Despite strong television viewership, a fascinating title push and ongoing negotiations on a potentially league-altering collective bargaining agreement, the biggest August storyline in the WNBA is playing out in New England.
That’s where the league is seemingly holding up the sale of the Connecticut Sun to former Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, who has the highest bid for the team and wants to move it from Uncasville to the bright lights of Beantown.
Pagliuca is willing to pay $75 million more than the WNBA just got for three expansion franchises. He has committed a nine-figure investment into a training facility in the area. And he plans for the team to play its home games downtown at the TD Garden. Yet the league office is holding up the sale because it says the Sun ownership group improperly agreed to relocate the team and did not receive Board of Governors approval on each step of the process.
To many, the league appears to be shooting itself in the foot. Why turn down more money and a bigger market on technicalities? Growth should be the priority.
On Tuesday night, NBC Sports Boston reporter Trenni Casey became the most prominent media voice to bash the WNBA for allowing this seemingly tremendous opportunity become a problem.
“I am really frustrated by this, because I think the WNBA is really screwing up here,” Casey said during a Connecticut Sun broadcast on the network.
NBC Boston Sports analyst goes off on the WNBA 😳 pic.twitter.com/1SzIIYsr0O
— Krysta (@Krysta____) August 20, 2025
Casey went on to wonder whether the NBA might have an issue with Pagliuca, whose bid to buy the Celtics also lost earlier this year. Or whether the people running the WNBA simply “don’t really know how to run the league.”
More from the NBC Sports Boston reporter:
“You have an offer for $325 million plus a $100 million investment in a state of the art facility in a major television market and a sports crazy town, and you’re like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. You know what we would rather do, because you didn’t fill out the proper paperwork the first couple of times and we don’t like the way that you’re going about this? No, we’re going to move it to Houston, where we already had a team for 11 years and it failed after the first four or five years so we had to pull the franchise from there and move it somewhere else. But we’re going to give it another shot rather than going to a city that has already made its mark, sold out its arena, has a commitment to bringing a team here.’ I do not understand it. I do not understand why the NBA is so adamantly opposed to Steve Pagliuca, I do not know why it is so adamantly opposed to the Boston market. It almost feels like, between this and how they’ve handled everything with Caitlin Clark, that they just don’t really know how to run the league.”
As Casey explains, the Sun have already played games at TD Garden to sold-out crowds. That is a major arrow in their quiver when it comes to proving the local fanbase is ready for a WNBA team.
Beyond that, the WNBA’s main argument appears to be that Pagliuca found a loophole to cut the expansion team line and force a team into Boston. That may be true, but according to ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, the league’s solution appears to be to buy the team itself (for just $250 million, the going price for an expansion team) and award it to a different ownership group, likely in Houston, which lost the Comets in 2008.
Ultimately, Pagliuca may succeed in his efforts. Of all the options, his plans appear to be best for the Sun and the WNBA. But for whatever reason, the league is getting in the way. Until it relents, expect more commentators like Casey to point out the clear issues with this process.