Clay says expansion makes economic sense right now, but warns that Atlanta will suck. And next year, it will. (The year after that, if they make the right trades, who knows?)

David Siegel is angry. He doesn't like expansion in a contract year (and an Olympic year), and he thinks that if expansion was coming, Dave King's Colorado franchise should have received the league's green light instead: after all, King has already run a successful team (the WNBL's Colorado Chill).

But King-- whom I hope runs a team sooner or later-- doesn't appear to be rich enough to sustain the likely near-term losses on his own: he needed to line up other investors, and so far he hasn't found enough.

It's not that the league is greedy; rather, it's that franchises should go only to people who can truly afford them. The worst thing you can do to a sports league is to bring in owners who have trouble making payroll. That's what killed the WBL.

It's all very well to talk about which teams will draw, what looks good in the stands, and how-- in the long term-- the WNBA can make money. But the WNBA, this year and over the next several years, is going to depend on people with very deep pockets who want to own and operate women's basketball teams because they care for the sport, not because they expect to turn a profit. Some of those people also own NBA teams (and any owners who can afford to run an NBA team can afford WNBA-level losses forever); some of them don't.

Michael Alter appears to be a good owner, not because Chicago draws well-- it doesn't-- but because he wants to be an owner, cares for the league and its players, and can afford it. Ditto for Sheila Johnson. Terwilliger appears to be much like Alter. If he's willing to stay in the league for the long term, makes wise front-office hires, and does what he can to promote the Atlanta Whatevers, then the league will have made the right choice this month, even if the Atlanta team begins with an empty arena and 800 fans.