Dom Amore: An old, familiar ending -- it was inevitable WNBA, Sun would be leaving

HARTFORD, Conn. — Well, Connecticut, we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it goes, that it doesn’t end happily for us. This time, the ending was so telegraphed, there was little point coming back from the intermission.

Despite 20 years of fidelity, we will watch our team ride off into the Sun-set with the dashing, more handsome partner, love unrequited, only memories to cling to. Yada, yada. The End.

The Sun are said to be shipping up to Boston, taking the WNBA, the major league version of women’s basketball, out of the state with it as early as 2027, as the Boston Globe first reported. It’s coming down pretty much the way I’ve laid it out for the last couple of years, with Celtics ownership involved in bringing the team to pair with the flagship NBA franchise, but I take no bows. Didn’t have to be Nostra-Dominic to see this coming.

If all that’s needed now is league approval, it’s hard to imagine the Board of Governors saying no to Boston, the Celtics and a third-of-a-billion dollar offer in hand. Many Sun fans are coming from Rhode Island and Eastern Massachusetts now, and many of the games are televised in Boston, so there is a built-in base waiting there. Why would the WNBA, even if miffed that this story came out without its blessing, even if there is a need for another Western team, say no to that? But if they did deny Boston, the Sun would be sooner than later be headed to Houston, or somewhere else.

Maybe things would have turned out differently here if the team was in Hartford all along, and the state and the city are still trying to pull that off, as they should. But to sell Hartford to the WNBA and its players over Boston or Houston now is an extreme long shot. In this franchise-removal game, the fix was in — long ago.

All this was inevitable when the Sun first began planning to play annual games in Boston. Oh, no, that wasn’t, you know, a trial balloon or anything. … It was more inevitable when it was shown a random WNBA game, with or without Caitlin Clark, could fill TD Garden’s 20,000 seats. … It was still more obvious when the Mohegan Tribe announced last spring it had retained a firm to evaluate the franchise and explore options and more still when the WNBA added three expansion teams but skipped Boston, the most logical location for one, if the Sun were not on the market.

On July 24, when the Sun sent season ticket holders the information to re-up for 2026, it was only asserting the team would be at Mohegan Sun Arena next season, not beyond. Team president Jen Rizzotti re-affirmed Sunday that the Sun will be here in 2026, and no deal is done yet.

In the end though, this appears inevitable because the WNBA is not the struggling league it was 20-plus years ago, when the Tribal leaders invested $10 million to bring the foundering Orlando franchise to a place where UConn made women’s basketball a big deal. The arena was new and right-sized, the fans in driving distance were ready to embrace the Sun once the UConn season was over, nearly every team coming in would have a prominent former Husky. It couldn’t miss — and it didn’t.

But in 2025, casinos are not printing money like they once did, even with the foot traffic arena events bring, and at Mohegan Sun there is reported to be heavy debt to service. When The W’s expansion franchises sold for $250 million, it was clear an established franchise that already had made inroads in Boston would command much more than that. What if this current WNBA surge in popularity proves temporary? The new owners will be left holding the bag; the Tribal leaders recognized a good time to cash out and walk away from the card table. Steve Pagliuca’s $325 million is an offer they cannot refuse.

All of this is part of the normal evolution of major league sports, though growth in this league was very slow until the recent spurt. As the WNBA draws more TV money, and deals with a players union demanding higher salaries, it can no longer cling to small “women’s basketball hotbeds;” it must move to bigger markets and get them interested. That’s why they are trying again in places where they failed before.

If you don’t know the history, the NBA once had teams in Syracuse, Rochester, Fort Wayne. When the league grew, they had to move to major cities. The NFL was born in Midwest industrial towns, Canton, Decatur. The league grew, and only Green Bay remains a reminder of those roots.

Even MLB’s National League started with a team in Hartford 150 years ago. It was gone by 1876. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ epic move to Los Angeles, of course, is the Gone with the Wind of this particular genre.

There are more recent movies in which we played the jilted ones and still feel the emptiness. The Whalers, who came with upstart WHA and were absorbed into the NHL in 1979, had their run in Hartford, and they were loved almost unconditionally, but a league with three teams in New York/New Jersey and one in Boston felt the need to unclutter the corridor and whisked our hockey team down to Mayberry.

… And to think, the Sun sale news leaked in the middle of the annual Whalers reunion at Dunkin’ Park.

When the Patriots couldn’t get a deal done in Boston, they made arrangements to come to Hartford, and our headlines blared Touchdown!, but it neither the NFL nor the TV networks were going to allow it and risk another team moving into Boston. The reasons were found to scotch the deal.

There was justification in being angry or bitter with the unhappy endings back then, in the mid-90s … or maybe it’s just that there is no obvious villain now, or maybe just that I was younger then.

In this summer of 2025, it makes more sense to accept the inevitable and be glad it all happened, rather than mad because it’s soon to be over. The gravitational pull from Boston is too strong for the Sun to resist. They really want a team there, or so they say. The league, the networks and the players have given every signal they want the Sun out, like the annual free agent exodus and the complaints about there being nothing to do in Southeastern Connecticut, being cooped up in the casino, sharing a practice facility with kids’ birthday parties. Even if the Tribal leaders built a lavish practice facility overlooking Long Island Sound, it wouldn’t have been enough.

If there is ever a book about the history of the WNBA, there should be a sizable chapter devoted to the debt the league owes the Mohegan Tribe for the part it played in keeping it afloat, saving a valuable franchise and making it the first to turn a profit. The Sun never brought home a championship, but came close multiple times. By the look of this current team, it will leave next year without one, and Connecticut, outgrown, outmaneuvered, is now to be cast aside. No, it’s not fair, unless one acknowledges that all is fair in love, war and franchise relocation.

La Fin! So the movie ends, the remainder of this season, and all of next will merely be the rolling of credits. Gather your belongings, please drive home safely.