CHARLOTTE — Hornets forward Grant Williams wants to see a WNBA expansion team in Charlotte.

And he wants things to be done right.

“I’ve been trying to bring a team to Charlotte for 2.5 or 3 years, but it’s up to (WNBA Commissioner) Cathy (Engelbert) and them,” Williams said during the Hornets shootout in Charlotte last week. “There’s nothing we can say or do about it. The WNBA is in charge of this, they hired a third party company to do all of this. 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 in bringing a WNBA team to their hometown.

His old Celtics his teammate, Jayson Tatum, has been linked to an offer to his hometown of St. Louis, while Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has expressed interest in a Kansas City team, where he has become a legend.

And there are a plethora of former athletes and other investors considering vying for a team in this growing league.

It all happened so quickly.

The WNBA had 12 teams in the 2024 season and is expected to welcome three more over the next two seasons: the Valkyries of the Golden State in 2025 and the teams in Toronto And Portland in 2026. The league is fighting for a 16th team to even things out by 2027, and there are more than a dozen interested suitors, including 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 the WNBA’s new ownership groups truly invest

Williams said he wasn’t able to talk about his specific involvement in Charlotte’s bid and noted there were a ton of other teams involved in the process.

“Before, no one was super motivated, and then suddenly there was this wave” Williams said.

He is not wrong: the proliferation was recent and intense. Last season, the WNBA broke numerous viewership and attendance records, 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 vital role in the WNBA’s rise in opinions, as did the rise of other rookies in the class.

But Williams urged 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 financial opportunity,” Williams said. “It’s something you really have to care about, promoting women’s basketball…they deserve a lot of the same marketing and opportunities that we do.”

This is not the first time that Grant Williams has spoken out in favor of women’s football. Shortly after the Americans beat Australia to qualify for the gold medal match at the Paris Olympics, Williams I turned to X to draw attention to the lack of media coverage during the games.

“The difference between men and women after the match is disrespectful and women deserve better,” Williams said.

Now that the league continues to look to expand, Williams hopes Charlotte can be considered. This would be the first time he would participate in an initiative of this nature.

“I’m not supposed to talk about most of this, but in general, they probably have 12 franchises now that are going out for bids,” Williams said. “It’s a competitive market.”

Last season, a number of ownership groups were criticized for their lack of consistent investment in their teams, including the Connecticut Sun and Chicago, who did not have their own training facilities for players (although Sky is starting to build one). .

The Sun infamously had to share a practice facility with a child’s birthday party during the WNBA Finals, which Sun star Alyssa Thomas deemed “the ultimate disrespect.”

Williams is not alone in calling for better standards across the board – it’s something the players union ” also asked – but it is essential to ensure that new franchises are committed to providing teams with the resources they need from the start.

“You don’t want people to come in and not really commit to the team – (you have to) make sure they have all the resources they need,” Williams said. “They need to do a thorough analysis to make sure they bring in the right partners. That’s the most important thing.”

Additionally, Williams wants to see the league improve organizationally and overall – echoing an increasingly common trend from various stakeholders – while acknowledging its relative youth. The WNBA was founded in 1997, while the NBA formed decades earlier, in 1949. Williams became more intimately familiar with NBA governance through his position as first vice president of the NBA players’ union. the NBA, a role he has held since February 2021.

Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images

“The WNBA organization needs to improve as a whole, in the sense of taking care of the operating budget, making sure things are spent where they’re supposed to be, just managed like it’s “It was a fortune. 500 companies as well,” he said. “They’ve been around for 25 years, just like we did in the first 25 years before that.

Grant Williams hopes the league’s expansion will serve as a tipping point for future growth, and that it will be done with thought and intention.

He also hopes to see his hometown in the mix.

“Now is the time to capitalize on the opportunity that presents itself,” Williams said. “It’s just about putting people in place who have a good understanding of what they’re doing and using that success to hopefully not only help the players, but also help the ownership.”