The WNBA's First Dynasty Died in 2008. A Houston Billionaire Just Paid $300 Million to Bring It Back.

The Houston Comets won the first four WNBA championships ever played. Then they vanished.

That's not me being dramatic. The franchise that defined the early WNBA — Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson, the team that went 27-3 in 1998 for a .900 winning percentage that still stands as a single-season record — folded in 2008 after the league couldn't find a buyer. The Comets were just gone. No relocation. No naming-rights deal. Liquidated.

Eighteen years later they're coming back. And to bring them back, the WNBA had to kill the Connecticut Sun.

Tilman Fertitta — the Houston billionaire who already owns the Rockets — paid $300 million for the Sun. That's the largest sale in WNBA history. By a lot. The previous record was about a third of that. Fertitta will move the franchise to Houston for the 2027 season, install them at the Toyota Center next to his Rockets, and revive the Comets name on the way in.

That last detail is the part I can't get over. Houston had the WNBA's first four trophies. Then the league grew up without them. Now, after seventeen years of being a dead franchise, the Comets are coming back to a league with a billion-dollar team in it.

The Golden State Valkyries — who joined the league last May, played one season, won nothing — are valued at $1 billion. They are the first women's professional team in any sport to be valued that high. The average WNBA franchise is up 59% year over year and pulls in a cut of a $281 million annual media rights deal — 6.5 times the previous package. Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia are paying $250 million each just to join the league later this decade.

None of this made sense in 2008.

In 2008, the WNBA literally could not find someone willing to buy the Comets. Houston was the league's foundational dynasty — the team that built the brand, the team Cynthia Cooper carried to four straight titles — and nobody wanted it. The market said the franchise was worth less than the cost of running it.

Tilman Fertitta just paid $300 million for a team that's never won one.

The Sun aren't a glamour brand. They've never been to a championship parade. They were the Orlando Miracle before they were anything else. They moved to Connecticut on January 28, 2003 after the Mohegan Native American tribe bought them and rebranded them as the Sun. Their first home game at Mohegan Sun Arena was May 24, 2003. 9,341 people showed up. Sellout.

For 23 seasons they were the most consistent thing about the WNBA. They went to four Finals and lost all four. They produced All-Stars without paying a star's price. They were the team you took for granted because they were always there.

Connecticut is going to lose them anyway.

The team is calling 2026 the "Sunset Season." Their season opener is May 8 in Brooklyn against the Liberty. The home opener is May 10 against Seattle. There are 22 home games left in this entire franchise's life in Connecticut. After September, the lights at Mohegan Sun Arena are off for WNBA basketball forever.

And the league is fine with this.

The WNBA is trading its longest-tenured franchise's geography for a $300 million check from a billionaire who already owns the local NBA team. Because the math says it's worth it. Houston is the country's fourth-largest media market. The Toyota Center seats 18,000. Fertitta paid $2.2 billion for the Rockets in 2017 — at the time a record for an NBA team — and his Landry's hospitality empire prints money. He plays at this level.

Connecticut's loss is the league's stock price.

I keep thinking about Cynthia Cooper. The original Comets' biggest star. Two-time MVP, Finals MVP in every single championship that team ever played in. She led the WNBA in scoring three years in a row in a league that paid her so little she had to play overseas in the offseason. The franchise she built was deemed unworthy of survival in 2008.

Now her old jersey is going to be worn by Azzi Fudd or whoever ends up on this Houston team in two years. By a player who will sign a contract bigger than Cynthia Cooper's entire career earnings.

This is a different league.

The Sun spent 23 years quietly being a basketball team inside a casino in eastern Connecticut. They weren't broken. They didn't deserve to die. They're being killed because the WNBA finally got expensive, and Connecticut couldn't pay what Houston could.

That's the trade. The Comets get to be alive again. The Sun get a goodbye tour.

I'll be watching every game.