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Ackerman was joined on the dais by Lieutenant Governor Jodi Rell, Brown, other representatives of the tribal commission and WNBA stars Swin Cash, Tamika Williams, Kara Wolters, Sue Bird, Teresa Weatherspoon, Rebecca Lobo and Nykesha Sales.
Sales is the only former University of Connecticut player on the current Sun roster. There are 10 other ex-Huskies in the league: Cash, Williams, Bird, Lobo, Wolters, Ashja Jones, Jen Rizzotti, Rita Williams, Svetlana Abrosimova and Kelly Schumacher.
"In my six-plus years as president of the WNBA, I’ve been asked one question over and over and over, and that question has been ‘When will there be a team in Connecticut,’" Ackerman said. "The answer is, ‘We have one.’
"It’s been a good question and the right question because fans in this state really seem to have a passion for women’s basketball that is unmatched in any other part of the country."
Brown said the tribe was driven to bring a WNBA team to the state.
"When we built the arena, we recognized that one of the important factors in the state is women’s basketball," Brown said. "When we built the arena, we built it with that in mind."
Sales is happy to return home. She played four years at Bloomfield High before becoming UConn’s all-time leading scorer.
"When the Orlando franchise decided to move and there was buzz about being back in Connecticut, I started clicking my heels together and saying, ‘There’s no place like home’ because I desperately wanted to be back here," Sales said.
Ackerman dispelled any thoughts about women’s professional basketball in the same building with casino gambling being a bad mix.
"It doesn’t present a problem for us," she said. "The Mohegan Sun casino doesn’t accept any form of sports wagering. There’s no sports book whatsoever and there will not be. What we felt we had here was an extraordinary package of amenities."
Mitchell Etess, executive vice president of marketing for the Mohegan Sun, said, "This is not just a gaming destination, it’s an entertainment destination and that’s the real focal point."
The tribe has not yet finalized any plans to play any games at the Hartford Civic Center, but Etess said the idea will be addressed when the WNBA schedule comes out.
"We have talked about playing at least one regular-season game there and a preseason game there," Etess said. "The scheduling may be an issue with getting a preseason game there but our original intention was one and one."
Ackerman said the league is open to games in Hartford to stress that the team is a regional entity. Etess said there haven’t been any steps made toward playing games at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport.
Chris Sienko, the tribe’s director of sports and entertainment, will run the club on a day-to-day basis. Sienko was a general manager for the New England Blizzard, who played before large crowds before the demise of the ABL.
Ackerman said the league spoke to other Hartford-based groups interested in buying the team, "but the level of support we required never materialized. The Mohegan Sun group was the group that stepped up and told us how much we were wanted."
The other members of the team in addition to Sales are: Davalyn Cunningham, Cintia dos Santos, Katie Douglas, Jessie Hicks, Adrienne Johnson, Shannon Johnson, Clarisse Machanguana, Tiffany McCain, Carla McGee, Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Wendy Palmer and Brooke Wyckoff.
Ackerman said the league had no intention of instituting a territorial procedure that would help the Sun procure UConn players.
"We don’t have (territorial drafts) in the WNBA," she said. "When we started the league, we did a little engineering to get selected players into selected markets to help get things off the ground but we haven’t intervened in that way in several years. The only mechanism for players to get processed into our league is through our draft in April after the college season ends."
Ken Lipshez can be reached at Klipshez@newbritainherald.com or by calling (860) 225-4601, ext. 222.
