Golden State selected Julie Vanloo<\/a>, who was Washington\u2019s starting point guard in 2024 but was a 31-year-old Belgian veteran who didn\u2019t figure to be part of the Mystics\u2019 future after then-General Manager Mike Thibault and then-Head Coach Eric Thibault were let go.<\/p>\nNow, let\u2019s take a look at the Mystics\u2019 current roster and their status heading into the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
Mystics 2025 roster by 2026 status<\/p>\n
Unrestricted Free Agents (player can sign with any team): Alysha Clark, Stefanie Dolson, Jade Melbourne<\/p>\n
Restricted Free Agents (player can negotiate and sign an offer sheet with any team but the Mystics can match): Sug Sutton, Shakira Austin<\/p>\n
Reserved ( contract ended BUT she can only negotiate her next contract with the 2025 team: Emily Engstler, Madison Scott<\/p>\n
On contract for 2026 season: Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen, Georgia Amoore, Jacy Sheldon, Lucy Olsen<\/p>\n
Players the Mystics hold draft rights to, though they never signed: Nastja Claessens, Txell Alarcon<\/p>\n
Okay, so which players would the Mystics be most likely to protect?<\/p>\n
The rules aren\u2019t out yet, but for the purposes of this exercise, we will assume that Washington gets to protect six players from their last-day-of-the-2025 season roster and their unsigned draft picks. Here are the players whom I think make sense for Washington to keep based on each category.<\/p>\n
Unrestricted Free Agents: Melbourne seems to be the best candidate to be protected. This is because I don\u2019t see the Mystics feeling desperate to keep Clark or Dolson. That\u2019s one.<\/p>\n
Restricted Free Agents: Both Sutton and Austin are likely to be protected That\u2019s two more protected players so we are up to three.<\/p>\n
Reserved: None. While I like Engstler, I also don\u2019t necessarily see the Fire or Tempo selecting her in an expanson draft scenario.<\/p>\n
Players on contract for 2026: Citron, Iriafen, Amoore. All three are 2025 draft picks. Citron and Iriafen are All-Stars. Amoore is someone the Mystics want to see grow with them in 2026.<\/p>\n
So in short, if I were Mystics General Manager Jamila Wideman, she is most likely protecting Citron, Iriafen, Amoore, Austin, Sutton and Melbourne. Agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA will welcome two new teams in the 2026 season: the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,8253,165604,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-324471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-washington-mystics","10":"tag-washington-mystics-team-analysis","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}