The Connecticut Sun, which moved from Orlando to Connecticut to play at the Mohegan Sun Arena in 2003, are playing their final game Thursday night before the franchise relocates to Houston next season.
The state hadn’t had a professional women’s basketball team since the New England Blizzard ceased operations after the ABL folded in 1998 but in 2002, with the WNBA struggling, the league opted to open ownership to interested parties who were not NBA teams, and the state of Connecticut was ready to bring a team here.
Now, 23 years later, the team is moving on. The Sun had a lot of success, advanced to the WNBA Finals four times but never won a title. UConn greats Rebecca Lobo, Nykesha Sales, Asjha Jones and Tina Charles all wore Sun jerseys at one point in their professional careers.
Here is a timeline of the Connecticut Sun’s history
Oct. 2002: The WNBA announces that non-NBA entities may own WNBA teams, opening the possibility that Connecticut, with its large population of women’s basketball fans, could get a team.
Nov. 2002: The Orlando Miracle, with UConn star Nykesha Sales, and the Miami Sol are cut loose by their NBA franchises.
Dec. 14, 2002: Two main groups in Connecticut – one led by LAZ Parking magnate Alan Lazowski and the other, the Mohegan Tribe – express interest in owning a WNBA team, with Lazowski wanting the team to go to Hartford and the Mohegan Tribe wanting it to play at the Mohegan Sun Arena. The WNBA said it would make a decision by Dec. 31 and wanted to have a team in place for the 2003 season.
Dec. 19, 2002: The NBA visits Mohegan Sun. One of the concerns at the time was having a team in a casino but the league was OK with Mohegan Sun because there was no sports book there.
Jan. 28, 2003: The Mohegan Sun introduces its new team, the Connecticut Sun. The tribe became the first non-NBA owners of a WNBA team and paid a reported $10 million for the team.
Rebecca Lobo, center, holds up a Connecticut Sun jersey with Mitchell Etess, left, vice president of marketing at Mohegan Sun, and Christopher Sienko, right, general manager of the Connecticut Sun, during a news conference announcing Lobo’s signing to the team Friday, Feb. 14, 2003, at the Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. The Sun acquired Lobo from the Houston Comets in exchange for a second-round draft pick. (AP Photo/Norwich Bulletin, Rory Glaeseman)
Feb. 14, 2003: The Sun announce they have traded a second-round draft pick to the Houston Comets to acquire Lobo, a deal which Mohegan Sun CEO Mitchell Etess later said was made for the team by the league.
March 7, 2003: Mike Thibault, a former NBA coach who had been an assistant with the Lakers, the Bulls and the Knicks among other teams, is hired to coach the team.
May 24, 2003: The Sun play their first game at Mohegan Sun Arena, losing to the Los Angeles Sparks, 82-73.
AP
Mike Thibault talks to his team before the start of their first practice.
Aug. 30, 2003: The Sun finish third in the Eastern Conference with an 18-16 record and sweep the Charlotte Sting for their first playoff series win. Connecticut advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, where it was swept by the Detroit Shock, coached by Bill Laimbeer, who became Thibault’s nemesis. Laimbeer was booed heartily (to his delight) every time he came to Mohegan Sun.
Sept. 23, 2003: Lobo announces her retirement from professional basketball. She played one season in Connecticut, averaging 2.4 points in 11.9 minutes per game.
April 17, 2004: The Sun draft star point guard Lindsay Whalen, who led the University of Minnesota to its only Final Four appearance, in the first round of the WNBA Draft. Whalen goes on to lead the team to two WNBA Finals appearances, scoring 2,290 points and recording 964 assists.
JOHN WOIKE / THE HARTFORD COURANT
Lindsay Whalen made her first of five career WNBA All-Star appearances as a member of the Connecticut Sun, the franchise that selected her fourth overall in the 2004 draft.
March 25, 2004: The Sun acquire former UConn All-American Ashja Jones.
Oct. 10, 2004: After winning the first game of the WNBA Finals over the Seattle Storm, 68-64, the Sun lose a heartbreaker after Sales (who had 32 points) missed a 3-pointer at the buzzer in Game 2, 67-65. The Sun lost the third and final game 74-60 two days later.
April 16, 2005: Margo Dydek, the WNBA’s tallest player at 7-foot-2, is acquired by the Sun in a trade with San Antonio. Dydek went on to become the all-time blocks leader (877) in the WNBA, before being passed by the Sun’s Brittney Griner this summer.
JESSICA HILL / ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Sun fell to the Shock again in 2006 during the Eastern Conference finals. From left, Nykesha Sales, Erin Phillips and Margo Dydek watch the final minutes of their season as Detroit closes out the series win. (Courant file photo)
July 9, 2005: The Sun host its first WNBA All-Star game in front of a sellout crowd at Mohegan Sun. The West beat the East, 122-99 and Sheryl Swoopes was named the game MVP.
Sept. 20, 2005: The Sun lose in the final game of the best-of-five WNBA Finals to the Sacramento Monarchs 62-59. Brooke Wyckoff’s 3-poitner with two seconds left in the second game tied the score and sent the game to overtime, which the Sun won to tie the series at 1. Whalen missed the series because of an ankle injury.
Aug. 27, 2006: Sun finished 26-8 in the regular season but lost to the Detroit Shock in the final game of the Eastern Conference Finals, 79-55. This time, another key player, Katie Douglas, had been injured in the first round of the playoffs against Washington and was limited.
Feb. 19, 2008: The Sun trade Douglas to her hometown team, the Indiana Fever, for Tamika Whitmore and a first-round pick. Douglas had been with the Sun since their inception in Connecticut and was a two-time All-Star.
Jan. 12, 2010: The Sun trade Whalen to her hometown team, the Minnesota Lynx.
Patrick Raycraft / Hartford Courant
From left, former UConn players Asjha Jones, Kalana Greene, Renee Montgomery and Tina Charles take the court together for the Connecticut Sun in 2011.
April 8, 2010: The Sun draft UConn star Tina Charles with the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft after missing the playoffs for the first time the year before.
Nov. 20, 2012: Thibault is fired after the Sun finish as the top seed in the East with a 25-9 record but lose in three straight games to the eventual WNBA champion Indiana Fever in the conference finals. Thibault led the team to the WNBA Finals in 2004 and 2005 and to five Eastern Conference Finals but never won a title. Thibault’s regular season record was 206-134 at the time and he was six wins short of breaking Houston Comet coach Van Chancellor’s all-time win record. Sun CEO Mitchell Etess expressed appreciation for Thibault at the time but added, “Our ultimate goal is the championship, and this change is made in with an eye to accomplishing just that.” Thibault won his first title in 2019 with the Washington Mystics but the Sun never won one.
Jan. 3, 2013: The Sun hire Hall of Fame coach Anne Donovan, who spent three seasons with the team before resigning in 2015. Her teams went 10-24 in 2013, 13-21 in 2014 and 15-19 in 2015.
April 14, 2014: Charles, the 2012 league MVP, tells the Sun’s management she wants to be traded to New York. The Sun make a draft-day trade, Charles for Alyssa Thomas (whom the Liberty had just drafted in the first round), Kelsey Bone and a draft pick. Thomas played for the Sun from 2014-2024 and went on to score 3,889 points (second to Sales’ 3,955) and lead the team in rebounds (2,396), assists (1,463), and steals (494) before she left for in Phoenix as a free agent in 2024.
Connecticut Sun’s Alyssa Thomas advances the ball in Game 5 of a WNBA basketball playoff semifinal against the Chicago Sky Friday, Sept. 9, 2022, in Chicago. The Sun won 72-63. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Dec. 17, 2015: The Sun hire Curt Miller as coach and general manager. Miller had a 140-86 record through 2022 and was named coach of the year in 2017 and 2021.
Oct. 10, 2019: Thibault and his Washington Mystics defeat the Sun, 89-78, in the fifth game of a best-of-five Finals series to win his first WNBA championship. Jonquel Jones led the Sun with 25 points and Alyssa Thomas had 21 points and 12 rebounds.
Sept. 29, 2020: The Sun lose to the Aces, 66-63, in the WNBA semifinals after a shortened season without fans at IMG Academy in Florida due to the pandemic.
Oct. 6, 2021: The Sun tie a franchise record with 26 wins in the regular season but fall to the Chicago Sky 79-69 in Game 4 of the league semifinals.
Sept. 18, 2022: The Sun return to the WNBA Finals but lose to the Las Vegas Aces in the fourth game of the best of five series, 78-71. In Game 3, which the Sun won 105-76, Thomas recorded the first triple-double in WNBA Finals history with 16 points, 15 rebounds and 11 assists. She had 15 triple-doubles with the Sun.
Connecticut Sun head coach Curt Miller argues a call during play against the Indiana Fever during a WNBA basketball game Friday, May 20, 2022, in Uncasville, Conn. (Sean D. Elliot/The Day via AP)
Oct. 21, 2022: Miller leaves the Sun to become the coach of the Los Angeles Sparks.
Nov. 21, 2022: Stephanie White becomes the Sun coach and leads the team to consecutive playoff appearances.
Oct. 28, 2024: White leaves the Sun, which went 28-12 and lost in a five-game semifinal series to Minnesota, for the Fever, which had just completed its first season with Caitlin Clark.
Dec. 4, 2024: Rachid Meziane is announced as the Sun’s new coach.
May 13, 2025: The Mohegan Tribe hires an investment bank to explore the sale of the franchise.
Aug. 4, 2025: There had been a lot of talk about the Sun leaving the state, and Gov. Ned Lamont weighed in, saying “We’re fighting like heck” to keep the team in Connecticut. On Aug. 3, a group led by Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca confirmed it had offered the Mohegan Tribe a reported $325 million and to move the team to Boston. Around the same time, former Bucks owner Marc Lasry matched the offer and wanted to move the team to Hartford. But the WNBA balked at both, saying that Houston was up next for expansion.
March 30, 2026: The Mohegan Tribe officially announces the sale of the Connecticut Sun to Houston for $300 million.
Sept. 24, 2026: The Sun, which have a 10-23 record and sit at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings, play their last game at Mohegan Sun against the Toronto Tempo.