Scoop: Parker helped advance Wanda Sykes' bid for a Philly WNBA team

The big picture: The WNBA is in expansion mode amid a boom in women's sports. The league is launching new teams in San Francisco next year and in Toronto and Portland in 2026.

• "Philly is on the list" for a team in 2027 or 2028, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said recently. But it's competing with about a dozen "very viable" cities.

Context: Basketball is to Philly what nylon is to net — a hoops haven that birthed legends like the late Kobe Bryant and Dawn Staley. The Dobbins Tech standout laced it up for the Philadelphia Rage before getting drafted into the WNBA after the American Basketball League folded in 1998.

• Philly has been without a women's pro team ever since.

State of play: The prospect of a Philly WNBA team is back in the conversation thanks to the Sixers' $1.3 billion arena proposal, which cleared a major hurdle in City Council last week.

• Parker supports the project, and she's said that building a new arena could help Philly land a WNBA team.
• Parker forged deep connections with Sykes' group, which worked closely with the Sixers on an initial proposal to bring a team here, according to city correspondence obtained by Axios through an open records request.
• Parker and Sykes have maintained their relationship and were pictured together at an event this summer.

"I can hope. I can dream. I can pray," the mayor said at a community meeting not long after, touting the "dynamic group of women" involved in the effort.

The who's who

Most people know Sykes for her biting comedic riffs and TV hits.

• The Emmy-winning comic is also a trailblazing WNBA fan and an entrepreneur looking to grow her legacy.
• Sykes lives part-time in Media — when she wanted a WNBA team of her own, she looked a mere 20 miles east.

Sykes and her wife, Alex Niedbalski-Sykes, wanted to call the team the Philadelphia Sisters.

• They hoped to launch the inaugural season by 2023 or 2024, and started working their A-lister contacts to make it happen, city correspondence shows.

Behind the scenes: They courted Philly-born comedian Kevin Hart about becoming a minority stakeholder, per the documents. (Hart's publicist didn't respond to Axios' request for comment.)

• And Sykes asked other celebrities, pro basketball players, coaches, musicians and entrepreneurs — many of them with deep ties to Philly — about joining forces with the Sisters in other ways, including as brand ambassadors or team sponsors.

The list included:

• NBA star Kevin Durant, part owner of the Philadelphia Union
• Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, part owners of the 76ers
• Jameer Nelson, a former NBA player and St. Joe's standout
• Hall of Fame WNBA pioneer Sue Wicks
• Fran Dunphy, former Temple athletic director and legendary college basketball coach known as "Mr. Big 5"
• Tennis great Billie Jean King
• Philly musician Questlove

The Sisters plotted outreach to more "rainmakers," including former Sixers great Julius Erving, one of the group's representatives wrote in a planning document.

The intrigue: The Sixers were deeply involved in the pitch, per the records. Aligning with NBA teams has been a successful model for cities that have landed WNBA franchises, and Sykes' group understood that.

• The Sisters reached out directly or made contact through intermediaries with Sixers principal owners Josh Harris, David Blitzer and David Adelman.
• Adelman told Crossing Broad last year that he offered to "personally invest" in Sykes' group.
• "A few" other Sixers part owners were interested in becoming Sisters stakeholders, a Sykes group representative wrote in one email.

The Sixers' chief operating officer, Lara Price, sat on the Sisters advisory board, as did Staley (now South Carolina's women's basketball coach) and Vetri restaurateur Jeff Benjamin.

• The Sisters' motto was riffed from the Sixers' star center, Joel Embiid: "Trust the Progress."

The Sisters had identified Temple's Liacouras Center as their most likely playing venue. (This was all going down before the Sixers' new arena push was public.) They expected about 6,200 fans at each home game.

• They were committed to being "authentic to Philly" and empowering women, with plans to focus on issues of gender and racial equality, health, and social justice.

And they had the WNBA's attention. According to an email from June 2021, Sisters reps met with the league's leadership a half dozen times.

The hidden hand: Parker

Sykes' group also had a powerful ringer inside Philly's government — Parker, the council's majority leader at the time and a former state representative with ties to Pennsylvania's top pols.

Inside the room: Parker made introductions and brokered meetings for the Sisters, records show.

• She lined them up with then-council President Darrell Clarke and former commerce director Michael Rashid.
• And she helped organize a key meeting between Sykes' group, then-Mayor Jim Kenney, then-Gov. Tom Wolf, and U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, where the Sisters tried to convince the pols to help pitch the WNBA.
• This all came after Kenney rebuffed the Sisters' invitation in 2020 to co-chair their advisory board.

Former Gov. Tom Wolf told Axios the Sisters proved to him that their bid was "pretty well along." His office penned an endorsement letter.

• "I thought it was a great idea," Wolf said.

Zoom out: Parker also had her fingerprints on another idea the Sisters loved: Let fans buy ownership stakes in the team.

• Parker drew the concept from the Green Bay Packers, the only publicly owned major sports franchise in the U.S.
• "We plan to explore this option as we move forward," Niedbalski-Sykes wrote to Kenney in a 2021 letter marked "private and confidential."

In July 2022, Councilmember Isaiah Thomas penned a letter to WNBA commissioner Engelbert saying Philly was ripe for expansion.

• Philly's young women need to "see role models in their own backyard," he wrote. "We're ready."

Yes, but: The WNBA wasn't. In 2023, the league awarded its next expansion team to the Golden State Warriors.

• And the league has passed over Philly twice more since then.

What's next

The Sixers have said they'll bid on a WNBA team in the future.

That begs the question: Will Sykes' group be involved in a future WNBA bid? Neither Sykes nor the Sixers are saying.

• But there's one sign the Sisters are gearing up. Over the summer, a Pennsylvania LLC filed applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark "Philadelphia Sisters" and "Philly Sisters" for clothing, sneakers, aprons, bibs and more.

Wolf, who now lives in Philadelphia, said Philly has a "strong hand" to finally get a WNBA team with Parker in the mix.

What we're watching: Engelbert has said that the league will use the offseason to evaluate the cities vying for the next round of WNBA teams.

• They're looking at arenas and practice facilities, "player experience, committed long-term ownership group, demographics, psychographics, Fortune 500 companies based there."
• The WNBA declined to discuss Sykes' proposal with Axios.

The Sixers tell us they'll "advance the bid process in the coming months." The team won't say whether it'll involve Sykes' group.

Between the lines: Adelman, the Sixers owner, has told Crossing Broad that the league wants the management of a WNBA team to be "driven by an entrepreneur that's going to wake up every day only thinking about that business."

• That leaves the door open for a future partnership between Sykes and the Sixers, Crossing Broad editor Kevin Kinkead tells Axios.
• "The best situation is that a WNBA team plays on Market Street but that it's owned by someone else," he said.

The bottom line: Parker is committed, her spokesperson Joe Grace tells Axios, and she supports "Sykes and other women leaders in the community in their efforts to secure a franchise for Philadelphia."