YOU NEVER SAW MOVES LIKE THIS
WNBA FREE AGENCY HAS SUDDENLY BECOME A SPECTATOR SPORT
In past years, WNBA free agency was an afterthought. Rarely would a highprofile player decide to leave her team — never mind the news then trending on Twitter.
But that’s not the case this year. Less than a week into the first free-agency period under the new collective-bargaining agreement, the landscape of the WNBA has transformed dramatically, creating a lot of buzz among fans.
It all started Monday, the first day of free agency, when five-time All-Star Angel McCoughtry signed with the Las Vegas Aces and Kristi Toliver left the defending champion Washington Mystics to sign with the Los Angeles Sparks. Then, former Connecticut Sun guard Layshia Clarendon signed with the New York Liberty, and DeWanna Bonner ended her decadelong run in Phoenix, forcing the Mercury to sign and trade her to the Sun.
Most recently, the Dallas Wings sent Skylar Diggins-Smith to the Mercury for a trio of first-round picks.
All this sudden movement by high-profile players is unprecedented. To put it into perspective, Toliver’s departure from the Mystics is only the fifth time a starter has left a WNBA championship team as a free agent — and the first time a player has done it since Toliver left the Sparks after the 2016 season.
“It’s entertaining to me,” Sky guard Diamond DeShields said Thursday at a women-supporting-women panel hosted by the team. “I like to watch it — it’s like watching a movie, almost. I know I’m not moving around, so for me at this point in time, it’s like, ‘OK, let’s see what happens around the league.’ It’s interesting.”
Center Stefanie Dolson, who agreed to re-sign with the Sky on Thursday, called the flurry of player movement “really cool.”
“A lot of players, myself included, we timed it up with the new CBA, so we all kind of knew there was going to be a lot of people trading teams and stuff,” Dolson said. “It’s always cool to see big-time players kind of get switched around.”
And it’s not done yet. Several players’ futures remain in question, including Tina
Charles, whom the Liberty designated as a core player (equivalent to an NFL player being given a franchise tag).
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert expected some player movement, but she didn’t see this coming.
“It actually has outpaced my expectations,” she said.
Welcome to the new era of the WNBA. The frenzy can be attributed to several changes instituted as a result of the new CBA. For starters, top veteran players can earn 85 percent more than last season, and teams saw a salary-cap increase of more than 30 percent. Additionally, the number of times a core designation can be used on a player in her career has been reduced from four to three.
Offseason buzz is key for the WNBA moving forward. In the past, the league typically went radio silent after the season ended, with many players heading overseas. But over the last few years, more and more have chosen to stay stateside (although more than half the league still opts to play year-round.)
Could this propel the league in a new direction? That’s what Engelbert hopes.
“Ultimately, if you want to build value in our 12 franchises and you want to raise money through corporate sponsorships and media deals, you’ve got to have players’ stories — rivalries that [fans] want to watch [and] they want to follow,” she said. “And so this freeagency cycle has done exactly that.” ✶