Basketball has discovered a house in Canada. The NBA’s Raptors have given potential groups a blueprint to success within the nation, as the game has blossomed in reputation over the previous decade.
Toronto is already the house for the Raptors, however may one other skilled basketball squad be on the horizon within the Six?
The WNBA is rising an increasing number of annually. The ladies’s skilled basketball league presently has 12 groups competing, however all are in america. A 13th based mostly out of San Francisco is predicted to affix forward of the 2025 season.
Leagues like an excellent variety of golf equipment. It simply makes extra sense that manner, and a 14th WNBA staff is more likely to be launched sooner or later within the close to future. Toronto is a candidate to land that bid.
Right here is the most recent on a possible WNBA growth staff in Toronto.
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Is Toronto getting a WNBA growth staff?
The town of Toronto has not but been tabbed with a WNBA staff. Nonetheless, Larry Tanenbaum is doing his half to vary that.
The Canadian billionaire is reportedly pursuing an growth staff within the league, in accordance with CBC Sports activities. Tanenbaum is presently searching for the staff by way of his holding firm, the Kilmer Group.
Tanenbaum has a significant affect on skilled sports activities within the Ontario metropolis. He’s a minority proprietor and chairman of Maple Leafs Sports activities and Leisure, the sporting firm that owns the Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC of the MLS, the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL, and Toronto Marlies of the AHL. If there was going to be somebody to blaze the path on the enterprise aspect for girls’s basketball in Toronto, Tanenbaum is the man.
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Tanenbaum and his Kilmer Group are anticipated to fulfill with WNBA management to debate the bid, in accordance with CBC Sports activities. There’s the potential for an official announcement to come back as quickly as Might.
Michael Bartlett, president of Basketball Canada, mentioned he’s totally on board with the thought of the WNBA coming to Toronto.
“Two particular issues would assist strengthen ladies’s basketball in Canada,” Bartlett mentioned. “A home league for girls, after which knowledgeable WNBA staff that will have the identical lightning rod impact because the Raptors did.”
Toronto has been named a number of occasions as a possible growth location within the WNBA. In Might of 2023, Scotiabank Enviornment hosted a sold-out preseason recreation for the league. On the time, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert mentioned that Toronto was “on the brief checklist” for future locations.
Whereas Scotiabank Enviornment can be a stellar location for a ladies’s staff, it is unlikely that the venue would be capable to home the Raptors, Maple Leafs, and a possible WNBA staff. Tanenbaum is reportedly taking a look at Coca-Cola Coliseum, presently residence to the Marlies, as a doable venue, CBC Sports activities mentioned. It has a capability of about 8,000.
WNBA growth cities, ranked
The Sporting Information ranked potential WNBA growth cities final summer time when the subject of growth was scorching. Here’s a have a look at the highest markets, with Toronto inserting within the prime three.
1. Denver
Give us extra land-locked, mountain-state groups. The Rockies now have a basketball championship because of the Nuggets, and Colorado as a complete doesn’t have knowledgeable ladies’s sports activities staff. The closest a staff has been to the Centennial State was when the defunct Starzz had been in Utah. To place a staff in Colorado, making it the primary within the vary in 21 years, can be a monumental transfer in ladies’s sports activities historical past.
2. Charlotte, N.C.
The Charlotte Sting have to make a return, for the love of the basketball gods. It will be such identify to pair with the area’s present NBA staff — the Hornets — and the Sting have a legacy. Their decade in North Carolina was minimize brief after they folded in 2007 after serving as one of many first eight authentic groups from the league’s first season in 1997.
Enjoyable truth: Do you know Daybreak Staley performed for the Sting? She was chosen ninth total within the 1999 draft and performed in Charlotte till 2005 as some extent guard. She led them to the WNBA championship recreation in 2001, although they by no means gained a WNBA title.
3. Toronto
The 6 proved it might be a fantastic marketplace for the WNBA in the course of the preseason. On Might 13, Scotiabank Enviornment was packed to the brim with an ear-splitting, excited crowd to look at Chicago and Minnesota sq. off in a historic battle.
The tradition of basketball is greater than placing the ball within the hoop in Canada: It is about going to the video games and interesting with the neighborhood. That the preseason recreation in Toronto offered out as quick because it did speaks volumes. The Raptors would do properly with a sister staff.
4. Philadelphia
Do you see how Philly followers are with the Eagles? Diehard, to-the-end, out-for-blood form of individuals. Now think about them fiending over and supporting a WNBA staff.
The pure power of Philadelphia is sufficient to say this metropolis wants a WNBA staff sooner reasonably than later. It’s a sports activities metropolis, by way of and thru. Engelbert is from the Philadelphia space and acknowledges that. Her father truly performed for Naismith Corridor of Fame coach Jack Ramsay at Saint Joseph’s within the 1950s.
5. Nashville, Tenn.
Nashville is considered one of a number of massive tourism cities in America (particularly for brides-to-be). They have already got a popularity for being a music dynasty, nicknamed “Music Metropolis.” Why not throw the WNBA into the pot?
They’ve the Titans, Predator,s and Nashville SC to spice up their athletic resume and credibility, and it will do them properly so as to add to that with a WNBA staff — very like Colorado, they don’t have one or have ever had one.
Axios reported in 2022 there have been roughly 30,000 bachelorette bookings in Nashville from the BACH app alone. Why not throw a WNBA recreation into their particular weekends?
Sara Tidwell contributed to this text
