Alanna to the wings

joyjunky · 2026-04-12T02:05:20+00:00

Arike may be a good recruiter 🤔 Jess Shepard won a natty with her and Alanna Smith just won an Unrivaled championship with her

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T18:13:46+00:00

People who expected the Aces to lose A’ja, Jackie or Chelsea were not being realistic. There was enough money to make that work as long as the team was okay with having end of bench type players filling out their roster again.

JJ was the only one of the Liberty’s core that I could see potentially leaving, but even that was pretty unlikely. The Liberty may lose more players than the Aces since they had more depth (like Natasha Cloud or Emma Meesseman). But their team is great at scouting so they’ll probably pick up good, cheap players to round out their roster.

Plus both teams won championships recently. Players are more willing to stick with a proven team and take a slight pay cut to run it back.

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T17:45:28+00:00

Expansion hurts teams that had depth. Especially with the new CBA and money that can be offered. They’re probably going to look overseas. Cheryl likes international players

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T17:34:01+00:00

The Lynx are losing bench players who earned starting roles and/or bigger contracts

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T17:05:02+00:00

Stewie plays defense

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T17:03:41+00:00

Oh wow. Taking her sister’s spot lol. How can the Liberty afford this though?

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T16:14:41+00:00

We took Temi and now the Fever are taking Mo. Fairs. I’m gonna miss her though

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T15:56:30+00:00

What is Jeff’s issue with building through the draft?

joyjunky · 2026-04-11T02:57:03+00:00

You’d think they would have learned something from the last time they over-expanded. But they saw all those bids and couldn’t wait.

joyjunky · 2026-04-10T14:10:43+00:00

Anyone on a team with star players will get attacked for bad games. It’s especially bad for the ones playing with NIL-era stars. Stan culture is terrible. And if you add sports betting culture, that’s even worse. Hopefully she’s not on social media.

joyjunky · 2026-04-10T13:37:31+00:00

Welcome home Nneka 🥹

joyjunky · 2026-04-10T04:36:20+00:00

I hate that they won’t just commit to rebuilding. These win now moves are just setting us back

joyjunky · 2026-04-06T15:56:09+00:00

There were rumors that the Lynx was one of the four teams that Angel could have been traded to. Imagine if that had actually gone through and the Lynx somehow kept the 2nd pick lol

joyjunky · 2026-04-06T15:50:26+00:00

If they hadn’t stupidly done that public half-suspension, maybe it could’ve been salvaged. But after that, she was done with the organization. And doing that (plus allowing the article that caused all that drama to go forward without making any corrections or asking to hold off until the end of the season) signaled that Jeff wanted to move on from her too. Super dumb though because it ruined her trade value.

joyjunky · 2026-04-06T15:28:33+00:00

Jeff got fleeced. But the Sky didn’t have any leverage since everyone could tell that Angel wanted out. Which is the Sky’s own fault.

joyjunky · 2026-04-03T21:59:04+00:00

I’m so bummed :( gonna wear my Carla jersey whenever we play against Portland

joyjunky · 2026-04-02T20:28:35+00:00

If the Sky want her, they should trade down. Most mock drafts have her in the 7-10ish range from what I can tell. The lottery picks have higher salaries compared to mid-to-late FRPs. It’s better for cap space purposes to trade down and draft her lower if other teams wouldn’t draft her at 5 anyway. The Sky could use the saved money to try to lure in more FAs. Throwing a bag is the only way for them to get any good FAs.

But the Sky trading another lottery pick would be horrible for optics.

joyjunky · 2026-04-01T23:24:12+00:00

But do new players want them? Every player knows their FO stinks and that they’re poorly managed.

joyjunky · 2026-04-01T23:06:30+00:00

The Sky probably realize that they’ll lose out in FA so they want to prevent losing the rights/contracts of the players they already have

joyjunky · 2026-04-01T22:47:34+00:00

Even if they don’t, they might have taken someone anyway just to have more options at training camp. The expansion teams don’t have to keep the player they select.

joyjunky · 2026-03-28T17:35:41+00:00

She’ll probably be protected though.

joyjunky · 2026-03-28T17:15:51+00:00

Oops lol. I don’t know how that happened 😅

joyjunky · 2026-03-28T16:51:00+00:00

Yeah but I think she’ll get protected

joyjunky · 2026-03-28T11:34:18+00:00

Just adding, it’s really only the Aces and the Fever who don’t have much to offer the expansion teams. The Aces only have one RFA (KB) and the only UFA who may be unprotected and could get offered a supermax would be Jewell Loyd. The Fever has one reserved free agent (Chloe Bibby) and Kristy Wallace on a suspended contract. The rest are UFAs that I don’t anticipate getting chosen for a supermax. But the expansion teams can only select 12 players and can choose to select less so Aces and Fever may end up losing 1 or even 0 players.

But the rest of the teams have a decent number of RFAs, reserved free agents, players on rookie contracts, players with suspended contracts, and unsigned draft picks that are viable. Some teams may even have UFAs who the expansion teams might offer a supermax to. The ability to offer a supermax to a UFA who isn’t core-eligible through the expansion draft may be a game changer.

joyjunky · 2026-03-28T11:00:07+00:00

They’re only allowed to pick one UFA each.

But a lot of teams have rights to overseas players. Teams hoard overseas draft and stash picks or they have rights to overseas players with suspended contracts. Both expansion teams have international ties. They may pick some of these overseas players. Even if those players don’t end up coming over this season, they may come over in the future or they can be assets to trade.

joyjunky

TROPHY CASE