Warriors, Bay Area reportedly 'finalists' for new WNBA team
The San Francisco Bay Area is filled with passionate fans of women's basketball. They may get a professional team as early as 2025.
The WNBA hasn't added any new teams since the Atlanta Dream began play in 2008. A year later, the Sacramento Monarchs, the closest team to the Bay Area, folded, after the Maloof family couldn't find a buyer.
If the Warriors' owners and the league can reach an agreement, the new team would be based in Oakland, where Golden State still has and maintains a practice facility. But they'd play in the Chase Center in San Francisco, where the Warriors themselves moved after the 2018-19 season.
It would not be the first time Warriors owner Joe Lacob owned a women's basketball team. In 1996, he owned the San Jose Lasers of the American Basketball League, which Lacob helped found. The WNBA started the next summer, and the ABL was out of business a year later.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said last month that the WNBA should have more than its dozen teams, with expansion planned for 2025 - after the league gets its new TV rights deal.
For comparison, the National Women's Soccer League plans to expand from 12 to 14 teams in 2024 - and to 16 teams by 2026. One of the new NWSL teams in 2024 will be in the Bay Area, with former Warriors president Rick Welts as part of the ownership group. But the NWSL has had 10 seasons, as opposed to the WNBA's 27th. Expansion is long overdue.
Will it happen in the Bay Area? The WNBA has a lot of options, but the Warriors may have the inside track.
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