WNBA in the Bay Area: What can the league learn from past expansion?

Lin Dunn is in the middle of rebuilding an Indiana Fever franchise that has spent the last decade at the bottom of the WNBA standings.

That task is nothing compared to the one she had more than two decades ago as the head coach of the Seattle Storm, one of four expansion teams that entered the league in 2000. The experience of bringing an expansion team on board with less than a year of lead time was one of the most difficult things the Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer said she’s ever done.

“People think this is hard [in Indiana], you just take an expansion team in 2000,” Dunn told Yahoo Sports during a Fever practice in August. “We didn’t have enough talent. Didn’t have a name, didn’t have a team, didn’t have a logo. Had to sell 5,000 seats. They didn’t give us the top picks.”

Dunn, who returned to Indiana in February 2022 as general manager after coaching the Fever to their only title in 2012, said she believes now is a good time for expansion because of the improved talent at all levels. The league hasn’t added a team since the Atlanta Dream in 2008 and has had 12 teams since 2010. It lost the Houston Comets and Sacramento Monarchs, both title winners, in back-to-back offseasons.

Expansion has been at the forefront for the WNBA and commissioner Cathy Engelbert over the past four years and on Thursday, the league announced the NBA’s Golden State Warriors have been awarded a team in the Bay Area. The team will begin play in 2025, giving the group 18 months from announcement to inaugural tipoff. Engelbert said the goal is to have a second expansion team announced for 2025. Site visits have been done in Portland, Denver and Toronto.

An expansion draft would take place after the 2024 season and 2024 draft lottery, Engelbert confirmed. The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) does not outline an expansion draft. There are currently no details on how it would work, or if there would be player allocation, for the expansion teams to begin filling out rosters. The last of five expansion drafts the league has held was 15 years ago in 2008.

“We’ll have more after we get through a diligence process with these owners [and] if we bring in another ownership group, as well as with the competition committee and our Board of Governors,” Engelbert said at the team’s announcement ceremony Thursday. “These are very important decisions to make since we haven’t done it in over 15 years.”

The competition committee and Board of Governors will each meet in November after the WNBA Finals, which tips off Sunday, concludes on Oct. 20 at the latest.

The WNBA currently has a maximum of only 144 spots on 12 teams, making it one of the most difficult leagues to make a roster. The league brings in domestic and international talent. Draft picks beyond the first round are often waived, and the next two draft classes are expected to be loaded, bolstering the early years of an expansion team. It is the last year players can opt to stay an additional season under the COVID-19 eligibility waiver.

Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s 2023 Naismith Award winner, could come out and would likely go No. 1. Connecticut Naismith winner Paige Bueckers would be eligible as well as teammate and Canadian national team member Aaliyah Edwards. Azzi Fudd is eligible as a junior who turns 22 in the calendar year. LSU’s Angel Reese and Hailey Van Lith and Stanford national champion Cameron Brink are also eligible.

“The depth of the talent in this league has never been better and the depth of the talent and breadth of the talent coming out of the NCAA system has never been better,” Engelbert said. “So [deciding the expansion draft format] is a really good problem to have.”

If they all enter the league together, building a competitive franchise around even a low-first-round pick combined with bench talent from existing teams is plausible.

“When I started the Seattle Storm, I look at the talent then and the talent now, we’re seeing the benefits of Title IX,” Dunn said of the 1972 act that requires equal opportunity in athletics. “These little girls have been playing since they were 3, 4, 5, 6 [years old]. The game’s better, the talent’s better, the support’s better, the commitment is better. Facilities. Everything is better. I don’t know what’s not better.”

How the expansion teams acquire their first roster, which could include an improved expansion draft system, would go a long way to competitive success for them and the league.

How WNBA handled expansion draft made 2000 difficult

For Dunn, one of the major difficulties in building a competitive roster in Seattle was the design of the 2000 expansion draft. There were four teams, all without names or logos yet, based in Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami and Portland who took part in the draft held via conference call in December 1999.

It was a six-round draft of four players each round and unlike the two prior expansion drafts, there were no allocated players for new teams. The 12 existing WNBA teams were allowed to protect five players, which was one fewer than the expansion draft the year prior. Once an existing team’s player was drafted by an expansion club, the team could then protect three more, according to an ESPN piece published days before the draft.

That format meant an existing team could only lose one of its top nine players. And an expansion team was left essentially selecting from an existing team’s front-of-the-bench players in the first rounds, to the 10th through 12th best players in the final three rounds.

“Teams weren’t as talented then,” Dunn said. “I got to pick seven, eight, nine [best players]. Well, wait a minute. Seven, eight, nine aren’t very good. So it was hard to build an expansion team.”

Dunn and Seattle general manager Karen Bryant said as much then. Bryant told ESPN “at this point, it is what it is,” and they “lobbied [the league] as much as we could to make sure our teams are competitive.”

The four teams filled out the rest of their rosters in the 2000 WNBA Draft in April. It was not one of the stronger classes. The Cleveland Rockers selected French star Ann Wauters at No. 1, followed by Tausha Mills (Washington Mystics), Edwina Brown (Detroit Shock) and Cintia dos Santos (Orlando Miracle).

The WNBA did relax rules at the time on trades for expansion teams, allowing them to trade for draft picks and engage in “unbalanced” trades, such as one player for two. Only the Portland Fire (Lynn Pride at No. 7) and Storm (Kamila Vodičková at No. 9) had first-round draft picks that year.

“It’ll be easier for expansion teams now because teams are deeper,” said Dunn, whose Fever hold the best odds at the No. 1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. “Let’s say I can only protect six. Or New York can only protect six, and that means, seven, eight, nine are up for grabs.”

If it were to occur this upcoming winter, available players (excluding any considerations for free agency status) could include New York’s Stefanie Dolson, Kayla Thornton and Marine Johannès. Dolson is a veteran center with a championship, Thornton is a top defender in the league, and Johannès, who might opt to stay in France due to the prioritization rules, is a strong 3-point threat and artistic passer.

Las Vegas’ Sixth Player of the Year winner Alysha Clark and starting center Kiah Stokes (assuming they protected veteran Candace Parker) could be taken in an expansion draft. Both have championship rings. Connecticut Sun guard DiJonai Carrington and Chicago Sky guard Dana Evans could also go unprotected.

What did other WNBA expansion drafts look like?

There have been five expansion drafts in league history. Ahead of the league’s founding in 1997 and for the 1998 and 1999 expansion teams, the league allocated players to new teams often with regional appeal considered.

It is how UConn’s Rebecca Lobo played for the New York Liberty, Texas Tech champion Sheryl Swoopes went to the defunct Houston Comets and Lisa Leslie started in Los Angeles. A team in the Bay Area would surely benefit in marketing, for example, from having local star Sabrina Ionescu on the roster. Allotting players was also how the Comets were able to build a dynasty with four titles in four years.

The Shock and Mystics in 1998, and Lynx and Miracle in 1999, were all allocated players and took four additional players each in an expansion draft. Existing teams could protect six players.

There were no allocations in 2000 and beyond. Ahead of 2006 (Sky) and 2008 (Dream), existing teams could protect up to six players and expansion teams selected one player from each team. The Dream could select no more than one unrestricted free agent, and were able to give that player the core designation to retain the player’s rights rather than the player signing elsewhere as a free agent.

The Sky had the No. 6 overall pick in each round in the 2006 WNBA Draft, and the Dream had the No. 4 pick in each round in 2008 to help build their rosters. Atlanta traded those picks for players and other draft picks.

What might an expansion draft look like?

Without any insight, almost anything is on the table for an expansion draft. It seems unlikely the league would allocate players to new teams. What is more likely is the ability for expansion teams to trade for a hometown player to boost interest in their inaugural season, as the NWSL’s San Diego Wave FC did for Alex Morgan.

Complicating the 2024 expansion draft is the prioritization clause, which beginning in the spring requires players to arrive on time for training camp or else be suspended for the year. Some players might be out of the pool.

Storm forward Gabby Williams has already said it’s unlikely she returns next year while she remains overseas. A large portion of players still go overseas in the WNBA offseason and do not return from their playoff responsibilities until the WNBA season has begun.

The players can also opt out of the CBA after the 2025 season, which they are widely expected around the league to do. Players might opt to sign shorter contracts and be free agents come time for a new CBA that could boost salaries, or change allowances for charter flights.

The Bay Area expansion team will first look to develop the marketing areas that Dunn also found frustrating in Seattle.

It needs to choose a name, select a logo, build a fan base, sell season tickets and make a competitive roster. Largely, it needs to build the support necessary to get through what could be tough early times in order to prosper.

“The name game is ongoing. So we’re going to try to come up with something that makes sense,” Warriors majority owner Joe Lacob said. “And hopefully it’ll be a good name and reflect what we have going on here in San Francisco and in the whole Bay Area and women’s sports.”

The WNBA announced the four 2000 expansion cities on June 7, 1999, and within a year they were tipping off play. The league required each franchise to sell at least 5,500 season tickets by Oct. 15 to officially begin, according to the Fever and WNBA archives. They didn’t announce their team names and logos until the following month, less than five months before the season began.

What happened to the 2000 expansion teams?

The Portland Fire missed the playoffs their first two seasons and reached .500 in their third. But the WNBA sold ownership of the franchises back to NBA team owners that offseason and placed the responsibility of corporate sponsorships and paying player salaries onto the individual teams, rather than done by the WNBA itself.

The Trail Blazers’ Paul Allen reportedly opted not to buy because the NBA team was doing poorly and the WNBA, still only 5 years old, was undergoing the early financial struggles of any new company or organization. The Miami Sol folded the same offseason with team ownership citing the inability to raise enough revenue to meet the league’s new agreement, The Associated Press reported in 2002.

“That model will work well for the league with cities that have good corporate bases,” Eric Woolworth, Heat Group’s president of business operations, told the AP. “The model, ultimately in Miami, is not going to work.”

Engelbert noted the number of Fortune 500 companies in the Bay Area at the official announcement Thursday, and had spoken of its importance in the bid process over the past four years. It is why she repeatedly named the lack of a team in the Bay Area as an issue for the league to address, especially as it enters media rights negotiations.

Dunn left the Storm the same offseason as the teams folded despite the Storm breaking the .500 threshold for the first time. She said she wanted to take a break at the end of her three-year contract and recover from building a franchise from scratch.

The Storm drafted back-to-back No. 1 picks Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird in 2001 and 2002. They led the franchise to its first of four WNBA championships in 2004. The team was 5 years old, a move Lacob has already made a stake to match.

“I’m telling you right now, we will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise,” Lacob said to close his opening remarks at the announcement.

It’s been a mixed bag for expansion teams that remain in the league. The Sky didn’t break .500 until their seventh season, reached the Finals in their ninth, and won the title in their 16th in 2021. The Dream did it in Year 3, reaching back-to-back Finals and four in total. But they’ve never won a championship.

The Fever, the last of the 2000 expansion teams, reached .500 in their third season and began making regular playoff appearances in 2005, their sixth year in the league. Dunn took over as head coach in 2008 and they went to the 2009 Finals. In 2012, they broke through for their first title with No. 1 draft pick Tamika Catchings.

It’s been seven lean years without a postseason appearance. But the come up, at least in Dunn’s eyes, is easier than expansion teams in the earlier years.