Charlotte Hornets forward Grant Williams wants to see a WNBA expansion team in his town.
CHARLOTTE — Hornets forward Grant Williams wants to see a WNBA expansion team in Charlotte.
And, he wants to see it done right.
“I’ve been trying to bring a team to Charlotte for the past 2.5, 3 years, but that’s up to [WNBA Commissioner] Cathy [Engelbert] and them,” Williams said at Hornets shootaround in Charlotte last week. “Nothing we can say or do about that. The WNBA is in charge of that, they hired a third-party firm to do all that. I feel like it’s a competitive landscape now.”
To say the landscape is competitive is an understatement. Williams is far from the only professional athlete — or person for that matter — hoping to get involved with bringing a WNBA team to their hometown or city.
His former Celtics teammate, Jayson Tatum, has been linked to a bid in his hometown of St. Louis, while Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has expressed interest in a team in Kansas City, where he’s become a legend.
And, there’s a plethora of former athletes and other investors exploring vying for a team in the fast-growing league.
It’s all happened so fast.
The WNBA was comprised 12 teams in the 2024 season, and is slated for three more to join over the next two seasons: the Golden State Valkyries in 2025 and teams in Toronto and Portland in 2026. The league is vying for a 16th team to even things out by 2027, and there are more than a dozen interested suitors, including in Miami, Milwaukee, Denver, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, among others. Some teams hope to latch onto a thriving existing sports scene, others due to a connection in the
Grant Williams wants to see new WNBA ownership groups truly invest
Williams said he wasn’t able to talk about any specific involvement he had in the Charlotte bid, and noted that there are a ton of other teams involved in the process.
“Before, no one was super motivated, and then all of a sudden, there’s been this wave,” Williams said.
He’s not wrong — the proliferation has been recent, and intense. This past season, the WNBA broke a slew of viewership and attendance record, with a record 22 regular-season games averaging at least 1 million views. The popularity of the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark — who was the Rookie of the Year — played a critical part in the WNBA’s increasing views, as did the rise of other rookies in the class.
But, Williams urged for those interested in purchasing a WNBA team to view it as more than just a financial investment.
“It can’t just be fleeting — it can’t be something that’s seen as a money opportunity,” Williams said. “It’s something that you [have to] actually care, promote the game of women’s basketball… they deserve a lot of the same marketing and opportunities that we do.”
It’s not the first time that Grant Williams has spoken out in support of the women’s game. Shortly after the U.S. women beat Australia to advance to the gold medal game in the Paris Olympics, Williams turned to X to call attention to the lack of media coverage at the games.
“The difference between the men’s vs women’s postgame is disrespectful, and the women deserve better,” Williams said.
Now, with the league continuing to look toward expansion, Williams hopes that Charlotte can be in consideration. It’d be his first time being involved with an initiative of this nature.
“I’m not supposed to talk about most of that, but in general, they have probably 12 franchises now that are going after bids,” Williams said. “It’s a competitive market.”
This past season, a number of ownership groups were criticized for a lack of consistent investment in their teams, including the Connecticut Sun and the Chicago, neither of which had their own practice facilities for players (though the Sky are beginning the construction of one).
The Sun notoriously had to share a practice facility with a toddler’s birthday party during the WNBA Finals, something that Sun star Alyssa Thomas deemed as “the ultimate disrespect.”
Williams is not alone in calling for better standards across the board — it’s something that the players’ union has called for as well — but ensuring that new franchises are committed to providing teams with the resources they need from the jump is paramount.
“You don’t want people that just come in and don’t really engage in the team — [you have to] make sure they have all the resources they need,” Williams said. “They have to do a deep dive to make sure they bring the right partners in. That’s the number one thing.”
In addition, Williams wants to see the league improve organizationally and across the board — echoing an increasingly common from diverse stakeholders — while acknowledging its relative youth. The WNBA was founded in 1997, while the NBA formed decades prior, in 1949. Williams has become more intimately familiar with the NBA’s governance through his position as the NBA Player Union’s First Vice President, a role he’s held since February of 2021.
Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images
“The organization of the WNBA has to get better as a whole, in the sense of taking care of the operating budget, making sure that things are being spent where they’re supposed to be, just being run as if they’re a Fortune 500 business as well,” he said. “They’ve been around for 25 years. They have some growing pains, just like we did in the first 25 years before.”
Grant Williams hopes that the league’s expansion serves as a tipping point for further growth, and that it’s done with thought and intention.
He also hopes to see his hometown in the mix.
“Now, this is the time to capitalize on the opportunity that’s ahead,” Williams said. “It’s just a matter of putting people in place that have a good understanding of what they’re doing, and utilizing that success to hopefully not just help the players, but help ownership as well.”
