Sheryl Swoopes, from left, Cynthia Cooper and Tina Thompson are the superstars most responsible for the Comets’ championship trophies.
Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle
Tina Thompson drives to the basket during WNBA action between the Comets and the Los Angeles Sparks in 2007 at Toyota Center.
Bob Levey/For The Chronicle
Paige Fertitta of Fertitta Entertainment jokes with former Houston Comets coach Van Chancellor after a press conference regarding the return of the WNBA’s Houston Comets.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Comets’ Sheryl Swoopes, right, drives during the WNBA championship at Compaq Center in 2000.
Christobal Perez/Houston Chronicle
Five years after the Rockets won consecutive NBA championships in 1994-95, the Houston Comets in 2000 doubled up that number in the first four years of the WNBA. Now the Comets are coming back.
Basketball superstar Tina Thompson reflected earlier this year on why fans felt so attached to the Women’s National Basketball Association.
“It’s been a league of the people,” Thompson said. “The stars of this league have always been in reach.”
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In this case, the stars were Comets, and the “W” added to “NBA” also could have stood for “Wins” for Houston’s WNBA franchise from 1997-2000.
“It’s a standard that has stood the test of time – the back-to-back-to-back-to-back championship culture of the Houston Comets,” said Chiney Ogwumike, a national basketball TV analyst and former WNBA star who was raised in Cypress and grew up watching the Rockets and Comets.
Despite winning the WNBA’s first four championships as the fledgling league’s initial dynasty, the Houston Comets organization disbanded in late 2008, two years after owner Les Alexander announced he intended to sell the franchise.
Iconic women’s coach Van Chancellor, the ideal fit for the program in its infancy, said he cried the day Alexander announced he intended to unload the team.
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“I don’t ever come to a Rockets game that I don’t look up at our banners,” Chancellor said in 2026 of the four regal championship cloths hanging to this day in Toyota Center. “That brings back so many great memories. … Every time I look at those banners, I think about something great that went on with our players, who are just great people.”
He’s not the only one. Fertitta Entertainment bought the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun in the spring of 2026 with the intention of moving the franchise to Houston in 2027 and renaming it … you guessed it.
“There is such history and nostalgia,” said Patrick Fertitta, a Rockets and Comets executive, of the iconic Comets name. “It wouldn’t feel right to have a different name or different brand than the Houston Comets playing in the WNBA in this town.”
While the Rockets had superstar center Hakeem Olajuwon, the Comets featured a superstar triumvirate: Thompson, Sheryl Swoopes and Cynthia Cooper, Houston’s version of the “Big Three.”
Despite their legendary status, the trio and their teammates always appreciated that fans helped make their prolonged basketball careers possible.
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“It was something we took great pride in as Houston Comets, that we were so in touch with the community and the people around us,” said Thompson, who in 1997 was the first draft selection in the history of the WNBA, as well as a two-time U.S. Olympic team gold medalist. “We actually had relationships with people in our fan base.”
Those bonds weren’t enough to save the franchise the first time around during an economic recession. Alexander sold the team to furniture store owner Hilton Koch, who failed to keep the franchise upright financially, and a new owner couldn’t be found in 2008.
Today the WNBA features 15 teams. The Comets were one of the first eight franchises in the WNBA. They won the WNBA’s inaugural single championship game in 1997 over the New York Liberty.
The following season the WNBA expanded to a best-of-three format in the title series, and the Comets won a championship in three games over the Phoenix Mercury. They followed with another three-game victory over the Liberty in 1999, and finally swept the Liberty in two games in 2000 for a fourth straight title.
“My star players made $50,000 a year,” Chancellor recalled, “and we flew commercial to play away games.”
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The Comets won all of their titles with The Summit on the Southwest Freeway as their home, which became Compaq Center from 1998-2003. (It’s now the home of evangelist Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church.)
Toyota Center in Downtown Houston, longtime home of the Rockets, opened in 2003, and will be home to the revived Comets.
“It’s a name the city of Houston still resonates with,” Thompson said of the Comets, adding that she expects plenty of vintage Comets jerseys and merchandise to resurface. “Comets fans have not gone away, they’ve just been sitting and waiting a really long time.”
While the University of Houston and Rice University have never won national titles in college women’s basketball, seasoned fans of the game in Houston recall a previous champion in pro hoops in the Houston Angels ,the first title winner of the long-gone Women’s Professional Basketball League.
In 1979, the Angels, behind former Rice men’s coach Don Knodel and star players Belinda Candler and Paula Mayo, won the inaugural championship of the WBL, the first women’s pro basketball league in the United States.
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The team played in the Astroarena, adjacent to the Astrodome, although they won the first title game in UH’s Hofheinz Pavilion. The Astroarena and The Summit already were booked for events in 1979. Alas, the high-flying Angels played only two seasons, as the WBL folded in 1980.
“It was a league ahead of its time,” said Angels assistant coach Greg Williams, in noting the later success of the WNBA. “No question about it.”
The Comets carried on the city’s tradition of winning in women’s pro basketball about 20 years later, and intend to create more memories for hoops fans moving forward.
“We can’t wait to see what this franchise does again,” said Comets superfan Ogwumike, “to continue writing more and more history in the legacy books.”
Danielle Lerner contributed to this story.