Despite winless start and missing playoffs, Washington Mystics ‘set a foundation’ in 2024

The Mystics kept surging from there, scoring 30 points in each of the next two quarters to lead by as many as 17 late in the third quarter.

Then they hung on for dear life.

The Fever cut the lead to 92-91 with 1:13 remaining, but the Mystics forced them to miss two potential game-winning shots with under 30 seconds left to escape with the win in the season finale.

The ups and downs of that game mirrored the Mystics’ entire season, as if all 40 games had been condensed into that 40-minute roller coaster. The Mystics started the season 0-12, setting a franchise record for losses to begin a season.

Yet after that, the Mystics went 6-5, and they had an even bigger surge after the Olympic break, going 7-2 between Aug. 23 and Sept. 14. That gave them a 66% chance to make the playoffs with three games left.

But combined with other results around the league, the Mystics’ 1-2 record in their last three games wasn’t enough to get the final playoff spot.

“It felt like three or four seasons in one, to be honest with you,” Mystics head coach Eric Thibault told reporters after Thursday’s game.

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The Mystics’ struggles this season were partly due to injuries. They had five during the winless start, and in July, they found themselves down four starters in a game against the Las Vegas Aces. Overall, they led the WNBA for the second straight season with 28 injuries, and they had only two games all season where the entire roster was available and didn’t suffer an injury midgame.

The consolation prize for the 14-26 season will be a lottery pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft. The Mystics have about a 25% chance to get a top-two pick in the lottery and about a 75% chance to pick fourth. They also have the Atlanta Dream’s pick, which will likely be fifth or sixth overall depending on where the expansion Golden State Valkyries get slotted in.

In addition, eight of the 12 players on the roster are under contract for next season, so depending on how free agency and the upcoming expansion draft go, the Mystics could have a lot of continuity to build off of next season — with hopefully better health.

“We set a foundation of who we want to be,” guard Ariel Atkins told reporters on Thursday. “… So I think when you talk about what is something I want to roll over [for next season], honestly, everything minus injuries.”

As the Mystics reflected on their season immediately after the loss and during exit interviews on Friday, they cited how they responded to the winless start as a point of pride. Every coach and player knows the playbook for those situations, Thibault said: Stay together and stay positive. But it’s extremely challenging to get everyone to believe in and execute it.

“I’m not gonna lie: We could have folded a long time ago,” guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough told The Next on Sept. 15. “You start 0-12, it’s [potentially] like, ‘Well, all right, it’s gonna be a long season. We tried, y’all!’

“But … no one hung their head. I think everybody just continued to still commit because even though we were 0-12, the scores were still close. And I think that’s what kind of gave us hope.”

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To Walker-Kimbrough’s point, nine of the Mystics’ 12 losses in that streak were by single digits, and in the last five minutes of those 12 games, the score was within 5 points more often than not. (The WNBA calls those minutes late in games with the score so close “clutch minutes.”)

Thibault added on Friday that he’d liked how his team was playing in training camp and noted that the Mystics lost to the New York Liberty — the eventual No. 1 seed in the playoffs — by just 5 points on opening night.

The most precarious time, in Thibault’s eyes, was when the team lost back-to-back home games in early June by a total of 10 points to fall to 0-11.

“Those would be the days that it could have come apart and it didn’t,” he said on Thursday. “And that’s a testament to players and staff and everybody around the team. We checked ourselves, we were honest with ourselves, held each other accountable and got better. … And I think that’s when you show your character.”

The Mystics continued to play close games throughout the season — in fact, their 27 games that had clutch minutes were a league high, and they played the second-most clutch minutes in the league. After losing their first 10 games that had clutch minutes, they eventually won eight such games. That helped them go 14-14 after their winless start and stay in playoff contention until the final day of the regular season.

“Resiliency is an understatement for what we went through,” guard Brittney Sykes told reporters on Friday.

The wins late in the season were partly a result of better chemistry, as the Mystics finished the season with eight players who hadn’t been on the roster in 2023. They were partly the result of a young team — the second-youngest in the league at season’s end — learning how to win. And they also reflected clear strides individual players made, taking advantage of optional days all season long and extra practices over the Olympic break to get better.

For all the Mystics’ challenges this season, one success story was how the culture remained positive. The players bonded as a group, even after midseason trades shook up the roster. They played selflessly on offense, averaging the third-most assists per game in the WNBA even though they made the third-fewest shots. Defensively, they got better late in the year, even as Thibault experimented with lineup combinations and expanded his rotations to 10 or 11 players, which could easily have challenged their chemistry and communication.

“There are things that we were growing in and things that were being built even though we weren’t winning,” Atkins said on Friday. “And as hard as that was, I was very shocked by the way that we were all able to respond and still enjoy coming into work.”

“It was just a really good vibe and energy to be around,” point guard Jade Melbourne told reporters on Friday. “And coming into practice, you wanted to do the optional workouts, you wanted to do all that because you enjoyed being around those people. So … I wanted to play as much basketball as I could with this team.”

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The Mystics are taking pride in what they accomplished this season after it looked like it’d be a lost year. But there was also recognition after they were eliminated from the playoff race that their good moments won’t mean much if there isn’t progress next year.

“I think we’ve had a pretty positive feeling in the building and in the room for a team that didn’t make the playoffs,” Thibault said on Friday. “But that’s definitely not the end goal. … We don’t want to be sitting having that same conversation in a year. And so it only gets harder the better you get.”

Thibault and his staff know what that build should look like. He joined the Mystics in 2013 as an assistant coach, at the same time as his father Mike took over as head coach and general manager. They rebuilt the Mystics in the aftermath of a last-place finish in 2012 and led them all the way to a championship in 2019.

LaToya Sanders, now the Mystics’ associate head coach, played for the team during much of that rebuild and started on the championship team. (Late this season, she said she saw similarities between 2024 and 2015, when the Mystics went 18-16 with another young, up-and-coming team.) And Mike Thibault remains general manager after relinquishing head-coaching duties in 2022.

Meanwhile, assistant coach Shelley Patterson was on the staff of a different rebuild, helping the Minnesota Lynx go from 13-21 in 2010 to winning WNBA championships in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.

The Mystics’ goal for the offseason is clear: Get back to the playoffs and get back in contention. The Mystics haven’t won a single playoff game since lifting the trophy in 2019 — the second-longest span in franchise history, behind 2005-12. 

While the plan is that this season’s struggles will soon be in the rearview mirror, the hope is that the chemistry and battle scars that came with those struggles will keep pushing the franchise forward.

“When you go through some of those things like we did and you find that you can get out the other side, hopefully … individually as a player and with your team as a culture, that becomes part of who you are,” Eric Thibault said on Thursday. “You can go to that place. … The mentality that they showed, hopefully that becomes part of what the Mystics are about going forward.”