Ten of 15 WNBA teams have extended core qualifying offers to players since free agency started Monday.<\/p>\n
Players who have been “cored” — akin to being given the NFL’s franchise tag — include Sabrina Ionescu, by the New York Liberty; Napheesa Collier\u00a0(Minnesota Lynx); Kelsey Mitchell\u00a0(Indiana Fever); Kelsey Plum, (Los Angeles Sparks); and Arike Ogunbowale\u00a0(Dallas Wings).<\/p>\n
The core designation gives a team exclusive negotiating rights to a player and comes with a baseline contract of a fully guaranteed one-year deal worth the supermax ($1.4 million in 2026), though the player can negotiate different terms.<\/p>\n
The core designation can also be a way for a team to prevent a player from walking in free agency without getting anything in return as it ultimately executes a sign-and-trade with the star.<\/p>\n
Other players who were cored by teams this week include Allisha Gray (Atlanta Dream), Ariel Atkins (Chicago Sky) and Ezi Magbegor (Seattle Storm).<\/p>\n
The unrestricted free agents the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo selected in last week’s expansion draft were also given core qualifying offers: Bridget Carleton, whom Portland chose\u00a0from Minnesota; and Marina Mabrey, whom Toronto chose from the Connecticut Sun.<\/p>\n
Teams were also able to send out reserved and restricted qualifying offers to players during this designation period, which began Monday.<\/p>\n
Negotiations will run Wednesday through Friday, while signings can start Saturday. Training camp is scheduled to begin April 19 and the first preseason games are set for April 25.<\/p>\n
Free agency and other offseason activity were delayed this year as the league and players union negotiated a new CBA, which was agreed upon and ratified by both sides in late March. The long-form contract is still being executed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ten of 15 WNBA teams have extended core qualifying offers to players since free agency started Monday. Players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":589524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82627,75878,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-589523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-minnesota-lynx-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-156","11":"tag-new-york-liberty-sports-basketball-team-team-statscom-150","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589523","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=589523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/589524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}