THE STATE AT STAKE
The Sun are no afterthought, but the team has yet to receive the kind of Connecticut-wide cachet that only winning the whole darn thing will earn you
UNCASVILLE — Curt Miller’s primary motivations to pursue the job as coach of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun in late 2015 were borne of what he saw above, so to speak, and what he saw in the 5,500-plus square miles of basketball-rich expanse within the borders of our little state.
The team had wealthy and committed owners, a competent front office and the general support any team or business would value.
The Sun also had a flag planted, and a longstanding footprint, in a part of the country where a particular sport is appreciated as much as anywhere in the world.
“First-class organization,” Miller said. “It just all felt right from the top down, that there was a true commitment to these athletes. And, obviously, it is in a state that truly is educated about what women’s basketball is all about. I thought it was a sleeping giant.”
To call the Sun anything but a success 17 years into the franchise’s existence at Mohegan Sun would be foolish.
Yet to call the Sun champions is impossible … for now.
That could soon change. Miller and
the Sun open a best-of-five WNBA Finals series today in Washington, D.C. Three more victories — against former Sun coach Mike Thibault and his Washington Mystics, in a strange twist — and that sleeping giant that Miller spoke of will awake as a franchise with an enhanced profile.
Sixteen seasons and counting, plenty of success to cite on the court and off, but no titles won. A partly-shared fan base has been able to celebrate one UConn women’s championship after another since the Sun hit the casino court in 2003. Wouldn’t a Sun trophy, in a way, tie up a loose end for the partnership between a sport and a community?
There is room for another winner in a state so driven by what goes on in Storrs, where Geno Auriemma has won 11 national championships. There is room for a professional team that isn’t minor league to do what the Whalers could not. The Wolf
Pack won the Calder Cup in
2000. There have been an awful lot of cool things on the minor league baseball front over the years, too.
But a professional team winning big while competing at the top level of its sport?
That would be new.
The Sun have not been an afterthought all these years, but the team has yet to truly stand out as a major part of Connecticut’s athletic identity with the kind of cachet that only winning the whole darn thing will earn you.
“It would change this franchise,” Miller said. “It would mean so much to this franchise — but also the state, for a little bit of bragging rights. It’s the capital of college women’s basketball. But to have a professional champion, too, would bring everything together, the vision that Mitchell Etess and Chris Sienko had for this opportunity. I know they’ve waited a long time.”
Since 2002-2003. It was a fascinating time for the WNBA. Three of 16 franchises were set to fold — those in Orlando, Portland and Miami. The league had lifted the ban on ownership groups independent of an NBA team, and Connecticut was a logical destination for relocation of one of those teams.
The question at the time: Would a franchise be placed down in the Southeast corner, as it ultimately turned out? Or would it play downtown in our capital city as the parent-company NBA initially preferred?
It was always going to be Connecticut, though. UConn’s success had been the impetus for an extraordinary rise in women’s basketball interest. Storrs hadn’t yet started calling itself the capital of the college basketball world — that would happen a year later, when the men and women both won NCAA titles — but there was already a galvanizing surge of interest on the women’s front.
After first only exploring the possibility of hosting a few games, Mohegan told the NBA it was all in on an ownership opportunity. The NBA’s then-commissioner, David Stern, first wanted to explore working something out with interested groups in Hartford.
Nothing worked out in Hartford. Conversations soon began in earnest with the ready and willing folks at Mohegan Sun. They had the facilities, the resources, and a deal was struck (a $10 million purchase price, it was reported at the time).
This came well before the NHL and NFL were moving to Las Vegas, remember. There was still great discomfort in professional sports being anywhere near gambling, and the Mohegan Sun Arena court is little more than the roll of the dice from the casino floor.
It’s a hell of an arena, though. “I told [the NBA] it’s not like there’s a casino and I have a basketball court in the middle of a cornfield,” said Etess, the former Mohegan Sun CEO and president who remains CEO of the team. “I said, ‘I know you don’t understand this. You need to come see it.’”
They did in mid-December 2002. On Jan. 30, the team was announced. The Sun opted to become the new home of the Orlando Miracle, because that team had UConn’s Nykesha Sales.
And this whole project started. Thibault was hired, taking the Sun to the Finals in 2004 and 2005 and lasting 10 seasons. After three losing seasons under Anne Donovan, Miller, the longtime coach at Bowling Green, was hired. He came onto the Sun’s radar via a recommendation from Auriemma.
“He had the vision; he had the energy; he had the dedication that you really need to live it,” Etess said. “And we just felt it in him, that he was the guy who could take us there.”
The Sun are there. Almost. Again. Etess and Sienko, now the president of the Atlanta Dream, hired both coaches in this year’s Finals. Sienko has reached out to Miller this week.
“There’s a lot of pride behind the scenes,” Miller said. “This was his baby for a long, long time. When I got here, I talked about 2019, but 2019 was beyond my contract length. So I had to earn their trust and belief to get that first extension to allow this vision to take hold. But I was very vocal early on that I wanted to build and give a core group time to jell and grow together.”
This season, Miller’s fourth, began with one of the team’s best players, Chiney Ogwumike, demanding and being granted a trade to Los Angeles. Few thought much of the Sun roster, and the team has embraced the underdog, overlooked, disrespected themes.
Winning three games would validate everything they’ve believed in — this season, and over the years. And it would make them all the more relevant in a state the WNBA considered a no-brainer 16 years ago.
“We had a lot of success [early] that kind of set the tone for what we wanted to do,” Etess said. “When Curt came, we had another start and another plan and it really seems to have come together. … I think it would be really big for this town and for this state, this title.”
“We had a lot of success [early] that kind of set the tone for what we wanted to do. When Curt [Miller] came, we had another start and another plan and it really seems to have come together. … I think it would be really big for this town and for this state, this title.”
— Mitchell Etess