In fact, it's about time. Did you know that there has been a dozen, and only a dozen, Women's National Basketball Association teams since charter franchise The Sacramento Monarchs went out of business before the 2010 season? Between then and the just-completed 2024 season, women's pro basketball in the country -- and, because America remains the best country for basketball players, the world -- has been survived with only 12 franchises. Now, two of them were taken from cities during this period (and ironically, both The Las Vegas Aces and The Dallas Wings were taken from the second city both franchises have technically been in -- San Antonio and Tulsa, respectively), but for 15 Years (a majority of the 28 Years of the WNBA itself, by the way), it's been The Dozen.
I think, as a general rule, league expansion is overblown. It's just a money grab, and a somewhat insecure nod to the notion that if you're not growing, you're dying. The Big Three North American Sports Leagues have had the same number of teams for a while, and they seem to be doing just fine. But I have to confess that I felt the WNBA was different because it was breaking ground in professionalizing women's sports. An embryonic league needs to prove that it is growing in order to survive. Besides, the WNBA tried an early explosion of expansion, adding two teams to the original eight in the league's second, third (this is when The Minnesota Lynx was born), and fourth seasons, then added four more in its fifth. But three years after that, two teams in The Class Of 2000 (Portland and Miami) died. The next year, original franchise Cleveland closed up shop. The WNBA then yo-yoed between 14 and 13 teams in a pair of de facto trades: Chicago was born in 2006, but charter club Charlotte died at the end of that Year; Atlanta rose and the dynasty Houston Comets set in the 2008 season. The Monarchs were done the Year after that ... and the league just stayed there, at twelve.
After all the risky expansion and potentially-fatal contraction, the WNBA at this point was just, you know, there. It wasn't growing, but it wasn't shrinking, either. It was, however, stable, and maybe that is exactly what the league, and women's sports, needed then. To be honest, the American sports world considered the WNBA at the time to be a boutique sport at best, an afterthought at worst, even though a generation of world-class female athletes left their marks on the league. They didn't make as much money as their NBA counterparts, of course, and they still don't. They had to share practice facilities with commoners working out at the gym. Up until last Year, most teams had to take commercial flights to get to Games. But yet, those dozen franchises just kept soldiering on, putting out a damn good product too few people appreciated.
And that's why I feel compelled to blog post about this. Beyond the misogynistic ridicule that was heaped on it (and, let's be honest, is still being heaped on it), the WNBA probably had to face numerous obstacles that threatened to bankrupt and end the league, issues that won't be disclosed until memoirs are published decades from now. But these twelve teams held it down, showcasing as much and as well as they could the best female athletes in the world until the world woke up and realized what was under its nose the whole time. And now, with Golden State coming in in 2025 and Toronto and a rekindled Portland (going back to a once-failed market, I think, is a sure sign of growth) coming in 2026, I am very happy to see the WNBA expand, and I think this time, the going will be sustainable.
So just before the WNBA welcomes its 13th team, I want to give praise and thanks to The Dozen, the ones that kept the flame of pro women's b-ball in the United States alive despite inattention and disrespect. There would be no Golden State without the twelve mothers that are, through its players, essentially birthing this new team. May the league go and grow onward!
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