{"id":627289,"date":"2026-05-06T18:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627289\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T18:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T18:00:11","slug":"phoenix-mercury-make-roster-moves-ahead-of-2026-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/627289\/","title":{"rendered":"Phoenix Mercury make roster moves ahead of 2026 season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 On the same day that the Phoenix Mercury are hosting media before opening the 2026 season, the team is making changes to its roster. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">The Mercury on Wednesday announced a trade, injury update, player waivers and suspension of a contract. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Phoenix announced a trade to bring over Australia-born forward Chloe Bibby from Portland in exchange for forward Julia Ayrault. Bibby is in her second WNBA season after spending her rookie year split between the Indiana Fever and Golden State Valkyries while averaging 4.8 points per game at a 45% three-point mark. She was the 11th overall pick in the recent expansion draft by the Portland Fire. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Bibby has been a member of the Australian National Team since 2023, and played college basketball at both Maryland and Mississippi State.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Phoenix announced veteran guard Sami Whitcomb will be out at least four to six weeks for a surgery to remove a loose body in her left knee. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">After forward Kathryn Westbeld tore her right ACL during off-season play, the Mercury have suspended her contract for the 2026 season due to the season-ending nature of the injury. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Finally, the team announced guard Kara Dunn and forward Ashten Prechtel have been waived from its roster. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Wednesday is also Media Day for the Mercury at Mortgage Matchup Center. Watch live coverage of the events at the top of this story from 10 to 11 a.m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Please click here to report it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-start\">Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send <a href=\"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">it to us here<\/a> with a brief description.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AZFamily) \u2014 On the same day that the Phoenix Mercury are hosting media before opening the 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[4958,271339,271336,271334,271337,271335,19156,99,434,271338,60429],"class_list":["post-627289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-azfamily","tag-kathryn-westbeld-acl-injury","tag-mercury-injury-update-sami-whitcomb","tag-phoenix-mercury-2026-roster","tag-phoenix-mercury-media-day-2026","tag-phoenix-mercury-trade-chloe-bibby","tag-phoenix-news","tag-sports","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-phoenix-mercury-news","tag-wnba-trades"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627289","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=627289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}