The Toronto Tempo will have the sixth pick in the WNBA first-year player draft on April 13, choosing that option over having the top choice in the league’s expansion draft on April 3.
That means the Portland Fire will have the first choice in the expansion draft and the seventh pick in the WNBA draft.
The Tempo won the right to choose which option it wanted Friday, when a silver dollar was flipped on a Zoom call and came up Toronto’s way.
WNBA teams have until Sunday to inform the league of the five players they’ll be protecting ahead of the expansion draft. That draft will have two rounds, with up to six picks for each team in each round. The teams will alternate picks, with the team that picks second in the first round going first in the next round.
The new teams will pick among players left unprotected by their current WNBA teams. A current franchise can lose up to two players through the expansion draft. If a player is taken in the first round, a second player from that same franchise can’t be taken until the second round.
Teams can protect players they had rights to on the final day of the 2025 regular season.
Any player who has five or more years of WNBA service after the 2025 season must be put on the roster list as an unrestricted free agent or included on the unprotected list. Only two veteran players — Kalani Brown of the Phoenix Mercury and Lexie Brown of the Seattle Storm — had contracts that didn’t expire last season before the league collective bargaining agreement expired.
Portland and Toronto each may only select one player who is a potential unrestricted free agent. The Fire and the Tempo would then be allowed to negotiate a supermax contract with those players, which could be worth up to $1.4 million annually under the new CBA ratified earlier this week by players and league ownership.
It’s the second consecutive year the WNBA has held an expansion draft — the Golden State Valkyries entered the league last year and became the first expansion team to make the playoffs in its inaugural campaign — with the addition of Portland and Toronto pushing the league to 15 teams ahead of what will be its 30th season.
The two teams will alternate which one picks sixth and seventh in the second and third rounds of the WNBA draft. So Portland will go sixth in the second round and seventh in the third round. Toronto gets the seventh pick in the second round and the sixth pick in the third round.
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