Here are some of the things I would like to see the team do:<\/p>\n
Sign a marquee free agent \u2014 This is one thing that I think the current front office will not do and that doesn\u2019t seem to be their intent either. There is also precedent for the Mystics doing this because they started the 2025 season with the holdovers from 2024, though Ariel Atkins was traded. Because of the high amount of player movement that will likely happen because of an anticipated Collective Bargaining Agreement, some player on every team will see a big payday with a salary that will probably at least $1 million. The question is just who the Mystics\u2019 marquee free agent will be.Sonia Citron or Kiki Iriafen make an All-WNBA team \u2014 If the Mystics are a playoff team in 2026, it\u2019s likely that Citron or Iriafen will be among the league\u2019s biggest producers. Hell, they were last season. That said, Citron and Iriafen also were part of a team that lost 10 games in a row last year after the team surprised others early on.Shakira Austin makes the All-Star team \u2014 Austin was part of the 2018 FIBA World Cup team that won the Gold Medal and then won another Gold Medal with Team USA in the FIBA 3×3 Women\u2019s AmeriCup earlier this fall. She still hasn\u2019t made an All-Star team of her own yet. If Washington makes the playoffs in 2026, she would likely be part of that. Austin is a restricted free agent in 2026<\/a> and would almost definitely be protected from the upcoming expansion draft. On top of that, even if she signs an offer sheet, Washington would probably match it.The Mystics are at least a middle of the pack team led by youth from start to finish \u2014 The 2025 Mystics team should have made the playoffs and used it as a selling point for 2026. Instead, when every WNBA team is rebuilding, it wouldn\u2019t be a surprise to see them try to replicate the Wizards\u2019 ongoing rebuild. In a league that remains at 12 teams for eternity? That is not a bad path. But in a league that will expand to 18 teams by 2030? That\u2019s a recipe to make the Mystics a \u201chave not\u201d franchise like they were for most of their history before the Mike Thibault years.<\/p>\n What accomplishments would you like to see the Mystics make in 2026? Let us know in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here are some of the things I would like to see the team do: Sign a marquee free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[121865,99,8253,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-378427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-bullets-forever-community-bulletin-board","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-washington-mystics","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378427","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=378427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}