Time is right for WNBA—and to remember Franklin Mieuli

This was good work from almost everyone concerned, especially the WNBA for inevitably awarding an expansion franchise to a community where both pro basketball and women’s sports are wildly popular.

Warriors’ owner Joe Lacob (and others involved) for assigning the name Golden State, readily identifiable now, although the nickname has yet to be decided.

One imagines that it will have some connection to “Warriors.” But that came with the formation of the team in Philadelphia in 1946, a time when we were unaware of political correctness. The reference was to native Americans—subsequently replaced by a character called Thunder now with the guys in Oklahoma City.

Philly became the San Francisco Warriors in 1962, and despite having the great Wilt Chamberlain, there were more empty seats than full ones.  Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who ran a proverbial mom-and-pop operation, was struggling financially.

When in 1971 the San Diego Rockets moved to Houston, Mieuli arranged to play a part of the Warriors’ home schedule in San Diego. He needed a change to a more inclusive name. “I could have used California Warriors,” he would say, “but to me, California was the school in Berkeley.”

So Golden State became a mythical place, and now after all those championships, Golden State will remain.

The WNBA team will begin playing in 2025, after the Paris Olympics, perfect placement. As hoops fans know the WNBA schedule begins when the NBA schedule ends. And vice versa.

Tara VanDervrer obliquely deserves credit in all this. Her Stanford teams gave women’s basketball a place in Northern California’s overly busy sporting calendar among the Niners and Giants—and Warriors.

But so much is attributable to that electronic device that seems to control our lives, the television.

It was two years ago when ESPN (curse them, bless them) signed a contract to show us the WNBA. And if there’s one thing ESPN can do it’s promote its own products. Not more than a figurative minute has gone by the last few weeks without a mention of the WNBA and its stars.

Somebody must have been watching, and for good reason. Those girls can play.  

After the announcement at Chase Center, Warriors all-star Klay Thompson said now he would have something to occupy his summer, sailing his boat across the Bay from Marin to WNBA games in San Francisco.

The shame is one one-time Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli, who died at 89 ln 2010, couldn’t be around with others like WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert, to announce that the league is coming to San Francisco—really to the Bay Area since the team will practice at the Warriors former facility in Oakland.   

It was back in 1969 before anyone even thought of women playing pro basketball, Mieuli and the Warriors used the 13th pick in that year’s NBA draft on an Iowa schoolgirl with a great shot, Denise Long Rife.

Now Denise is 72 and while she never got a chance to play in the league, she has earned the recognition and it has kept her in the news.

A few years later, in the early 1980s, the Women's Professional Basketball League arrived briefly. There was a San Francisco team, the appropriately named Pioneers, and they played at Civic Auditorium, as on occasion did the Warriors.

We’re told that in life and love, timing is everything. You can add interest in the WNBA. Just look at Klay Thompson.