Arn Tellem\u2019s competitors for a WNBA expansion franchise were places such as Austin, Nashville and Miami \u2014 \u201chot, sexy Southern cities,\u201d he called them. So how did sweater weather Detroit beat them out? It started with cold calls.<\/p>\n
It was vintage Tellem. He\u2019s big on charts, decks and whiteboards, and in 2024, he and then-Pistons COO Rich Haddad drew up a list of dream investors \u2014 power brokers who had connections to the city of Detroit, to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert. He figured: Sometimes it\u2019s not just who you are, it\u2019s who you know. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo we put together this list thinking very strategically: \u2018How do we make this the most decorated group that has ever owned a sports team?\u2019\u201d Haddad said.<\/p>\n
One of the first calls was to Grant Hill, a former Piston, head of USA Basketball and, aha, on the Duke University board of trustees with Silver.<\/p>\n
\u201cI call him, give him my presentation,\u201d said Tellem, the Pistons\u2019 vice chairman. \u201cHe says he\u2019s in. And he says, \u2018You ought to call Mary Barra.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Tellem already had Barra, the chair and CEO of General Motors, on his to-do list. She was also on the Duke board with Silver. She told him she was in, too. <\/p>\n
Tellem dialed Lions owner and Chairwoman Sheila Ford Hamp \u2014 \u201cThere\u2019s no more notable women\u2019s sports owner, I think, in the universe,\u201d he said \u2014 and Hamp and her husband, Steve, committed. He called Denise Ilitch, daughter of Mike Ilitch and president of Ilitch Enterprises. She was in. He called the Davidson family, whose patriarch, Bill Davidson, owned Detroit\u2019s original WNBA team, the Shock. Bill\u2019s son, Ethan, and Ethan\u2019s wife, Gretchen, were also good to go.<\/p>\n
Add in Lions quarterback Jared Goff and rapper Eminem, and now Tellem was cooking. \u201cThese are powerful people, including powerful women that are leaders in the city,\u201d Pistons owner Tom Gores said. \u201cI told Arn he can come work for Platinum [Gores\u2019 private equity and investment firm]. Because he\u2019s great at that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Tellem had more up his sleeve, especially this doozy: Steve Greenberg, his close friend and longtime colleague, is managing director of Allen & Company, which was leading the W\u2019s expansion process. \u201cLet\u2019s just say we had a rooting interest for Detroit,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n
All that was left was convincing Silver. Tellem strategically invited the commissioner to Detroit to speak to Pistons employees, and while Silver was there, told him about Gores\u2019 plan to build a WNBA training facility \u201cunlike any other in the United States\u201d \u2014 a $50 million, 75,000-square-foot campus that would include an adjacent 100,000-square-foot youth complex. Kids and W players would intermingle. He gave Silver his charts; waited for an answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, when Adam was in Detroit, Arn had like 40 or 50 of his front-office staff meet with Adam,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cAnd someone said, \u2018Commissioner, what are our chances of getting one of the WNBA teams?\u2019 And apparently Adam said, \u2018Well, we hired Arn\u2019s best friend as our banker, so I think they\u2019re pretty good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
By June 2025, it was official: Detroit would have a WNBA team in 2029. It hadn\u2019t gotten the cold shoulder.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can sell a vision,\u201d said Tellem, raising his arms on announcement day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arn Tellem\u2019s competitors for a WNBA expansion franchise were places such as Austin, Nashville and Miami \u2014 \u201chot,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,42100,28459,39932,82,630],"class_list":["post-938802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-champions","tag-in-depth","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}