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The sun is setting on the Sun era in Connecticut. The WNBA team was purchased by the women of the Mohegan Tribe in 2003 for $10 million, and is being sold to a Houston ownership group for $300 million. When the team relocates for the 2027 season, it will become the Comets, reviving the name of one of the original eight WNBA franchises.

On one hand, it’s great that the team is going to have ownership that can invest enough in the franchise to make it competitive in the current WNBA. The league has grown rapidly in the last few years, and looks fundamentally different from when the Sun came to Connecticut over two decades ago.

“I would say to the fans, support the Connecticut Sun this season,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert said in a press conference ahead of the 2026 Draft. “It's a great basketball state for women's basketball—some would call it the center of women's basketball, with how successful UConn has been over so many years. So I would say, stick with us. Stick with the WNBA. We know that fandom won't go away.”

But elements of this sale don’t sit well with fans of the team, even beyond losing the only WNBA squad in New England. The sale to Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, whose bid and plan to relocate the team was approved by the league despite a higher offer from a Boston ownership group that would have kept the team with its existing fanbase, stinks of the sour “growth at all costs” mindset that plagues men’s sports under late-stage capitalism.

The first native-owned team in pro sports is being given to a man who was named President Donald Trump’s Ambassador to Italy.

“You’re going from having a tribe owning a team, and the first individually-owned WNBA team and that being so important and such a huge part of the identity of the team, and now it’s owned by another one of the male billionaires, who is in favor of our current administration,” says Skylar Cook, a Sun fan from Portland, Maine. “It’s a dramatic and painful shift in leadership.”

In 2003, the WNBA signed a restructuring agreement. This moved the league from a single-entity model, where all the teams were centrally owned by NBA owners and there was a franchise agreement, to one that allowed for individual ownership. Under this new structure, non-NBA cities could have WNBA teams or there could be WNBA teams in NBA markets that didn’t have a men’s franchise who was interested in running a women’s team (the Chicago Sky are an example of this), decoupling the women’s league from the men's. 

But the new deal also meant that the NBA teams associated with a WNBA team would now be responsible for paying player salaries themselves, rather than the centralized league paying them. Three WNBA teams folded immediately when NBA owners decided not to spend the money to keep them—the Portland Fire, the Miami Sol, and the Orlando Miracle. The Miracle were purchased by the Mohegan Tribe and moved to Connecticut, hoping to capitalize on the built-in women’s basketball fandom that existed in the region thanks to UConn.

The Mohegan Tribe chose to invest in women’s basketball at a time when male billionaires refused. It’s ironic, then, that the WNBA is now prioritizing NBA owners when those very owners turned their back on the league two decades ago.

“It’s so painful to see them reproducing the worst habits of how American institutions have treated Native Americans for centuries, especially given that they were among the first to commit to a league that many people didn’t believe would survive, much less thrive,” says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Sun fan who lives in New Hampshire.

Sun fans know that the team's location in Uncasville isn't convenient for travel. Many told me they drive over an hour each way to get to home games, and hold season tickets anyway. Another says they moved to New Haven, Conn., from Boston specifically because they wanted to live somewhere with a nearby WNBA team. For Micha Brodnax, a season ticket holder from Holyoke, Mass., the ritual of Sun games has grounded her week, and helped formed a point of connection for her and her girlfriend.

“She is a big casino head and I am into sports,” Brodnax, who has held season tickets for the last three seasons, tells Out of Your League. “Having that time together, driving to the games about an hour-and-a-half away, her commitment to be committed to us supporting the team was so important. When we are not able to go to games, to be able to give the tickets away to people we know, it's been a part of our cultural identity.”

Fans aren’t upset that the team may have outgrown the Mohegan Sun Casino, which seats just over 9,000 people and sits on the southern edge of the southernmost New England state. They’re also glad that the Mohegan Tribe stands to make a lot of money on this sale. 

But fans are stung by the way the sale unfolded, and what it says about the league’s values. Fertitta and the WNBA are essentially erasing a 20-year-old franchise, with 20 years worth of stars, stories and records. “I was devastated that they were intending to sell the team and the potential sale to Boston made me really sad, but it was a different kind of sad than this,” says River Wendell, a Sun season ticket holder from New Haven. “How can it make more sense to force a sale to Houston than to keep it in the region where there is a strong base of fans?”

Houston has mourned the loss of the Comets since the team was disbanded following the 2008 season, when the Koch family put it up for sale and couldn't find a buyer. Connecticut supporters are happy that Houston fans have the Comets again; they just wish the team could have returned a different way.

Sun fans, like many longtime WNBA fans, have invested themselves in every aspect of the franchise. In this case, that means feeling proud to support the Mohegan tribe, and to learn more about the nation whose land hosts the Sun's home games. “I’ve learned a lot about Mohegan tribal history and culture through going to games,” says Wendell. “I have beadwork earrings I bought from a Mohegan artisan.”

There have been many other ways for fans to connect with and learn about the Mohegan Tribe, as well. The Sun’s “Rebel” jerseys, which debuted in 2021, honor Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Mohegan’s medicine woman who was also an anthropologist, author, tribal council member, and Elder. The jerseys feature the word “Keesusk,” which means “sun” in the Mohegan language. During this Sunset Season, the team will host its final Indigenous Peoples’ Night, which will “celebrate the roots of the Connecticut Sun and the Mohegan Tribe, along with other local Indigenous traditions, feature “an intertribal dance performance by the Rez Dogs Drumming Group at halftime,” and “gain an inside look at the inspiration behind the 2026 Rebel Jersey.” 

All the fans who spoke to Out of Your League say they don’t plan on abandoning the Sun during the team's swan song, but they differ in how they are going to approach this season. Some fans, like Wendell, say they would attend as many games as possible because they don’t know when they’ll have a local WNBA team again.

Others, like Jenny Berggren, are more conflicted. “I’ve not landed on what I want to do yet,” she says. “I looked at my Sun hoodie this morning and didn't want to wear it. I don’t feel like I'm ready to be like, ‘let’s go have a great last season.’” Brodnax feels upset that fans like her, who had already made a financial commitment to the team, didn’t get a say in what happens to it.

And then there is the question of who to root for after this season. The closest team geographically will be the New York Liberty, but many New England sports fans can’t stomach the thought of rooting for a New York team. Brodnax says she is considering an expansion team like the Toronto Tempo.

Regardless, the WNBA is losing one of the few teams in all of professional sports not owned by an obscenely wealthy white man. Wherever orphaned Sun fans go next, they'll likely have to resign themselves to rooting for a team whose ownership sees them solely as a mark. And that's only if they remain fans of the WNBA. 

“I’m going to miss being a fan of a team where I don't have to be like, ‘Oh my money is going into the pocket of an evil man,’” says Wendell. Brodnax has even bigger questions: “What does repair look like between the league and the Sun fans? There’s no real possibility for that at the moment.”

But this league has a way of drawing fans back into its orbit. The team selected UCLA’s Charlisse Leger-Walker as the 18th pick in the draft, continuing the franchise’s connection to indigenous cultures—Leger-Walker is the first Māori and New Zealander to be drafted into the WNBA. And a few days after I talked to Berggren, who had been too sad to wear any of her Sun gear and felt it was “too soon” for the team to be rolling out their “sunset season” branding, the team signed Houston native Brittney Griner.

“Until last night I was still very bitter about the Sun... And then they signed BG,” Berggren messaged me on Instagram. “And I KNOW it's just so she can go play in her hometown next year but I don't care, she's my favorite player ever and I can't wait to see her play in a Sun uniform. Congrats, Sun, you roped me back in for one last year.”

This newsletter was edited by Louis Bien.