It’s about time.
On Wednesday, the WNBA finally provided details and a timeline for the first major offseason event: the Portland and Toronto expansion draft.
The league will flip a coin Friday to determine Portland and Toronto’s order for the expansion and college drafts next month.
The winner will choose whether the team wants to go first in the expansion draft, scheduled for the afternoon of April 3, or take the No. 6 overall pick in the 2026 draft.
The expansion draft will be a “snake” draft, where the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo will take turns through two rounds picking unprotected players from the league’s other 13 teams.
Prior to the expansion draft, which will notably happen only hours before the Women’s Final Four begins, each of the 13 existing teams must submit a list of its five “protected” players who will be off-limits to the Fire and Tempo. Any unprotected players will be eligible for selection in the expansion draft.
The Fire and Tempo will acquire the rights to each player depending on their current status with their teams.
For example, Liberty players Rebekah Gardner and Marine Johannès are reserved free agents. If either were left exposed and then picked in the expansion draft, the selecting team would have exclusive negotiation rights with them because they are reserved free agents.
Rebekah Gardner, who is now a reserved free agent, listens to instructions former Liberty coach Sandy Brondello during a game last season. Michelle Farsi / New York Post
The Fire and Tempo are each allowed to pick only one pending unrestricted free agent, even if the player can no longer be designated as a core player.
The selecting team that acquires the unrestricted free agent will be the only team that can negotiate a supermax contract with them, which differs from last year’s Valkyries expansion draft.
That means the Liberty will need to protect Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones, despite each having already been designated core players twice, the maximum number allowed.
As for the college draft, scheduled for April 13, the Fire and Tempo will alternate picks, so whoever picks sixth in the first round would pick seventh in the second and sixth in the third.
The team with the seventh overall pick would get the sixth pick in the second round and the seventh in the third.