Wednesday Aug 21, 2024
Written by Laura Everett, Edited by Abbi Holt
(Boston): On Tuesday August 20, 2024, professional women’s basketball returned to Massachusetts with the Connecticut Sun selling out the Boston TD Garden, the traditional home of the NBA championship winning Celtics, and beating the LA Sparks 69-61.
The last time a professional women’s basketball team played in Massachusetts was the New England Blizzard of the short lived American Basketball League at the Springfield MA Civic Center, in 1999.
It took twenty-five years for the return of professional women’s basketball to come back to Massachusetts. And from the jump, the Sun’s marketing team was doing everything in its power to link the Suns to Boston’s storied sports history. The opening hype reel played on the in stadium screens linked the champion Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots and PWHL Boston (missing the dynastic Boston Renegades, and soon to be NWSL Boston):
The video was narrated by WBZ sports anchor Steve Burton, who also happens to be the father of CT Sun Guard and Newton native Veronica Burton.
Even the Boston Celtics were crystal clear: this is our “sister squad,” and consistently shared their social media accounts to cross-promote the historic game.
And so, for the first time ever, the WNBA logo was laid down on the storied Garden floor. Sun Coach Stephanie White thanked the staff in the post game for laying down the team’s own parquet floor: “It’s home court. Kudos to our people. Logistically, pulling this off, bringing everything we needed to make this happen? It’s a big project, and we know that. We’re all incredibly appreciative of it. We’re grateful for this opportunity. We wanted to play on our home court for sure.”
Boston basketball fans, and New England sports fans more generally, might wonder: Could we have a home team? Could this be our life? A hometown women’s basketball team? The Connecticut Sun are decidedly queer, unabashedly Black, and Native-owned.
Sun wore their home white uniforms, with the “13 dots around the life force (which) represents the Mohegan creation story – the 13 sections on Grandfather Turtle’s back where earth was created.”
Could this be our future? Could we have youth clinics and street parties?
Could Boston handle a drip cam? Fit checks?
We made players pronounce Massachusetts town names and join in the communal newcomer experience of not knowing how to do so.
Could we sell out the TD Garden to the tune of 19,156 sold, 19,125 seated on a Tuesday in August for the Sun playing a below .500 team? When half of New England was on the Cape? And on DeWana Bonner’s birthday, no less.
Could this be our life?
The Garden was rocking like an Eastern Conference playoff, in no small part due to a fired up Connecticut Sun team, returning from the Olympics break with newly acquired guard Marina Mabrey, Olympic Gold medalist Alyssa Thomas and DiJonai Carrington leading with 19 points.
The lead changed between the CT Sun and LA Sparks seven times during the game. Head Coach Stephanie White credited the “home crowd,” while “a hundred miles from home ,the crowd gave us a lift when we needed it. It absolutely was a lift and we needed it. This was a home game.”
For Boston fans, the ease of arriving to the Garden, rather than Uncaville, CT was part of what made this a home game, too.
Roxbury residents Jason Smith and his mother Mama Smith took the MBTA Orange Line to North Station for the game. Both serve at the Ron Burton Training Village in Hubberston, MA (yes, of the same Steve Burton, and Veronica Burton family). Both are longtime WNBA and Connecticut Sun fans, but rarely travel to Connecticut, in part because of the lack of public transportation. “This is our car,” Mama Smith said, gesturing to the MBTA train. Mama Smith played in the 1960’s when you were only able to dribble three times before being required to pass.
On a night when the MBTA was working well, this is the kind of city that Bostonians can dream of: functional public transportation, accessible sports where residents are not all priced out or culturally excluded, and joy.
Because for all the firsts, this was just plain good fun. It was a good game, and a fun night.
When asked about the sold out crowd at the Garden and what it means for veteran players, Sun Coach Stephanie White replied, “I think this speaks to our continued growth as a league. It speaks to women’s basketball fans in the New England area and New England sports fans in general. They are passionate about their sports. Our players deserve this.”
The arena at Mohegan Sun has a maximum capacity of 10,000 people, while the Boston Garden seats nearly double that and sold out at 19,156.. The WNBA season runs counter to the Celtics and the Bruins, but into the summer concert season, which is not to say, impossible to imagine scheduling at the Garden. Perhaps the biggest stumbling block to a WNBA expansion to Boston is current WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. Engelbert has vowed expansion to 16 teams by 2028 up from the current 12, though Boston has never been named in the mix of potential cities and many critics, present company included, consider her slow-walking the expansion and undervaluing media deals.
The truth is, even as the Sun, the Garden, and the Celtics did major work to promote the historic event, there was massive money and publicity left on the table. The WNBA failed to adequately promote the game nationally, and the game was not on any national television broadcast. Prior to the game, DiJonai Carrington took to Twitter to do her own promo in lieu of the league doing it.
Carrington commented after the game: ““The game should have been on a national television broadcast. You shouldn’t have to pay any type of subscription for a game that’s this historic”
But to a full house, with adoring fans and a dub, as Carrington said after the fame, “this is what every night should feel like.”
Which is true for both Connecticut Sun players, and for Bostonians.
Boston Women's Sports 
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