Photos by Brian Pohorylo
Sadly, the Sacramento Monarchs won't be visiting the Mohegan Sun Arena anytime in the near future.
Paul Simon once noted that “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,” and that sentiment is true regardless of gender. Indeed, the Connecticut Sun couldn’t have picked a better year to have their first “off” season. The Sun missed the playoffs in 2009 for the first time since the franchise relocated from Orlando in 2003. However, the loss of former UConn star Asjha Jones, the Sun’s veteran frontcourt leader and the only member of the Sun selected for the All-Star Game held at the Mohegan Sun Arena last season, is largely credited for the team’s collapse during its stretch run—particularly its nightmarish 0-for-4 swing through the West Coast in the season’s closing weeks, including a 90-70 loss to the Monarchs.
The Sun finished the 2009 season with a 16-18 record (resulting in a three-way tie for the final playoff spot; they were eliminated via tiebreakers), which put them in an envious position at draft time where they hold the No. 3 spot. And after last week’s announcement, that also put the Sun in the No. 3 spot in Monday’s dispersal draft. Head coach Mike Thibault is known to like a mix of veteran leadership with young talent, and there is plenty of both available on the Sacramento roster, including Courtney Paris, Laura Harper, Scholanda Robinson, Rebekkah Brunson, Nicole Powell and DeMya Walkker. Unrestricted free agents Kara Lawson, Hamchetou Maiga-Ba and Ticha Penicheiro will not be available in the dispersal draft.
The Monarchs were a perennial power in the Western Conference, making nine trips to the playoffs, winning the WNBA championship in 2005 (when the beat the Sun in the Finals) and the Western Conference crown in 2006. Many of the players had been hoping that investors could be pulled together to simply move the franchise to the Bay Area in 2009, but a relentless recession the likes of which has not been known in this generation coupled with looming league deadlines but the kibosh on those plans.
"It is unfortunate that the league has lost such a valuable franchise in Sacramento, but the circumstances are understandable and certainly not unprecedented in this economic climate," concedes Chris Sienko, vice president and general manager of the Sun.
However, according to WNBA President Donna Orender, the league will seek to add a team to the Bay Area for the 2011 season.
“A number of potential investors have come forward and expressed interest in relocating the Monarchs to the Bay Area, a market that we continue to see as desirable,” she says. “Ultimately, we made the judgment that we would not be able to complete a transaction in time for a successful new-market launch in 2010. We will therefore focus our energy on adding a team in the Bay Area for the 2011 campaign.”
The franchise had been owned and operated by the Maloof brothers, owners of the NBA Sacramento Kings. At the its inception in 1996, that was the paradigm the WNBA was using: joint NBA/WNBA franchise ownership, with the WNBA teams playing in the NBA arenas during the “off seasons” (i.e., when the NBA wasn’t playing). The idea was to create a win-win for everyone: year-round hoops for basketball junkies, a major league format for American women to play in, and spring and summer dates for dozens of venues that would have otherwise been empty. It also created live programming for the networks.
But that was then and this is now. Even before the economy began to slinde into an abyss, rapid expansion and a watered-down pool of available talent caused several of the early teams to either folded or move to areas not associated with NBA teams. The R.I.P list includes the Houston Comets, which represented the league’s first dynasty after they won the first four WNBA titles, the Miami Sol, Cleveland Rockers, Portland Fire and Charlotte Sting. The Utah Starzz were relocated to San Antonio where they became the Silver Stars, and the Orlando Miracle moved to Connecticut where they became the Sun and play at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville. They also became the first WNBA franchise owned and operated independently.
This past season, the Detroit Shock, themselves two-time WNBA champions, announced that they will no longer play in Motown and instead will be moving to Tulsa where they will play in the 18,000-seat BOK Center. The team has not yet been named. As was the case with the Monarchs, and the Houston Comets before them, success on the court ofen has little to do with a franchise's ultimate success or failure. The paradigm upon which the league was formed is broken, and no one seems to be willing to address the fundamental cracks in the WNBA's ecomonic foundation.
The likelihood of a WNBA team—any WNBA team—selling out an 18,000-seat arena is remote. Playing in facilities of that size represent a financial drain in terms of energy and personnel costs, and make the league look less-than-major league when national broadcasts show large sections of unsold seats and small clusters of fans scattered throughout these cavernous tombs. That being said, the WNBA’s future in Tulsa would not appear to be bright.
Indeed, the Indiana Fever, who, led by former Sun star and Indiana native Katie Douglas, won the WNBA Eastern Conference and played Diana Taurasi and the eventual champion Phoenix Mercury in the Finals, have been in perilous financial shape for some time and only recently committed to return for the 2010 season. Not co-incidentally, the Fever share the 18,000-seat Conseco Fieldhouse with the NBA’s Indiana Pacers.
The WNBA's fanbase is intensely loyal. It just isn't gargantuan. Not yet, at least. A far more reasonable model would seem to be for all WNBA teams—future and existing franchises—to scale back their grand plans and play in smaller arenas that can generate healthy crowds, but not bring down a franchise with wasteful operating expenses. The American Hockey League, filled with successful franchises in mid-sized markets playing in arenas that average around 10,000 (not unlike the Mohegan Sun Arena) would offer a more sensible paradigm to follow. And that includes the New York Liberty, one of the WNBA’s flagship franchises that routinely plays to half-empty houses at Madison Square Garden. Wouldn’t it make sense for the Liberty to play at least some of its games at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport, a beautiful 10,000-seat facility with tons of open dates in the spring and summer, easy access to New York via Metro-North and a built-in in-state rivalry with the Sun? It makes way too much sense for it ever to happen.
Regarding the dispersal of Sacramento talent, Sun management is still unsure what strategy it will take.
"There are some very talented players on the Sacramento roster,” notes Sienko. “However, we need to evaluate what our options might be with regard to whether we use the pick, or to trade it.”
