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‘I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen’: Maura Healey is not giving up on getting a WNBA team
"I'm not giving up."
Though recent developments in the WNBA landscape have been a setback to Boston’s desire to have a professional women’s basketball team, Gov. Maura Healey said she’s not giving up.
Healey, a former co-captain of Harvard women’s basketball, was asked about the WNBA subplot during an interview on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” on Tuesday.
Having acknowledged earlier in the interview that “I don’t know that I would be where I am today were it not for opportunities that I had in sports,” Healey spoke up on the subject of basketball.
Specifically, she was asked if she’s talked to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after the decision in April by the league to approve the bid of the Fertitta family to buy the Connecticut Sun and move the team to Houston following the 2026 season.
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It goes against a bid led by former Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca to buy the Sun and move them to Boston. The league effectively blocked Pagliuca’s then-record bid for a WNBA team, citing the logic that “relocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams,” and that Boston was less of a priority than cities that had already applied for expansion teams.
Healey noted that she had spoken to Engelbert.
“Yeah, and look I was really disappointed with the decision they made to move the team to Houston, and an NBA owner,” Healey explained. “But I’m not giving up.
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“Boston should be a home to a WNBA team,” she added. “We invented basketball here. Actually the men’s and women’s game was invented in Boston.”
(As a caller later pointed out — and Healey was quick to amend her earlier statement — the game of basketball was technically invented in Springfield.)
Beyond the Boston implications, Healey also explained that with the Sun set to pack up and move to Houston, the entire region will be without a WNBA team.
“New England will be without a [professional] women’s basketball team,” she said. “That’s crazy. That’s just crazy. So we’ve got to fix that. I will continue to work with the league, Celtics ownership. Women’s basketball, to say it’s on the rise is an understatement. I mean people love it, and we should have a WNBA team here. I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen.”
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