WNBA Folds in Sacramento, Seeks Bay Area Owner for 2010

The Sacramento Monarchs, one of the WNBA's original eight franchises folded Friday, leaving the league to scramble to find a new ownership group, possibly in the San Francisco Bay Area, in time for the 2010 season.

The league announced Friday that it is in talks to find a Bay Area ownership group prepared to take the team over.

WNBA president Donna Orender confirmed Friday evening that negotiations with an investor group are underway.

"The Bay Area is a market we wanted to be in within two years, so this accelerates that process that was already in place," Orender said. "We are hoping to have it worked out very soon."

Joe and Gavin Maloof have owned and operated the Monarchs, but financial losses from their ownership of the NBA's Sacramento Kings forced them to give up the WNBA franchise.

"We love the Monarchs, but it's time to re-focus," Joe Maloof told the Sacramento Bee. "Everyone in this business environment ... you have to do what has to be done. Our focus is to turn the Kings around."

Orender confirmed that she is talking to an investor group, not an individual, but she declined to identify them and said the league would like to speak to anyone interested in ownership of the team. She said she feels strongly a Bay Area team could ultimately be "one of our most successful franchises.''

"It's a market with strong support for women's sports and this is a ready-made team with players that have local ties," Orender said. "The ramp-up for this team would not be as long as it could be in another situation."

The Golden State Warriors are not among the potential new owners.

Oakland city council member Rebecca Kaplan has been pursuing an ownership group for a WNBA team for months. She said she has been in active talks with potential owners in Oakland and has met with Orender. Kaplan is pushing hard to locate the team in Oakland. Orender said she could not say where the team would be located at this point.

"The ideal scenario for this team would be to move to a place that could take advantage of a new fan base, but be near enough for the (Sacramento) fan base to come and watch games and Oakland is as near as you can get," Kaplan said. "There are a lot of reasons that Oakland is an ideal spot."

Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, who is the chairman of the Oakland Coliseum Authority that oversees Oracle Arena in Oakland, said a WNBA team would be welcome in the area, but it is important to "approach things cautiously" because of the arena's existing relationship with the Warriors, its main tenant.

"We would want to create a deal that's a win-win for everybody, including the WNBA," Haggerty said.

A move to the Bay Area -- whether it be Oakland, San Francisco or San Jose -- would make great sense here, allowing the league to maintain the team roster, which has two key players with Bay Area ties. Leading scorer Nicole Powell was an All-American at Stanford and the team's top draft pick a year ago was Courtney Paris, who grew up in nearby Piedmont.

The team also currently holds the No. 2 pick in the spring draft, and that pick could well be Stanford center Jayne Appel, giving the team three strong ties to the area. The players on the current roster will not be dispersed while the future of the team is being determined.

But placing a team in the Bay Area in the next six months is a tall task. If a deal cannot be reached in the very near future (within a couple of weeks), the league could be forced to disband the team and put the players in a dispersal draft if a solid investor group doesn't come together quickly. The league then could revisit putting an expansion team in the Bay Area without such a rush.

But the news of the Monarchs' demise sent shockwaves through the organization. The players were informed of the decision before the news was released publicly on Friday afternoon.

The team's general manager and head coach, John Whisenant, told a local television station in Sacramento that he was "shocked" by the announcement.

"Joe and Gavin (Maloof) called me (Thursday) night and told me," Whisenant said. "I was kept in the dark like everyone else."

Ticha Penicheiro, one of the team's original players who had been on the roster since 1997, posted on her Twitter Friday that she was "distraught". "This is one of the saddest days of my life," read her Twitter post.

The WNBA has long had an interest in placing a team in the Bay Area, the fifth-largest media market in the country. Other attempts to find an ownership to run the team in previous years have not been successful.

"The Bay Area has been a desirable market for the WNBA and the availability of the Monarchs provides an opportunity to move a well-known franchise and broaden its fan base within Northern California," Orender said in the statement issued by the league.

The biggest issue may be securing a venue. Oracle Arena in Oakland is the home court for the Golden State Warriors. There have been talks with arena management about moving a WNBA team into the venue over the summer months but no agreement has been reached, sources say. There is also the potential that the team could be located at San Jose's HP Pavilion, which shares its facility with the NHL's San Jose Sharks. San Francisco is the longest shot because the city does not currently have an indoor pro sports facility.

The league has already experienced two ownership changes since the season ended a month ago. The WNBA moved one franchise in the last month, relocating the Detroit Shock to Tulsa and shepherded a change of ownership for the Atlanta Dream.

The Monarchs have been among the league's most consistently successful teams, winning the league title in 2005 and the Western Conference crown in 2006. They have made nine trips to the playoffs in 13 seasons.

The team is coming off a 12-22 season, the worst record in the league this past season. Only New York, Los Angeles and Phoenix remain among the league's original franchises in their original cities.