A Basketball Team Can Be Sold, But Who Owns Its History?

The WNBA is still a fairly new league in both geologic and relative terms, and so the news that the Connecticut Sun had been sold to the folks who own the Houston Rockets and would move to Texas after this season created minimal stir, despite some ambient stink on the deal. WNBA franchises have moved before; the one that played in Houston won the league's first four championships, fielded some of the early WNBA's biggest stars, and was one of the sport's most iconic organizations before it disbanded. That was in 2008, although it feels much longer ago. Today, the league's franchises, established and expansion, are being bought up by NBA owners, and Tilman Fertitta, who owns the Rockets and is the United States' ambassador to Italy and San Marino, evidently needs something else to do. There was little fuss or muss, and, despite some high-powered threats, no lawsuits about the sale, and no demands for the team's history to remain in Connecticut. The franchise belonged to the Mohegan Tribe, and they could, and did, sell to whatever party they preferred. Nobody made much of a stink about the records when the Orlando Miracle moved to Connecticut to become the Sun, either. It was just another instance of this strange business conducting business as usual. But it's a funny thing about sports history—for all the hard numbers underpinning it, it is generally much more contingent on negotiations and dealmaking than it is on facts. The Seattle Soon-To-Be-Super-Again-Sonics organization will rise from the crypt in the next round of NBA expansion, and will both replace and supplant the Sonics that were skirted off to Oklahoma City. The citizens of Seattle demanded the name, team colors, and records in exchange for not suing owner Clay Bennett six generations into the future back then, and Bennett didn't care about any of that extraneous paperwork. And so the Thunder were for all intents and purposes an expansion team when they relocated to OKC, unless you knew the context. This despite having the same front office, coaches, players, and staff by whom and with which that history was made. Kevin Durant began his career with the Sonics in '07-08 and continued it with the Thunder the next season. It wasn't a trade that moved him from one team to the other, but it was a deal.