It’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about as I glanced over at Deanna Nolan, seated in the row ahead of me at Monday’s announcement. For those of you who are newer here: Tweety was an incredible player. She is 49th all-time in WNBA win shares, and she didn’t play a game after she turned 30 in the league, because the Flint native was too heartbroken by the WNBA fleeing town without so much as leaving a forwarding address. (Seriously, you cannot believe how absurdly the league and the Pistons ownership handled the end of a proud franchise.)

Once the initial festivities of the press conference ended and the media scrums began, I made a beeline for Nolan. As I expected, she couldn’t speak about this without tears welling up in her eyes as I asked her how this moment felt to her.

“It feels amazing,” she told me. “It’s great. It’s been a long time coming. I’m just proud. Appreciate that the investors and everybody is bringing the team back to Detroit. Like I said, we have a winning history. We have such loyal fans to the blue-collar team we were, and Detroit is a blue-collar city.”

Blue collar, perhaps, in the new version, but not second-class as they were in their previous identity. Arn Tellem, current Vice Chairman of the Detroit Pistons and a gift Philadelphia gave to the state of Michigan, was fired up talking about the history of the Shock. He referenced, several times, the all-time WNBA playoff game record crowd who saw the Shock win Game 3 of the 2003 WNBA Finals. Even so, when the Shock won Game 5 of the 2006 Finals to capture title number two, they did it in Joe Louis Arena, thanks to a date conflict with a Mariah Carey concert. In 2008, most of their third title run came at the Convocation Center at Eastern Michigan University.

“With the season being moved back a month to accommodate the Olympics, we had some arena schedule conflicts that could not be moved,” said Detroit Shock Chief Operating Officer Craig Turnbull, and to be fair to Turnbull, who could have predicted that the 2008 Olympics would take place in 2008? And attendance was a cited factor for the team leaving Detroit after the 2009 season. I’ll say it in this space forever: don’t ever let anyone conflate process and outcomes to denigrate women’s sports. And you don’t pay $250 million for a franchise to move its postseason games to Ypsilanti.

All of which suggests that this version of the Detroit WNBA team — and I hope they will be called the Shock — is built on a different foundation. But the potential peaks, while more sustainable, accompany a sustainable base for the next child of Flint who grows into a four-time WNBA All Star, like Deanna Nolan, and she can play her entire career in a league that takes care of its players.

Nolan showed me her luggage tag on Monday, her pride evident — a Detroit Shock logo emblazoned on it representing what once was and now exists again. Time and space are infinite. And nothing is guaranteed: you’d have found few takers in that record 2003 playoff crowd who would have believed the Shock would leave town just six years later.

As we think about the women’s basketball space, let us keep this in mind, for good and for ill. And if you are still somehow convinced that whatever realities, limitations and disappointments we find ourselves living through today are a permanent condition, well, you didn’t see the smile on Deanna Nolan’s face on Monday.

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This week in women’s basketball

Not great, Valkyries!

Terrific Thomas Costello piece on Cleveland’s return to the WNBA.

The Sun are not playing like the Valkyries so far. (Maybe they can sign Julie Vanloo!)

Great to see the Inquirer all over the Philly announcement.

The Minnesota Lynx may not have won the Commissioner’s Cup, but that may prove to be an opportunity.

But I agree with Emma: this was huge for the Indiana Fever.

And baseball, but: huge news with the WPBL holding tryouts at Nationals Park in August. Much more on this to come here at The IX.

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Five at The IX: Inside WNBA Expansion

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