Cynthia Cooper gets emotional about the Houston Comets' return, recalling her bond with fans and looking ahead to a new era of WNBA basketball in Houston starting in 2027.
Cynthia Cooper was standing at the free-throw line when it hit her. The crowd inside Toyota Center had started chanting her name. Then came the MVP chants. Then came the tears.
That memory, from the Houston Comets' dynasty years in the late 1990s, came rushing back Tuesday night when Cooper returned to the same building alongside fellow Comets legends Tina Thompson and Sheryl Swoopes. The occasion felt fitting: the Comets are coming back.
The Mohegan Tribe announced Monday that it has reached an agreement with the family of Tilman J. Fertitta, owner of the NBA's Houston Rockets, to purchase the Connecticut Sun. The Sun will relocate to Houston for the 2027 season and be rebranded as the Comets, pending WNBA approval. ESPN reported the sale price at $300 million, the most expensive in WNBA history.
"My family and I are thrilled for the opportunity to bring the Houston Comets back to this incredible city," Rockets alternate governor Patrick Fertitta said in a statement Monday. "Houston has a proud championship history in the WNBA, with banners from the Comets' four historic championship seasons still hanging in the rafters of Toyota Center."
Cooper, a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer who was the defining player of those championship teams, said the three legends got on a call together the moment the news broke.
"Tina and Cheryl and I, we got on a call," Cooper said Tuesday. "It was just -- we were all excited. I just remember standing at the free-throw line and the crowd started chanting MVP, and I started crying. That's how connected we were to our family."
Cooper also looked ahead to what Houston fans can expect once the Comets are back on the floor, rattling off a list of names that underscores just how much the WNBA landscape has changed since the original run.
"They'll get a chance to see some of the great stars coming here to play -- Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, A'ja Wilson, Sabrina Ionescu, and Breanna Stewart," Cooper said. "They'll all come here, and the fans of Houston will get a chance to see that type of talent every single year now."
The original Comets won the WNBA Finals in each of the league's first four seasons, from 1997 through 2000. Cooper and Swoopes were the cornerstones of those teams, giving Houston a pair of transcendent stars that the league has rarely seen on the same roster since. The franchise played 12 seasons before the WNBA dissolved the team in 2008 after ownership couldn't find a buyer at a $10 million asking price, sending its players to other clubs in a dispersal draft.
The Connecticut Sun, which will spend one final season in Connecticut in 2026 before the relocation, played four seasons in Orlando as the Miracle before moving to the state in 2003.
"The Connecticut Sun organization understands how emotional this moment is for our fans and community," Sun president Jen Rizzotti said Monday. "You have made a home for this franchise for generations, and we are grateful for the passion and support that made us a cornerstone team in the WNBA."
The Comets will play at Toyota Center alongside the Rockets when the 2027 WNBA season tips off, reuniting a franchise with a city that never quite forgot what it had.
Seeing Cooper, Thompson, and Swoopes together in that building Tuesday night made that clear.