PHILADELPHIA – Natasha Cloud rooted for the 76ers as a kid growing up in suburban Philadelphia and — like so many hoopsters back in the day — idolized Allen Iverson.
So when the former WNBA champion and current New York Liberty standout hit the same court where Iverson once dazzled, Cloud couldn't help but look up to his retired No. 3 jersey in the rafters and let the moment truly sink in; that women's professional basketball was back in Philadelphia for the first time in nearly 30 years — and she was a key figure in the comeback.
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“Man, like how crazy it is that I'm standing here about to play for the first time professionally in my home city,” Cloud said.
Cloud plays for Phantom BC, one of the teams in the burgeoning 3-on-3 women’s professional basketball league, Unrivaled. Unrivaled hit the road for the first time in its brief history, breaking free of its Florida bubble to expand its reach and stage two games on Friday night in Philadelphia.
The Phantom play the Breeze in the first game and Philly native Kahleah Copper leads league champion Rose against the Lunar Owls in the second game in front of a sold-out crowd of an expected 20,000 fans.
Copper, the 2021 WNBA NBA Finals MVP for the Chicago Sky, played her role as both tour guide — she took her teammates to Dalessandro's Steaks — and promoter — she needed 64 tickets to the event — to perfection.
“I think the city is ready for women's professional sports,” Copper said. “I'm excited that, one, that it's here, and two, that I'm a part of it.”
Philly's rich basketball history is largely comprised of household name Hall of Famers and All-Stars out of the men's game. Wilt Chamberlain and Kobe Bryant played high school basketball in the area. Sixers stars from Iverson to Julius Erving to Joel Embiid have brought fans to their feet for decades.
Yet no women's pro game has been played in the city since 1998 when the Philadelphia Rage played for the now-defunct American Basketball League. Philly native Dawn Staley has carried the banner for women's basketball out of the city — her hometown street was named in her honor in 2017 — but the college teams have largely been immaterial on the national scene.
Unrivaled's debut is the expected first step toward Philly basketball breaking into the conversation as a women's hotbed of hoops. There are pep rallies and watch parties planned for Friday night and a pair of lower bowl tickets on the secondary markets matched the price and high demand of recent Sixers' games.
Philadelphia is planning on a new arena that will be completed hopefully by 2030 and will serve as the new home for the WNBA team set to join the league.
For all the hype in the city — Cloud gave a shoutout to a credentialed media member wearing a Philly Loves Women's Sports sweatshirt — Unrivaled's doubleheader also comes at a pivotal moment for a league experiencing growing pains in televised viewership in its second season.
The eight-team league is averaging 92,000 viewers on TNT and truTV, down 49% from last year through the comparable number of games (183,000 through 26 games). Unrivaled telecasts on TNT in primetime are averaging 68% fewer viewers than primetime programming on TNT the four weeks prior to Unrivaled starting (93,000 viewers vs. 291,000).
While ratings matter, Cloud focused more on the packed house later that night as proof of “how hot, booming, (in)-demand, that women's sports, women's basketball in general is, right now.”
Co-founded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, Unrivaled's first tour stop in Philadelphia could represent a proving ground on whether taking the product on the road can lead to new revenue and expand the league’s fan base, while recalibrating a business model that was originally rooted in centralization.
“I would love to see Unrivaled tour more often,” said Breeze forward Cameron Brink. “We saw that this is a city that wants to cheer on women’s basketball.”
Brink flashed a TikTok-worthy moment when she dunked at practice Thursday for the first time since the WNBA Los Angeles Sparks star suffered a torn ACL in her left knee in June.
Breeze and former UConn star Paige Bueckers — the 2021 AP Player of the Year — are just two of the players responsible for packing the place on Friday night. Unrivaled players participated in community events and connected with fans — especially young girls — that opened their eyes to how starved the Philly sports scene is for professional women's basketball.
“To see the turnout, to see the sold-out arena, to just see the love that they have for women’s sports, it means a lot for the future too in terms of getting a WNBA team,” Bueckers said. “It’s really cool just for the game to continue to expand and for us to see that turnaround and for us to see that support everywhere we go.”
Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell did not specifically take questions Friday but popped into the press room for a brief rah-rah speech and suggested more touring dates could be ahead.
“We're going to continue to make the sports world proud by the product we put out,” Bazell said.
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