The Sixers and Mayor Cherelle Parker say they want to bring a WNBA team to Philadelphia

It was one line buried on page 66 of an 80-page PowerPoint presentation that city officials unveiled at a news conference Wednesday night about the 76ers’ arena proposal.

But for local women’s basketball fans, it was one of the most significant turns of phrase they’d seen in some time.

The Sixers, that presentation said, “expect to submit a bid for a WNBA team in Philadelphia.”

The presentation didn’t say when such a submission will happen. Nor has anyone said why bringing a WNBA team here would be conditioned on the new arena being built, instead of wanting to bring one here for its own sake.

Still, that one line came in a deck that had Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s name and face on its first page, and on Thursday morning, the Sixers confirmed their interest in bringing a team here.

“We share in Mayor Parker’s desire to bring a WNBA franchise to Philadelphia and have been engaged with the league on the process,” a team spokesperson told The Inquirer. “Our goal is for our new arena to serve as home to both the 76ers and a WNBA franchise.”

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On Wednesday night, Parker said at the news conference: “I know you notice we don’t have a WNBA team here in the city of Philadelphia. Any of y’all ever noticed that? Y’all know y’all’s mayor don’t like that.”

Nor did she like it when she was City Council’s majority leader from 2020-22. During her tenure, she met with “a dynamic group of women who had been working for a very, very long time to put together the potential for Philadelphia to see a team one day.”

Parker didn’t say who those women were, nor did she put an exact date on the meeting, beyond saying it was “in the middle of COVID.” But a separate source confirmed that the group included actor and comedian Wanda Sykes, who was part of a Philadelphia WNBA bid that came together around that time.

Sykes calls the Philadelphia area home and is an avid women’s basketball fan. The Athletic reported in June 2022 that she was “a part of a group with interest in bringing an expansion team to Philadelphia,” and other sources have since confirmed that. In June of last year, Sixers part-owner David Adelman told CrossingBroad.com that he had met with Sykes, but it’s not known where those talks ended up.

After Parker met with the bid group, she went to then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, Mayor Jim Kenney, and City Council president Darrell L. Clarke and got them to put their support behind that effort.

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This past April, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert — coincidentally a Collingswood native — said at the league’s draft that “we continue to engage with cities like Philadelphia” and many others she named.

There was a bid in the works at that time, but the people involved repeatedly refused invitations from The Inquirer and other outlets to state publicly who was involved with it.

It’s unclear whether that bid effort is still alive or related to a potential Sixers bid. Meanwhile, the league has awarded three expansion teams recently, to San Francisco (2025), Toronto (2026), and Portland, Ore. (2026).

For now, there’s just a lot of hoping in town, including from Parker. But there’s also that one line in the presentation, even though “expects to” is the key phrase. That’s still not the same as it officially happening.

“I will tell you that with this new Sixers arena there, there is no one who can tell me that Philadelphia just would not have upped its position in trying and trying to pursue a WNBA team for our great city,” Parker said Wednesday. “I can hope. I can dream. I can pray.”

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