With the 2022 rendition of the NBA All-Star Game and All-Star Weekend upon us, it means, once again, of one of basketball’s signature events. Football may have ruled the roost last week, but this weekend, the focus will be on one basketball court.
And that basketball court is located at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio – home of the Cavaliers. But while those Cavs, who have surprised many a basketball fan with how won games this season, may call Cleveland home, it is not the only occasion where The Land could call itself the home city to a professional sports franchise.
When the WNBA first debuted in 1997, it launched with eight teams. Three of those teams – the New York Liberty, Los Angeles Sparks and Phoenix Mercury are still with us today. Another one of those teams it launched with were the Cleveland Rockers, named after the Cleveland-based Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And they played at the same current Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse that now houses the Cavs to this day.
In the Rockers’ short-lived heyday, though, the building was called Gund Arena.
The Rockers’ short-lived tenure as a WNBA team could be seen as a case of close but no cigar – or, in this case, close but no guitar pick. Cleveland would have a number of winning season with the Rockers and they qualified for the playoffs on plenty of occasions, but never reached the WNBA Finals.
Dan Hughes used to be a coach of the Rockers – the same Dan Hughes that later went on to WNBA coaching success in the latter portion of his career with the Seattle Storm. Lynette Woodard is currently representing the Rockers in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. She not only is a pride of basketball within the state of Kansas, but was the first woman participant of the Harlem Globetrotters. She currently is the women’s basketball coach at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Isabelle Fijalkowski is another one of the Rockers’ notable players. She was eventually inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame. She averaged 11.9 points and 5.6 rebounds in her first season in Cleveland. In the 1998 campaign, she posted nearly 14 points per game (13.7 to be exact) along with 6.9 rebounds. They also had a roster that included another former Storm coach in Jenny Boucek. Another ex-Rocker? Chasity Melvin. They also had someone by the name of Cheryl Reeve on its coaching staff at one point.
The Rockers seem to be a story of a team that actually encountered some modicum of on-court success, but simply did not garner plenty of interest from local investors to ensure its long-term future. This noteworthy fact about Cleveland and the Rockers is even more glaring when considering the season that the franchise folded – 2003.
The same year the Rockers folded was also the same year that a young, highly touted basketball phenom out of Akron would burst onto the scene and take the basketball world by storm.
That name, of course, was LeBron James. All of a sudden, basketball in northeast Ohio had a face it could attach itself to – and that face was one of its own instead of being imported from another city or another country. And while he did leave Cleveland for a few seasons to win a pair of championships with the Miami Heat, he did, of course, deliver on his promise to win a championship for “Believeland.”
No. 23, of course, is also responsible for making both the Cavaliers and the city of Cleveland a lot of money with how interest in basketball peaked during his Cavs days. If a local owner was willing to give the Rockers a chance at the same time LeBron James put the Cavs on the map, who knows what that could have meant for the Rockers’ fortunes.
At one point, links that had the Cleveland Rockers domain used to direct to the WNBA’s official website. It was common at one point to see stories linking to the W’s page with the Rockers’ domain. This may no longer be the case currently, but it was positive to see the league at least acknowledge the currently non-existent team – at least digitally. If one were to type in Houston Comets dot com, it does still redirect to a “Page Not Found” message at the WNBA website.
Also, the Rockers name was once suggested as a new possible name for Cleveland’s MLB franchise who rebranded from its previous insignia to becoming the Cleveland Guardians.
As is the case with every NBA All-Star weekend, there will be a noteworthy WNBA presence – including Dearica Hamby participating in the All-Star Celebrity Game and a Women In Basketball panel that will include Ari Chambers, Khristina Williams, Angela Gray, Greydy Diaz and the Liberty’s Betnijah Laney.
When thinking about cities where the WNBA may want to place new teams, Cleveland is not as mentioned as much as other cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, Houston and Charlotte. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert, though, was asked about the WNBA and Cleveland in her recent media availability session where she hyped up the W’s new $75 million capital gains haul.
Could Cleveland be the site of a future WNBA franchise? It goes without saying how much of a WNBA fan and backer LeBron James is. If he sees sports team ownership in his future after he retires, would he put some of that money he has amassed over the years in bringing professional women’s basketball back to The Land?
Only time will tell – and in all honesty, a city like Cleveland may not necessarily have first dibs on a WNBA expansion franchise the way a market such as Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, Houston or Charlotte may.
While Cleveland becomes the epicenter of the basketball universe this upcoming weekend, hopefully those heading to northeast Ohio take time to remember that professional women’s basketball did once call the city home – and it was not as if the product on the court was bad as may have been the case with other franchises that were here today and gone tomorrow.
Hopefully one day the WNBA will give Cleveland another try – and the franchise would start where it left off and continue to build toward the long-term success the initial iteration of the Rockers appeared to be building towards.
It would be one noteworthy “tour” if it did.
