PHILADELPHIA — It feels like Caitlin Clark is finally coming to Philadelphia. At least, the tangential ripple from the Caitlin Clark tidal wave is roaring up the Delaware River.

After 28 years, the WNBA finally has committed to launch an expansion team in Philadelphia that will begin play in 2030, thanks to a bid by Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the 76ers’ parent group.

The league also will expand to Cleveland in 2028 and Detroit in 2029, it also announced, making Philadelphia the WNBA’s 18th team and its sixth addition in the last two years. Thanks, Caitlin.

The new team will provide a summertime tenant for the planned new arena in the South Philadelphia sports complex, which is due to open in 2031; perhaps a guinea pig tenancy, since the WNBA plays earlier in the calendar year than the NBA and NHL.

There has been no mention of the involvement of Flyers corporate parent Comcast Spectacor, the Sixers’ partner in the new arena, though the teams were supposed to submit a WNBA bid together in the range of $250 million, according to an NBA source. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts attended a press availability Monday, and there were implications that he was involved.

There also is no word of any involvement by Dobbins Tech alumna and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who has long lobbied for a piece of a WNBA team. Staley is the face of women’s college basketball, which has never been more relevant. Folks tend to do what she tells them to, and she’ll tell them to come see the new club. There is a conflict of interest — Staley is a college coach — but her value to the NCAA and the WNBA, along with her unimpeachable character are reasons enough to carve out an exception.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert indicated to reporters Monday that both entities have an appetite to include Staley.

“Dawn’s a current college coach and obviously was the (Team) USA coach for a while. I don’t know if there’s conflicts there, we’d have to talk to the lawyers.”

If Sixers owner Josh Harris has any sense, he’ll be on the phone with Staley today.

Late to the party

This is the first real effect in Philadelphia of Clark’s massive impact on the sports landscape during her dynamic, charismatic and record-setting career at Iowa, where, from 2020 to 2024, she broke “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s Division I scoring record with the flair of Maravich and NBA star Steph Curry.

Women’s hoops has never been hotter. Golden State is in its inaugural season, Toronto got a WNBA team 13 months ago, and Portland got a second team in September. They’ll start play next year, but Philadelphia has long been a no-brainer site for a women’s professional basketball team. It cannot be coincidental that with the ascent of Clark, the most significant female athlete since Billie Jean King, the WNBA finally is making its way to one of the best basketball cities on the planet.

Philly had to beat out Nashville; Miami; Austin, Texas; and Charlotte, N.C.; none of which could offer the commerce and rabid fan base Philly has always had.

Since he bought the Sixers in 2011, Harris has endured an unlucky and unsuccessful tenure as Mr. Basketball in Philly, from the worst trade in Philly history (Andrew Bynum) to the 12-year deconstruction disaster known as The Process.

This always was Harris’ responsibility, but he first had to invest in the Flyers’ rival New Jersey Devils and their arena, Crystal Palace of the Premier League, a gaming franchise, and, most recently, the Washington freaking Commanders, to the universal outrage of Eagles fans.

Well, he hasn’t won anything with those sports franchises, either.

The way things look, the WNBA team five years from existence might be his best shot.

It’s personal

Women’s sports have long been close to my heart.

If you are reading this Monday, when the news is breaking, then you are reading it while my middle daughter is working a basketball camp for her high school team on which my eldest daughter played for four years and on which my youngest daughter presumably also will play for four years.

My wife was the all-time leading scorer at her high school, scored more than 1,000 points at Penn as its point guard, and decorated the record books in several other categories. We met playing pickup basketball on the Palestra floor. In the first year of our courtship, she made it to the second cut of a WNBA predecessor, the American Basketball League, a league for which Staley once played in Philadelphia.

Last fall one of my wife’s former college teammates got married, an event attended by several area college coaches and some former professional players. The most popular topic of conversation at the reception: the Caitlin Clark phenomenon and bringing a WNBA team to Philadelphia. The appetite isn’t just there. The area is ravenous.

Maybe it’s me, but, if you ignore the WWE-style theatrics currently associated with Clark, female athletes seem so much happier than males, and watching them is far more joyful. Maybe that’s why I’m so jazzed to train my girls and coach them and watch them perform. I have no empirical evidence, and I’m a Girl Dad only, but I would contend that you are much more eager to buy athletic equipment for a daughter than for a son. (Please don’t tell my daughters that I wrote this; lacrosse sticks are mad expensive.)

I like women’s sports. In my business, in my position, I get a lot of latitude as to what I cover. I went to the women’s NCAA tournament about 10 times in my career. Perhaps the most satisfying column I wrote in 2024 involved the flag football explosion among high school girls. One of the few instances in which I used connections to get tickets to a sporting event involves my wife and her former teammates going to the 2000 Women’s Final Four when it was in Philadelphia. I cover and follow women’s golf. Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are great, but if you want to see a pure swing, check out Nelly Korda.

In 2020, I lobbied for Staley to succeed Brett Brown as the Sixers’ head coach. Doc Rivers got the job. How’d that work out?

And the most popular sports team in my household has, for the past decade, been the U.S. women’s national soccer team. We’ve still got 2019 World Cup games stored on the DVR.

History and future

Staley’s name in Philly women’s hoops is just the biggest in this moment.

Women’s college basketball essentially began at Immaculata College in Chester County, which won the first three national titles and had its first title team, from 1972, enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

C. Vivian Stringer was born in western Pennsylvania and played at Slippery Rock, but she began her Hall of Fame coaching career at Cheyney State in Delaware County — as a volunteer coach.

Muffet McGraw played at Bishop Shanahan and then at St. Joseph’s, coached high school and college in Philly, then earned her Hall nod at Notre Dame.

Engelbert played at Collingswood (N.J.) High School, then at Lehigh University in Bethlehem. Good work, homegirl.

I have met and talked with each of these women (well, not each of the Mighty Macs). They are magnificent people. They are the foundation of women’s basketball in this area, a foundation from which we benefit, and the foundation on which Philadelphia’s WNBA team will stand.

For all of the dismissers, we know: For the moment, a WNBA team is more a worthy civic investment than a sound financial investment.

The presence of Clark in 2024, who as the Rookie of the Year and the leading All-Star vote-getter, spurred record attendance and record viewership. Still, the league lost $50 million last year. It has never turned a profit. It faces such challenges of paltry pay, even for its stars, and a possible labor stoppage next year.

That should not affect the Philly club. It should not affect our household. When the show gets on the road, we will buy season tickets.

Hopefully, they will bring my family greater satisfaction than the Sixers season tickets we gave up last year.

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