WNBA never let them apply

But that hasn’t been the case for Oakland and the African American Sports & Entertainment Group (AASEG). The group had been publicly pursuing a WNBA team for its city for more than two years, even though AASEG founder Ray Bobbitt admitted that he knew it would be tough to beat out the bid from the Warriors’ brass.

“Nobody here’s confused about why the Warriors would get a WNBA team,” Bobbitt told SFGATE last week. “They’re the Warriors. People lose to the Warriors — I mean, LeBron lost three times to the Warriors. You don’t have to do critical thinking to understand why.”

In spite of his initial disappointment, Bobbitt still believes that Oakland is in the running for a WNBA team in the future. And he says the league is telling AASEG they are still interested in Oakland.

At AASEG’s request, league officials and counsel met with Bobbitt and AASEG’s legal counsel last Tuesday, with those officials telling Bobbitt that Oakland remains a candidate for future expansion opportunities, he told SFGATE. AASEG released a statement about the meeting the next day.

“We just wanted to make sure that we’re not chasing ghosts,” Bobbitt said to SFGATE about the reason for requesting the meeting. 

But it appears that is exactly what Bobbitt and Oakland may be doing. A source with knowledge of the situation told SFGATE that the idea that the WNBA would consider adding a second team in the Bay Area anytime soon is not accurate. The Athletic and the San Francisco Chronicle also reported that the league isn’t considering a second Bay Area team at this time. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Given how the expansion process played out — particularly in the past three weeks — it’s fair to wonder whether the Oakland group ever really was in the running at all.

The Athletic’s report from three weeks ago about a team likely coming to the Warriors caught the Oakland group — comprising Bobbitt’s AASEG, former WNBA star Alana Beard and marketing agency Everest Talent Management — by surprise, Bobbitt told SFGATE. According to Bobbitt, the Oakland group had gone more than six months without hearing from the WNBA.

“There was not a second bid,” Engelbert said. “… With a lot of cities, we have major discussions before you get into the bid process. But we had never received a bid from anyone else.”

The declarative statement was eyebrow-raising in the room; when Bobbitt heard Engelbert’s quote, he too was surprised. Oakland’s group had requested a bid application, but never got one, he told SFGATE.

Engelbert was then asked if there was a formal process to submit a bid. She demurred, saying the discussions with the Warriors started before the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’ll never forget, when [former Warriors president] Rick Welts was still here, he came to the NBA, WNBA offices and we started talking about potential,” Engelbert said. “So we were in discussions with them for a very long time, and they ultimately put a bid together. We were in discussions with other groups here in the Bay Area, including the Oakland group, but [those] never matured to a bid process.”

Engelbert spoke again three days later at a press conference in Las Vegas ahead of Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. She once again highlighted the “several cities” that have shown interest in a WNBA team. With the league reportedly set to add Portland as a second expansion team for 2025, Engelbert said the league is “in discussions with a variety of cities to be that 14th team.”

But when the commissioner was asked how many formal expansion bids the WNBA had received, Engelbert replied that she was “not going to comment on formal expansion bids because the definition of that can be — we’ve had a lot of discussions with a lot of cities.”

“The maturing discussions you would have as part of any bid or any formal bid are really important to get to know the ownership group, what their objectives, what their long-term commitment is, what their financial wherewithal is,” Engelbert continued. “There’s a lot of due diligence that goes on on both sides that we performed before you would get to a formal bid process.

“That’s why you might hear some groups in the news and then they drop out because maybe during those maturing discussions and the due diligence, maybe there was something where they weren’t a good fit for us or we weren’t a good fit for them. So it’s complicated. It takes a lot longer than everyone thinks.”

Engelbert’s declining twice in one week to answer directly whether there were alternate expansion bids aside from the Warriors’ matches what Bobbitt said the league told the Oakland group: There has not been a formal bidding process for this round of expansion.

The WNBA declined to respond to questions from SFGATE about the league’s bid process. But the WNBA and the Warriors seemed to know this line of questioning was coming. Last Thursday, the Warriors said they would have their WNBA team be based in Oakland, using the Warriors’ former practice facility as the team’s headquarters. Games will still be played in San Francisco, at Chase Center.

The Oakland group’s bid was always going to be a litmus test for the WNBA. In a league that is made of an overwhelming majority of Black women, choosing a bid led in part by a Black woman and former WNBA All-Star in Beard could have sent a powerful message, one that would have aligned with the league’s stated values.

Beard, who played in the WNBA for 15 years, released a statement on Instagram congratulating the Warriors after the news was made public. But she made clear that her goals hadn’t changed.

“I will take the learnings and experiences from this process and set a new strategy towards continuing to pursue my goal of owning a WNBA team and more,” Beard’s statement read. “My life’s work is to shift how women, in particular women of color, experience access to networks, capital and opportunities.”

As for Bobbitt and AASEG, there is still plenty of work remaining at the Oakland Coliseum complex, where AASEG is working on buying out the city of Oakland’s half of the complex (the A’s own the other half). AASEG is also working with the Oakland Roots and Soul to build a temporary stadium.

Bobbitt is still hopeful about AASEG’s goal to deliver professional sports back to the city he’s always called home — whether that be via the WNBA or something else.

“Anything that we feel can help Oakland win, that’s what we want to support,” Bobbitt said. “People pile on Oakland and people don’t celebrate the beauty of Oakland. They really focus on the perceived negatives of Oakland. Anything that’s in Oakland right now, that’s pushing Oakland in a direction of rebuilding and advancing forward, we’re going to support that, no matter what.”