Look: I know that women's basketball has a long tradition in the state of Connecticut, and I know that the state having a WNBA team is super cool, even if the fact that it's in Uncasville instead of somewhere more populated like Hartford kind of dulls that excitement just a bit.
Front Office Sports reported on Monday that WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert was presented with Steve Pagliuca's $350 million bid to purchase the Sun and move the team to Boston, and Engelbert didn't take the bid to the Board of Governors, instead allowing the exclusivity window to lapse to allow for other bidders, including a potential sale to former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry, who would keep the Sun in Connecticut.
I want to make this clear: I'm not against the Sun staying in Connecticut, though if they did, I'd hope they'd move to Hartford. But the WNBA also seems interested in cultivating the Boston thing, with the Sun playing a game in the city this year and ... well, it sounds like the league might want to eventually have a team in both places?
The WNBA doesn't need to have two teams in what's essentially the same media market
Here's a statement that the league put out after reports of Pagliuca purchasing the Sun:
Here’s a statement from a WNBA spokesperson to @TheAthletic re: a potential sale of the Sun to Steve Pagliuca (and a potential move to Boston) https://t.co/O8D8Ts05DM pic.twitter.com/lqPhIqkjWi
— Ben Pickman (@benpickman) August 2, 2025
It basically suggested that if Boston wanted a team, it should have applied for one in the latest round of expansion. On the surface, that makes sense! Other ownership groups in other cities applied for teams and didn't get them, so why should Boston just get to skip the line?
But think about it some more. Boston gets to skip the line because the Connecticut Sun already are Boston's team. It's an hour and a half from Boston to Uncasville, and if the Sun moved to Hartford, it would be an hour and a half from Boston to Hartford. When it comes to pro sports, you can't have two teams that close unless you're in one of the country's largest cities. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles can manage it in other leagues because they're the three biggest metros in the country. But Boston's metro is 11th and Hartford — just to keep this idea going of a move inside the state — is 50th.
It's hard to see how those two teams can coexist. The potential future Boston team would likely consume the Sun team. Connecticut's games air locally on NBC Sports Boston, but if a team actually in Boston existed, what does the local media rights deal for the Sun even look like? There are so many small problems that eventually add up.
Not to mention that adding a separate Boston team wouldn't be until after 2030, as the league's future expansion timeline is already packed. And if the Celtics were awarded a team then, wouldn't they still be "cutting the line" over teams that entered bids in this current expansion round?
I don't know. It's a mess. But by playing this all wishy-washy, Engelbert isn't doing the league any favors. Expecting two New England teams to work is expecting too much. Either let the Sun move to Boston right now with this current bid, or force a sale to an owner who will keep the team in the state of Connecticut, something the league has the right to do. Boston doesn't need to be in the expansion conversation a decade from now. This is a really, really simple moment. Give Boston a team, or tell Boston that it already has a team playing an hour and a half away and to just deal with it.
But it sure looks like the league is just getting itself mired in another controversy. As someone who's been covering the league since 2018, I've seen a lot of missteps by the league office. Let's try to avoid making another one.