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Part of the WNBA's journey has been the evolution of its owners. The latest example coming, officially, on Wednesday as the league announced its new franchise in Atlanta.

J. Ronald Terwilliger will be owner and operator, making for the sixth franchise in the league that has ownership separate from an NBA franchise. The first was Connecticut, and since then non-NBA owners have taken over in Washington, Los Angeles, Houston and expansion Chicago.

Of course, both ownership models are viable and needed. The WNBA obviously is still under the umbrella of the NBA. The teams that just competed in the WNBA Finals last month, Phoenix and Detroit, are owned by NBA teams and seem to have solid support from management.

But the so-called "independent" model has been an important step for the league in the last few years.

From the start in 1997, the WNBA provided NBA owners with another tenant for arenas and another tool for marketing the "bigger" product: the NBA. There's nothing wrong with that -- provided the people working directly with the WNBA team are really committed to the women's side and not just passing time when it's not NBA season.

But some initial NBA owners didn't have their hearts even halfway into the WNBA. It wasn't that the women's league was tragically draining them financially. A single miscalculation in evaluating personnel in the NBA -- handing out a contract that doesn't pay off with results -- can be and has been more costly to NBA owners than their entire investment in a WNBA franchise.

What caused NBA owners to drop their WNBA affiliation was more about indifference. Sometimes it was extreme indifference, sometimes more benign indifference. But in both cases, what the owners got out of the WNBA simply wasn't enough to make them want to commit time, financial resources and their business acumen.

If there's one thing the WNBA must have on some level in management, it's that people in charge care enough to make it work. The WNBA is not a league owners get involved with because they want to accumulate a great deal more wealth, or because they want to show up on television a lot, or be written about in the tabloids.

For the independent WNBA owner, there needs to be at least some belief in the value of women's athletics that goes beyond strictly monetary measurements. I'm not talking about something hokey here, or something that has been just a little too slickly packaged as an advertisement.

It's something real. Part of it is the idea that women's basketball on the pro and college levels still has a level of competitive purity and good citizenship that we've too often almost given up on in many other sports.

Fans expect that women's college hoops players really are going to class, really do their own work and really will graduate. And that, subsequently, pro players are going to be the finished product of that growth they achieved -- both athletic and personal -- in college. (Or that they conduct themselves that way even if they didn't go to college.)

The other part is that women athletes are inspirational symbols of what women can achieve in any endeavor. And that understanding/appreciating that is a healthy thing for both girls and boys, men and women.

For owners such as Los Angeles' Kathy Goodman and Carla Christofferson, who purchased the Sparks last year, there was all of the above -- plus the fact that they were flat-out huge fans of women's basketball.

In the case of Terwilliger, it's a different story. He doesn't come in with the same background of "fan" as Goodman and Christofferson. But he seems to believe in the values of the league and -- what was probably more important in getting this deal done -- he is committed to the Atlanta community. As a former owner of an indoor soccer team, he wanted to be involved in a sports franchise.

In a teleconference Wednesday, Terwilliger talked about having spent most of the past three decades in Atlanta and referenced something he once read in a book: that the first half of your life is for "success" and the second half for "significance."

These can go hand-in-hand, of course, through your whole life to some extent, certainly. But his point is that his accomplishments as a businessman have put him in position to make decisions that are for "community" good as well as his own gain.

Community leaders such as Lisa Borders, president of the Atlanta City Council, have been working for a while with the WNBA to bring a team to the city. But someone had to step forward with the money, and Terwilliger did.

His profile in many ways is classic American success story: a Naval Academy grad who spent five years in the military, then went to Harvard's School of Business. For the last 21 years, he has been chairman and CEO of Trammell Crow Residential. He was formerly chairman of the Urban Land Institute and is currently chairman of the International Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity.

Don't get me wrong: Terwilliger, like all the independent owners, wants this WNBA franchise to make money. These are business people, after all. It's not a charity endeavor. But, again, there has to be enough belief in the value of the product to think that it really can be profitable and is worth their time.

Terwilliger's involvement is a positive thing for the league, which is, admittedly, going out on a limb again with expansion.

Chicago is still trying to prove it will work as an expansion city. Will Atlanta be a similar story? Will the team -- which will get its name, logo and colors at a later date -- make a dent in the sports scene in that city?

Atlanta is in the heart of SEC country and home to an ACC school in Georgia Tech. The SEC has been the pre-eminent conference for collegiate women's basketball in terms of postseason accomplishment, and the ACC certainly has had its share of postseason success in the sport in recent years. But neither conference leads the way nationally in terms of women's basketball attendance.

After Charlotte folded last year, the WNBA needed, I think, to again get back to an even number of teams. The options were either to cut another franchise or expand. With an owner in place in Atlanta, one with considerable business background and financial stability, the league opted for that route. Whether Atlanta is really the "right" place remains to be seen.

Now, it would probably be best for the WNBA to focus on these 14 teams and not entertain thoughts of further expansion for a while.

It's important to note that there's still a lot of "business" to be decided for the WNBA before next season. A heck of a lot. The collective bargaining agreement must be signed by the league and the players' union, and there is no tangible progress report on that right now.

Asked about committing to the franchise before the CBA was signed, Terwilliger expressed belief that it would be worked out to everyone's satisfaction.

As with the other qualities, optimism is an essential element of the independent WNBA owners, too.

Mechelle Voepel of The Kansas City Star is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. She can be reached at mvoepel123@yahoo.com.