Houston Comets Are History

HOUSTON, TEXAS (December 1, 2008) The WNBA is disbanding the Houston Comets, one of the league's original eight members, according to WNBA President Donna Orender.

"We are unfortunately at a place we hoped that we wouldn't have to be at, the Comets will cease operations in this coming week," Orender said.

Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander, the original owner of the franchise, sold the team to Houston businessman Hilton Koch in 2007. One year later the WNBA took over the team from Koch in an effort to find a new owner with hopes of bringing stability to the franchise and keeping it in Houston.

Orender, in fact, came to Houston in July and met with Houston Mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett to solicit their help in finding new ownership for the Comets.

The two men co-wrote a letter that was sent out to influential members of the Houston community with hopes of finding a potential buyer.

Sources close to the situation told FOX 26 the league was negotiating with an investor from San Antonio, who if successful in purchasing the franchise, would have kept the team in Houston. However, those talks came to an end last week and with it the future of the Comets.

"All of our energies were focused on finding a viable ownership group in the city of Houston," Orender said. "As such, going really to the wire with a group that expressed an interest and desire to keep it there, at some point you can't start in another city.

"We're really too late to be able to drive success in another market. We were really focused on driving success in the Houston market."

Orender did not rule out the WNBA returning to Houston at some point. She does say the league will absorb the Comets current roster of players."

"December 8 we will have a dispersal draft and the players who are available to be drafted will be drafted in an inverse order of finish by the current WNBA teams", Orender said. "So the Atlanta team will have the first available player or the player they so chose on December 8th."

The Comets dominated the WNBA during the league's first four years in existence winning four consecutive league championships. Former Comets star Cynthia Cooper, now head women's coach at Prairie View A & M, was the Most Valuable Player of the Finals in 1997 and 1998.

LSU head coach Van Chancellor, was head coach of the Comets for the first ten years and has since been named to the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.