Warriors’ Welts hopeful Bay Area will get WNBA team

Warriors’ president would be ‘disappointed’ if Bay Area doesn’t get one soon

Warriors president and COO Rick Welts expects the Bay Area will be home to a WNBA team within the next five years.

Speaking with reporters ahead of tonight’s NBA draft lottery Welts, who will step down from his role within the next few weeks, acknowledged that the organization has considered creating a WNBA team in the past. However, because of plans to build San Francisco’s Chase Center and then the coronavirus pandemic, “the time wasn’t right.”

Still, Welts believes the Bay Area is a perfect spot for a WNBA franchise.

“We look at it all the time,” Welts said about putting a WNBA team in the Bay Area. “To be able to make this work, you have to be able to sell tickets and you have to be able to sell sponsorships. Without those two things you’re not going to have a financially successful WNBA team, and we do those two things really well by the way.

“There’s no plan right now, but I would be very disappointed if within ... the next five years we don’t have a WNBA team playing here somewhere in the Bay Area.”

The WNBA, the women’s counterpart to the NBA, is composed of 12 teams. Half of those teams have a direct affiliation with an NBA club in the same market. Although WNBA franchises don’t have to be affiliated with an NBA franchise, it appears the Warriors are interested in helping create the first WNBA expansion franchise since 2008.

In Welts, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has a fan and a supporter. Although Welts will step down from his position — and be replaced

by Brandon Schneider — he is still expected to remain in contact with the Warriors organization in a consulting capacity.

Welts, 68, spent the last 10 seasons with Golden State, and has been part of the NBA for more than four decades, including roles with the Seattle SuperSonics, Phoenix Suns and the NBA league office. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2018, punctuating a career filled with such accomplishments as marketing the 1992 Olympics “Dream Team,” helping create All-Star Weekend and build Chase Center, located in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district. Whether his next project involves the WNBA remains to be seen, but it appears to be a priority.