{"id":346488,"date":"2025-12-13T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346488\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T14:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:15:07","slug":"wnba-expansion-draft-expected-to-allow-teams-to-protect-five-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/346488\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA expansion draft expected to allow teams to protect five players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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\">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=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">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":346489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,8253,165604,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-346488","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\/346488","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=346488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}