WNBA: What is the future of the Connecticut Sun?

Whether it will be good or bad, we don’t know, but the Connecticut Sun are definitely about to change.

In the middle of August, the Sun were 5-26 with 17 games lost by 10 or more points. They were last in defensive rating, points per game and pace. Tina Charles was awesome, but we’re talking about a future Hall of Famer who’s 36 years old and will probably join a team with championship aspirations next year. Therefore, the only bright spots were rookie wing Saniya Rivers and fourth-year big Olivia Nelson-Ododa, both of whom were getting big minutes and responding with performances that signaled a bright future for both. Marina Mabrey was injured, Leïla Lacan was away for EuroBasket Women and Aneesah Morrow was going through typical rookie growing pains.

And then, something clicked.

As the Sun prepare to play the Atlanta Dream in the last game of the season, they are 6-6 in the last 12 games. That’s why trust and patience are so important in this game.

The Sun could’ve easily given to the pressure and fired first-year head coach Rachid Meziane, but instead, they allowed him and the team to figure things out. The team also traded for Aaliyah Edwards as a future building block, rather than trying to acquire somebody expected to contribute immediately. The main question is if the patience an actual strategy, or a by-product of the upcoming team sale, into which the state of Connecticut got involved (which was recently discussed by our Cat Ariail in The Feed). Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, also issued a letter warning the league that efforts to manipulate the Mohegan tribe’s potential sale of the Sun “could violate federal antitrust laws.”

The decision by the state to enter the negotiations is a big deal and to explain it, we’ve asked somebody who used to be close to the Sun for a full decade. Now a lecturer at MIT, Kristen H. Starkowski worked as a Team Attendant for the Sun from 2009 to 2019. Here’s what she said:

I do think the Sun are important to Connecticut, and I think they amplify the state’s tradition of women’s basketball excellence. UConn has created a culture of pride around the sport, and the Sun tap into that energy. I would say the fan bases overlap in many ways, especially since the team has historically drafted and signed UConn players, from Rebecca Lobo to Morgan Tuck to Tina Charles and so many more. That connection makes the Sun feel like a natural continuation of the basketball culture here. I think having some games in Hartford and some in Mohegan would be a smart move and probably attract a larger number of fans per game though, just because Uncasville isn’t necessarily in a central location.

The question with which the Sun are now left is not, “What went wrong?,” but, “What’s next?” Back when Kristen joined the Sun, they were in a bad place, too. But by 2019, they made their first WNBA Finals. Asked to make her own prediction, she said:

Every professional team goes through cycles of growth and rebuilding, and the Sun are no exception. What makes Connecticut unique is that retaining players long term can sometimes be more difficult compared to bigger markets like New York or Las Vegas, where the player lifestyle might be more appealing off the court.