{"id":611956,"date":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611956\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:26:09","slug":"maura-healey-is-not-giving-up-on-getting-a-wnba-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/611956\/","title":{"rendered":"Maura Healey is not giving up on getting a WNBA team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSports News\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t“I’m not giving up.”<\/p>\n

\"Maura
\n\tMass. Gov. Maura Healey speaking with Allison Feaster at the 2025 edition of Globe Summit. Ben Pennington for The Boston Globe\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Hayden Bird<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApril 28, 2026 | 4:01 PM\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

2 minutes to read<\/p>\n

Though recent developments in the WNBA<\/a> landscape have been a setback to Boston\u2019s desire to have a professional women\u2019s basketball team, Gov. Maura Healey said she\u2019s not giving up.<\/p>\n

Healey, a former co-captain of Harvard women\u2019s basketball, was asked about the WNBA subplot during an interview<\/a> on GBH\u2019s \u201cBoston Public Radio<\/a>\u201d on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Having acknowledged earlier in the interview that \u201cI don\u2019t know that I would be where I am today were it not for opportunities that I had in sports,\u201d Healey spoke up on the subject of basketball.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHealey says her social media bill would protect young users. Some see red flags.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Specifically, she was asked if she\u2019s talked to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after the decision<\/a> in April by the league to approve the bid of the Fertitta family to buy the Connecticut Sun and move the team to Houston following the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

It goes against a bid led by former Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca to buy the Sun and move them to Boston. The league effectively blocked<\/a> Pagliuca\u2019s then-record bid for a WNBA team, citing<\/a> the logic that \u201crelocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams,\u201d and that Boston was less of a priority than cities that had already applied for expansion teams.<\/p>\n

Healey noted that she had spoken to Engelbert.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, and look I was really disappointed with the decision they made to move the team to Houston, and an NBA owner,\u201d Healey explained. \u201cBut I\u2019m not giving up. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoston should be a home to a WNBA team,\u201d she added. \u201cWe invented basketball here. Actually the men\u2019s and women\u2019s game was invented in Boston.\u201d<\/p>\n

(As a caller later pointed out \u2014 and Healey was quick to amend her earlier statement \u2014 the game of basketball was technically invented in Springfield<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Beyond the Boston implications, Healey also explained that with the Sun set to pack up and move to Houston, the entire region will be without a WNBA team.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew England will be without a [professional] women\u2019s basketball team,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s crazy. That\u2019s just crazy. So we\u2019ve got to fix that. I will continue to work with the league, Celtics ownership. Women\u2019s basketball, to say it\u2019s on the rise is an understatement. I mean people love it, and we should have a WNBA team here. I\u2019ll do whatever I can to make that happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hayden Bird is a sports staff writer for Boston.com, where he has worked since 2016. He covers all things sports in New England.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet the latest Boston sports news<\/p>\n

Receive updates on your favorite Boston teams, straight from our newsroom to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sports News “I’m not giving up.” Mass. Gov. Maura Healey speaking with Allison Feaster at the 2025 edition…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-611956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}