{"id":343634,"date":"2025-12-14T00:41:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343634\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T00:41:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:41:17","slug":"wnba-expansion-draft-expected-to-allow-teams-to-protect-five-players-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/343634\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA expansion draft expected to allow teams to protect five players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">There is no set date for the 2026 WNBA Expansion Draft when the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire start filling their rosters. Last year, teams were allowed to protect six players from the Golden State Valkyries. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/wnba\/story\/_\/id\/47272305\/wnba-expansion-draft-2026-portland-fire-toronto-tempo-predictions-protected-players-roster\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Kevin Pelton of ESPN;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">Kevin Pelton of ESPN<\/a> wrote earlier this week that WNBA teams are expected to protect only five players when the next expansion draft comes out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Many WNBA players are expected to change teams in free agency as salaries are likely to increase, possibly by multiple times. In effect, that means that the league is set for a major realignment where every team is theoretically rebuilding.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Earlier this month, we had a post on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bulletsforever.com\/mystics\/66552\/who-would-the-mystics-protect-in-the-2026-wnba-expansion-draft\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:which six players the Washington Mystics would protect;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link \">which six players the Washington Mystics would protect <\/a>in an expansion draft, assuming last year\u2019s rules. If only five players can be protected, who would Washington protect?<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Pelton predicts that Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen, Georgia Amoore, Shakira Austin and Jacy Sheldon would be protected given a five player limit. I agree with him on the first four players because Citron, Iriafen, Amoore and Austin represent the young core that Monumental Basketball President Michael Winger and Mystics General Manager Jamila Wideman are keen on developing. However, I\u2019m not convinced that Sheldon would be protected. Pelton noted that Emily Engstler could also be a protected player. I\u2019d still lean toward protecting Sug Sutton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Let us know your thoughts below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no set date for the 2026 WNBA Expansion Draft when the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,122617,75786,8996,1612,13053,74706,4654,104252,12197,4649,82,45963,737,630,111859],"class_list":["post-343634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-emily-engstler","tag-expansion-draft","tag-georgia-amoore","tag-golden-state-valkyries","tag-jacy-sheldon","tag-kevin-pelton","tag-kiki-iriafen","tag-portland-fire","tag-shakira-austin","tag-sonia-citron","tag-sports","tag-toronto-tempo","tag-washington-mystics","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-expansion-draft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}