Drake wants a WNBA team in Toronto

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Could Toronto soon be home to two professional basketball teams? Drake certainly hopes so.

The rapper and global ambassador for the Raptors took to Instagram to request a WNBA expansion team in his home city.

“@WNBA I need a Toronto team,” he wrote on his Instagram Story.

Earlier this summer, Drake was seen in studio sporting an orange hoodie with the WNBA logo of a woman dunking mid-air.

According to Sports Illustrated, WNBA viewership hit record numbers last season. Viewership was up 325% during the league’s opening weekend from 2020.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert recently revealed that the league is looking to expand beyond its current 12-team lineup.

“I suspect by next summer or this time next year, in our 26th season, we’ll be talking about the number of teams and a list of where,” Engelbert told ESPN’s Tisha Thompson and Mechelle Voepel.

“Expansion is on the horizon,” Engelbert she added.

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Last month, Canadian-born Minnesota Lynx star Bridget Carleton tweeted that she is “manifesting a Canadian women’s professional basketball league in the near future.”

Writing in The Undefeated, Sean Hurd said that Drake’s support of an WNBA team could help launch a club in Toronto.

“The thought of having to deal with Drake’s antics all summer besides the NBA season (back-to-back, if you will) is an idea many may not embrace, but hear me out. We saw what the Raptors’ 2019 run did not just for Toronto but for the entire country of Canada.”

On social media, many people floated the idea of Drake using some of his wealth to join an ownership bid to bring a team to Toronto. After all, according to Forbes, in 2019, Drake had a net worth of $150 million.

mdaniell@postmedia.com