Mercury aids youth basketball as part of WNBA All-Star Game initiatives

From the ground up, the Phoenix Mercury wants to grow women’s basketball. That includes investing in the youth game. 

On Monday, the Mercury hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil four renovated recreational basketball courts at the Rose Mofford Sports Complex as part of the team’s 2024 WNBA All-Star community initiatives. 

“We’re just about 10 days away from all the festivities surrounding the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game right here in Phoenix,” Phoenix Mercury and Suns Chief Financial Officer Jim Pitman said. “When we first announced that Phoenix would host the WNBA All-Star weekend, we also announced several community initiatives to ensure that hosting the All-Star weekend would leave a lasting way to give back to our community. Our goal with these projects was to empower women, youth, and our community through basketball.” 

The refurbished outdoor courts feature an on-court mural from local artist Antoinette Cauley with the likes of Mercury stars Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner. To celebrate the grand opening, kids from various youth leagues, including the Jr. Mercury Legacy League, were invited to be the first to play,

Since winning the bid to host the upcoming game on July 20, Pitman and the Mercury have dedicated time to building youth basketball on several levels. The former general manager of the Mercury has long devoted time to starting an all-girls basketball league and saw his dreams come to fruition last year. 

“That’s a real treasure for me,” Pitman said. “We’ve been trying to for years to get an all-girls league and to have it actually happen and start with 80 girls in the winter, 240 girls in the spring, and now 400 in the summer when people don’t really play a lot of basketball. We’re seeing this incredible growth in women’s sports and girls playing basketball. It’s really important for us to make sure we’re giving girls an opportunity to play and play in a space where they feel they can be the best they can be.”  

The All-Star Game will be a major event for the Mercury as the game has been sold out for a month. The star-studded event will feature the U.S. Olympic team against the remaining best players in the WNBA, including rookies Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.  

This season's star power shows that the Mercury's front office was ahead of the curve last summer in securing what is now one of the biggest All-Star games in league history. 

“It’s a point in time in women’s sports where it has just literally exploded. We’re seeing it throughout the league and obviously, Caitlin Clark has had a huge impact on that and Angel Reese,” Pitman said. “We’ve seen it over the last few years growing at the NCAA level and now we’re experiencing it at the WNBA level, so I’m really excited about what’s happening in women’s sports and the WNBA in particular. We have expansion happening and the league has never been stronger.”