On Dec. 30, 2002, Mitchell Etess had his first meeting with the WNBA about moving the Orlando Miracle to Connecticut.
Less than a month later, Etess, then the executive vice president of marketing at the Mohegan Sun, watched as the announcement was made that the Orlando team would move to the casino and become the Connecticut Sun.
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“I remember standing in the back of the arena with Paul Munick (the Mohegan Sun vice president of sports and entertainment) and Chris Sienko (director of sports and entertainment) and we were like, ‘OK, now what do we do?’” Etess said. “It was like the movie, ‘The Candidate’ with Robert Redford; he finally wins the election at the end, he says something like that.”
Etess was one of the main forces that helped bring the WNBA team to the state, so he’s a little saddened by the news that the team could potentially move to Boston, although the league has not signed off on the $325 million deal reported by the Boston Globe Saturday and a Hartford-based group led by billionaire Marc Lasry is reportedly interested in trying to keep the team in state.
The sale and the move must be approved by the WNBA and its Board of Governors and neither Hartford or Boston applied for an expansion franchise, so there is a possibility that the Sun could be moved to one of the nine cities that did.
“I’ve been thinking about it, since the sale was more formally announced, it has hit me more emotionally, no doubt about it,” said Etess, the former CEO of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. “But conversely, to have been part of bringing a team here and see it being sold for so much money, more than the expansion teams, per the reports, it’s a really good feeling that kind of counteracts the sadness.”
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The Sun was Etess’ baby; he had basketball-playing daughters and was interested in the game at a time when interest in the UConn women, who had won three of the last four NCAA championships between 2000-2003, had reached a fever pitch in the state. The Mohegan Sun had an arena but no sports team.
“Women’s basketball was popular here and it would help us become more settled in the community and the state,” Etess said. “It’s good programming in the arena. Women’s basketball was a lot cheaper than having Bon Jovi. It was a source of pride for the tribe that they could buy a professional sports team. There was a business case for it.”
Since the inception of the league, there was a cry for a team to be located in Connecticut. At the time, the WNBA would only allow teams to be placed in NBA arenas in NBA cities. But in the fall of 2002, with some teams struggling financially, the league’s board of governors voted to open up ownership to outside sources.
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Jodi Rell, then Connecticut’s lieutenant governor, was interested in bringing a team to Hartford. Various groups of investors – including one led by LAZ Parking chairman Alan Lazowski and another led by Apple Health Care CEO Brian Foley – were interested in putting the team in the then-Hartford Civic Center, but there was concern about having a team up and running in only five months.
The Mohegan Sun, however, had all the infrastructure in place – including a marketing team – and Sienko, who had served as the general manager of the New England Blizzard, the ABL team that played in Hartford until that league went bankrupt in the winter of 1998.
The WNBA wanted a team ready to go in the summer of 2003, but there was some trepidation about the team playing in a casino.
Etess, who was given unanimous approval from the Mohegan Tribal Council to pursue a team, said it took a while for the WNBA to respond to his queries. Eventually, he said NBA commissioner David Stern called him and told him the league wanted the team in Hartford but if that didn’t work out, Uncasville would be considered.
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The deal was worked out and on Jan. 21, the WNBA announced the Miracle, with former UConn star Nykesha Sales, was coming to Connecticut. The tribe paid $10 million for the team.
“Chris knew what he was doing, he had the (ABL) team in Hartford,” Etess said. “But it takes more time than five months – it wasn’t even five months – it takes more than that to get a team up and running with some momentum.
“We had no place to practice. We had no uniforms.”
The league had no collective bargaining agreement in place (the CBA was ratified in April 2003) so they couldn’t go after players who weren’t already on the team. They had no coach. For years, Etess saved a phone message from NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West, who recommended Mike Thibault to coach the team. He remembers getting a call from Stern that former UConn star Rebecca Lobo would be coming to the Sun for its first season from the Houston Comets in exchange for a second-round pick.
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“We didn’t even do it,” Etess said, laughing. “It was done for us.”
The gym at Connecticut College was secured as a practice facility, but Etess remembered that in the summer they had to install a portable air conditioning unit because it was too hot in the gym.
The Sun had their season opener May 24, 2003, losing to the Los Angeles Sparks, 84-73. The team finished its first season 18-16 and lost to the Detroit Shock in the Eastern Conference Finals.
“The first year – we had a lot of infrastructure at Mohegan Sun, but we didn’t have a lot of things we needed,” Etess said. “Our first-year attendance wasn’t all we hoped for, or the league hoped for, but after Year One, we really took off.”
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Over the next two decades, the Sun went on to make four appearances in the WNBA Finals, the latest in 2023, but the team never won a title.
In 2002, the league was at a turning point. The Miami Sol and Miracle were cut loose from their NBA teams. The Utah Starzz moved to San Antonio. Nobody was talking about fancy practice facilities or players’ salaries and the interest in the league was nowhere near what it is today.
The Sun agreed to host the All-Star Game in 2005 and went on to host it three more times, the most of any arena. Mohegan Sun also hosted the WNBA draft three times.
“The W is where it is now, but there were times when no one wanted to have the All-Star game, so we said, ‘We’ll have the All-Star game,’” Etess said. “ ‘We don’t have anywhere to have the draft.’ ‘OK, we’ll have the draft and we’ll fill (the arena) with 3,000 screaming people.’ Back in the day when the league was more struggling, we did a lot of stuff to keep it in the game.
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“Now you have people bidding on All-Star games and people bidding to pay for expansion teams. Back then, when a team went broke, finding a new place for it was hard. It’s a whole ‘nother level now. People didn’t want to have the All-Star game, they saw it as an expense.”
Over the years, Etess served as a senior advisor to the Mohegan Tribe and CEO of the Connecticut Sun and was on the WNBA’s Board of Governors. He retired in 2020 and now works as a consultant and does board work for various organizations around the country.
Etess, who lives in Lyme, is still a fan and still goes to a few games now and then. He’s enjoyed watching the popularity of the WNBA soar and still believes Connecticut is a viable place for a team.
“I think when you have the most successful (women’s basketball) college team of all time here, it makes sense to have a professional team here,” he said. “But if there’s more money to be made in a place where you can sell 19,000 tickets every night instead of 9,000, maybe that’s the case but I don’t think it has to be the case. I think the team can continue to be successful here.”
