‘Happy as hell for her’: Washington Mystics welcome back Myisha Hines-Allen

Vanloo had played with Hines-Allen in Washington earlier this season and in Turkey last winter, and she credits Hines-Allen for helping her break into the WNBA as a 31-year-old rookie. Sunday was the first time Vanloo had seen Hines-Allen since Hines-Allen was traded to the Minnesota Lynx on Aug. 20. That trade, Vanloo said at the time, “kind of broke my heart.”

After Hines-Allen set Vanloo down on Sunday, a teary-eyed Vanloo leaned in for several more hugs.

“It was special to see her back,” Vanloo told The Next after the game. “I was very excited to see her again. … I don’t cry that easily, but for My, yeah.”

Just before Vanloo ambushed her, Hines-Allen said that it hadn’t sunk in yet that she was back in the arena that had always been her home in the WNBA. The Mystics drafted her in the second round in 2018, and she won a WNBA championship in 2019 and made the Second Team All-WNBA in 2020. The 6’1 forward played 187 regular-season games in a Mystics uniform, which ranks 13th in franchise history. And she filled nearly every role imaginable at one time or another: from playing zero minutes to starting, and from being a point forward to being an undersized center.

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The trade was emotional for many of the Mystics, but since then, both teams have been rolling. The Lynx have been the WNBA’s best team since the trade, going 7-1 to move into second place. And the Mystics have won five of their last seven games and are in contention for the final playoff spot, despite starting the season 0-12.

Those recent results set up an important matchup between Hines-Allen’s current and former teams on Sunday. During warmups, though, that seemed secondary to the human element, as Hines-Allen brought a familiar exuberance to the arena. She interrupted a pregame interview to greet former teammate Sug Sutton, then weaved throughout the building greeting everyone she came across, then did her own pregame interview.

“Have you even warmed up yet?” Mystics center Stefanie Dolson teased Hines-Allen toward the end of her pregame interview.

“Miss some shots for me!” Hines-Allen jokingly yelled back as Dolson walked toward the court.

Eventually, Hines-Allen did take the court with the Lynx for team warmups, her blue uniform contrasting with the red her former teammates were wearing at the other end.

“It’s good to have her back,” Thibault told reporters pregame. “I think she got a warm welcome from everybody here because that’s how she is, too. It’s very reflective of her personality.”

Wearing No. 22 instead of the No. 2 she wore in Washington, Hines-Allen came off the bench to help Minnesota to a 78-71 win. She had nine points on 3-for-7 shooting, five rebounds, three assists and a steal in nearly 24 minutes, and the Lynx outscored the Mystics by 13 points while she was on the court.

Seven of Hines-Allen’s points came in the decisive fourth quarter, which Minnesota won by eight. She also made her presence felt defensively in several ways. Her first basket of the quarter came by taking a steal all the way to the rim for an and-one, and she guarded everyone from 6’5 center/forward Shakira Austin to 5’9 guard Brittney Sykes. 

With 12 seconds left and the Lynx up by five, Hines-Allen forced Sykes to miss a midrange shot. Then, after Mystics guard Ariel Atkins got the offensive rebound and Vanloo attempted a 3-pointer, Hines-Allen grabbed the miss and fended off several players’ attempts to tie her up. Her two free throws with 4.3 seconds left provided the final margin.

Hines-Allen said pregame that she has had a relatively easy acclimation to Minnesota because the Lynx and the Mystics have similar plays and defensive coverages. (She has also played with Lynx star Napheesa Collier overseas.) The challenges have mainly been learning new terminology and training herself to hear her teammates’ and coaches’ voices in noisy game atmospheres.

“It just is a perfect fit,” Hines-Allen said. A few minutes later, she added, “It’s refreshing to know exactly what you need to do for the team and hear it from the coach.”

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Hines-Allen was excited to return to Washington, even hosting her new teammates at her house on Saturday. She also got to stop by some of her favorite places in the city, and she was eagerly anticipating her tribute video, which the Mystics organization typically puts together when former players return for the first time. 

“I’m waiting on it,” she said pregame. “Let’s play that! … It better be long as hell.”

When the video appeared during a first-quarter timeout, many fans immediately rose to their feet to recognize a player who’d grown from a rookie to a veteran before their eyes. Hines-Allen snuck peeks at the video board in the Lynx’s huddle, and teammate Diamond Miller looked her way, too, prompting them both to laugh.

“I imagine it wasn’t easy for her [coming back],” Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve told reporters postgame. “It was home for a while, and that’s the first time coming back and you’re going down the other end of the hall. … And I thought she really rose to the challenge.”

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Despite the obvious love between Hines-Allen and her former teammates, the game got chippy at times. Late in the third quarter, for example, Hines-Allen and Austin got especially physical as they fought for position near the elbow. Then Hines-Allen cut backdoor and tried to finish over Mystics forward Emily Engstler, inadvertently hitting her in the mouth in the process.

Engstler didn’t seem to mind, telling The Next postgame that she has looked up to Hines-Allen since college. Both played at Louisville, but they are five years apart in age and had never been teammates until Engstler made the Mystics’ roster this season.

“It’s weird to see her in a different jersey,” Engstler said. “[And] My’s one of the strongest players I’ve ever had to play against. So a couple times I was like, Whew, let me not try to back My down. It’s like running into a brick wall. …

“I miss playing with her, I miss playing against her in practice, but she did really well, and it’s good to see her doing well.”

Immediately after the win, several Lynx players surrounded Hines-Allen and patted her shoulders. She then walked across the court to hug Mystics general manager Mike Thibault; his wife Nanci; and former Mystic DiDi Richards, who is out for the season with an Achilles injury and was sitting courtside. Most of the active Mystics players had already gone back to the locker room, but forward Aaliyah Edwards and guard Jade Melbourne made beelines for Hines-Allen, and Hines-Allen playfully shoved Melbourne before wrapping her up in a hug.

Since the trade, several Mystics players have kept tabs on Hines-Allen and the Lynx, and Hines-Allen has watched every Mystics game.

When the Mystics traded Hines-Allen, they had a 6-21 record, had lost four straight games, and were turning the page fully to player development and the franchise’s future. Eric Thibault started regularly playing 11 players, giving more minutes to younger players and trying new lineup combinations. And ironically, the Mystics started winning.

“They’re playing phenomenal. I’m like, Yo, like, what’s up?! … [Am I] holding y’all back or something?” Hines-Allen joked pregame. “No, everyone’s playing extremely well.”

The Mystics have particularly clamped down defensively over the past few weeks. They have allowed just 98.6 points per 100 possessions since the trade, compared with 104.0 earlier in the season. The current mark ranks third in the WNBA in that span, behind only the Connecticut Sun and the New York Liberty. And they’re holding opponents to an effective field goal percentage of 46.5% since the trade, which is the best in the league.

The Mystics are now two games behind the Chicago Sky and one behind the Atlanta Dream for the eighth and final playoff spot, with three games still to play against those two teams. If the Mystics make the playoffs, they’ll be the first team in WNBA history to do so after losing more than seven straight games to begin the season.

“We were 0-6 [to start] last year. I can’t imagine 0-12,” Reeve said postgame. “But I saw in the Mystics the same thing that we saw on our team last year, which was they just kept playing. … [I’m] not surprised at all to see that they’ve rebounded.”

One stark example of the Mystics’ improvement? In the last game before Hines-Allen was traded, the Mystics faced the Lynx at home and gave up 99 points. On Sunday, the Mystics gave up 78 — and Eric Thibault was extremely unhappy with his team’s defense in the fourth quarter.

In fact, the Mystics seemed distraught about losing, even in a season they’ve earmarked for development rather than wins at all costs. In their postgame press conferences, Eric Thibault spoke tersely and quietly, and Dolson rested her head glumly on her chin at times.

“At this point, I don’t feel the whole ‘moral victory’ thing,” Atkins said. “But I think when we play well defensively as a team, you could kind of see in the past few games. Tonight, I don’t think we just figured out how to pull it out.”

Atkins admitted that, for her, it was “kind of awkward” to go against Hines-Allen because they were drafted to the Mystics together and have been friends ever since. But — much like the night of the trade itself — there was happiness for Hines-Allen mixed in with the awkwardness and the Mystics’ disappointment in Sunday’s result. They know not many players get to vault up the WNBA standings like Hines-Allen did with the trade, and they view her as a crucial piece on a bona fide title contender.

“We are happy as hell for her,” Sykes told The Next on Saturday. “I catch myself watching more Minnesota Lynx games than usual outside of scout because, you know, you support friends. You support family.”

The Next’s Rob Knox and Terry Horstman contributed reporting for this story.