Trading Myisha Hines-Allen was hard for the Mystics, but it can help their rebuild

“Reality has to set in,” he said. “… Trade-deadline days help you set your reality a little bit.”

The Mystics’ reality was that they entered Tuesday’s game with a 6-21 record, which was tied for last in the league and five games behind the Chicago Sky for the final playoff berth. With only 13 games left, making up that ground was going to be a tall task — and potentially without much reward, if it meant being swept in the first round of the playoffs for the third straight season.

So Thibault, acknowledging the situation, became a seller at the deadline. Although salary-cap constraints make in-season WNBA trades relatively rare, Thibault pulled off two Tuesday.

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In a trade with the Minnesota Lynx, Washington gave up veteran forward Myisha Hines-Allen, whose contract expires after this season, in exchange for forward Sika Koné, guard Olivia Époupa and a 2026 second-round pick.

Hours later, the Mystics traded the rights to Swedish guard Klara Lundquist to the Phoenix Mercury for guard Sug Sutton and a 2025 third-round pick.

In corresponding moves to keep their roster at the 12-player maximum, the Mystics cut Époupa and wing DiDi Richards. Thibault told reporters that Richards will have surgery to address an Achilles injury and will miss the rest of the season. Because her contract is guaranteed at this point in the season, she will still receive her full salary, but the move opened a roster spot for Sutton.

The trades came together at the last minute, Thibault said, but he’d had “general conversations” with six or seven teams about various players. He’d rejected another team’s offer for Hines-Allen on Monday night, and Minnesota’s offer materialized Tuesday.

The 6’1 forward had played all seven seasons of her career in Washington and helped the Mystics win the first championship in franchise history in 2019. In 187 career games with the team, she averaged 7.9 points, 4.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game.

At her best, Hines-Allen was an All-WNBA player. In 2020, she was named Second Team All-WNBA after averaging 17.0 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game. She later battled a knee injury but returned to play 35 regular-season games in 2023 and all 27 this season before the trade.

This season, she averaged 8.0 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game for the Mystics while shooting 48.9% from the field and 35.9% from behind the arc. Just as importantly, veteran guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough told The Next on Tuesday, Hines-Allen helped keep the team upbeat and “create light” during a trying season.

Why the Mystics made these trades

The Mystics’ motivation for both trades centers on the future of the franchise. They gave up Hines-Allen, who may have left in free agency next winter anyway, and Lundquist, who has never played in the WNBA, to add flexibility and protected assets ahead of two offseasons of uncertainty.

That uncertainty is partly because there will be expansion drafts in 2025 and 2026, and the Mystics will be able to protect only a certain number of players from being picked by the expansion Golden State and Toronto teams.

It’s also because the WNBA is expected to have a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for the 2026 season, and nearly all veteran players have refrained from signing contracts past 2025 in anticipation of the higher salaries that could come with that. That will create an enormous free-agent market for teams to contend with in 2026.

“All hell is going to break loose in the league after ’25 if the players opt out [of the current CBA], which everybody expects that they will,” Thibault said. “There will be over 100 unrestricted or restricted free agents in one fell swoop in January of ’26. … You have to do your due diligence to be prepared for all kind of situations.”

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The Mystics will now have four draft picks in 2025, including two first-round picks that could end up being lottery picks. They will have four more picks in 2026, and two are in the second round, where Thibault has drafted impact players such as Hines-Allen, Emma Meesseman and Natasha Cloud during his tenure.

Adding draft picks could help in multiple ways: The 2025 and 2026 drafts are expected to be deep and talented, and it’s possible that the Mystics could find franchise cornerstones who would be under team control for several years. WNBA draftees also command relatively low salaries, so that would give the Mystics more money to spend on free agents in 2026, when so many players could be available.

The Mystics could also package some draft picks to make further trades, which Thibault has done frequently in recent years. Above all, Thibault now has more options, which was his goal in these trades.

Asked Tuesday whether she understands the front office’s plan going forward, Walker-Kimbrough said, “For me personally, I trust what they do and … continue to focus on what I can do. I feel like everybody in the locker room has the same goal. We want to win games, and everybody obviously is in the gym getting better. … But it’s going to take some time, and it’s going to require that trust.”

How can the Mystics use the rest of the season wisely?

As the Mystics look toward the future, their goals for the rest of the 2024 season include player evaluation and development.

The Mystics’ intended starting lineup of Brittney Sykes, Ariel Atkins, Karlie Samuelson, Shakira Austin and Stefanie Dolson has played just 29 minutes together all season due to injuries, so it’s been difficult for Thibault to evaluate his roster. He wants to use the rest of the season to see what that lineup looks like and determine which players will be key pieces going forward.

Giving Koné and Sutton, the two newcomers, a look will also be part of the Mystics’ evaluations. At age 22, Koné is the second-youngest player in the league, right between Mystics guard Jade Melbourne and forward Aaliyah Edwards, and Sutton is 25.

“I think it says a lot that, as still as young as [Koné] is, she’s stuck with a couple teams the last couple years,” head coach Eric Thibault told reporters pregame. “… Adjusting to the league for a young player at that age is always challenging, but she’s been around some good teams already.

“So we’ll see. I mean, we’re excited to get her in the building and add her to our group.”

Koné has averaged 2.5 points in 37 games for Chicago and Minnesota since being drafted in the third round in 2022. Sutton was the last pick of the 2020 draft and played in 12 games that season for the Mystics, then sat out two seasons before establishing herself in Phoenix. In 74 career games, she has averaged 5.7 points and 2.4 assists.

The Mystics also want to continue to develop the players who’ve been on the roster throughout the season. In particular, growth from young, less experienced players could be critical to contending again. That group includes the 24-year-old Austin, 22-year-old Edwards, 22-year-old Melbourne and 24-year-old forward Emily Engstler. Edwards and Engstler will likely absorb many of Hines-Allen’s minutes, giving them more game reps than they otherwise would’ve gotten.

Asked for an example of how the Mystics’ player development has already paid off this season, Eric Thibault and Walker-Kimbrough both separately pointed to Melbourne. Melbourne was acquired just before the season began and has been impactful off the bench. (She also won an Olympic bronze medal as the starting point guard for Australia.)

“People already see some of the strides she’s made between shooting the ball and attacking the rim, and I think she’s a much better player than she was a year ago,” Eric Thibault said. “And that’s not all down to us. … But a lot of the work that you’re doing with players to develop them, sometimes you don’t see till down the road.”

In Tuesday’s game against the Seattle Storm, some of the Mystics’ developmental goals were already evident. Eric Thibault subbed in a long and quick lineup that he hadn’t used all season: Melbourne, Sykes, Walker-Kimbrough, Engstler and Austin. And Austin had a career-high 24 points, got to the free-throw line a career-high 15 times, and added nine rebounds and three steals.

“I’ve really been encouraged by Kira in the three games since the [Olympic] break,” Eric Thibault said postgame. Austin has played in all three after missing 19 games with a hip injury. “… Seeing her dive on the floor for a loose ball in a crowd of people, I don’t think she does that if she’s not feeling pretty good.

“So now it’s just about growing and making good plays. I love the way she’s aggressive and going at the rim, and I think our team’s feeding off it.”

How the team reacted to Hines-Allen’s departure

Tuesday’s trades were rational given where the franchise is and how much needs to change for it to become a championship contender again. But trading away Hines-Allen was also emotional.

“There’s two days in a year that are hard: when you cut people during training camp and when you have to trade somebody,” Mike Thibault said. “Those are tough days, particularly when somebody like Myisha’s been a big part of what we’ve done. … I don’t have any joy in doing that. There’s none.”

Hines-Allen was “part of the glue of our team,” guard Atkins told reporters postgame. And Atkins would know: Until Tuesday, Atkins and Hines-Allen had been teammates for every minute of their professional careers.

The timing of the trade made it difficult for the players to process what had happened. Before the trade was finalized, Hines-Allen went through shootaround as normal, but by the evening her locker was empty. Eric Thibault got to talk to the entire team about it only less than an hour before tipoff, and the players had to put aside their emotions as best they could and play shorthanded, with Koné and Sutton not yet in town.

After the game, the players could reflect a bit more and begin to absorb the news.

“More than anything, My’s my friend,” Atkins said. “… It’s hard for me personally to meet just super genuine [people] and be able to find somebody you can let your walls down with and actually create a friendship, more so [like] family. So obviously, it’s tough for me.”

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“It was pretty shocking for me,” point guard Julie Vanloo told The Next. Vanloo is in her first season in the WNBA, but she played overseas with Hines-Allen last winter and credits Hines-Allen with helping her realize her WNBA dream.

Vanloo continued, “I’m happy for My that she goes to Minny. I think it’s a great opportunity for her. I’m just gonna miss her a lot here because she’s my buddy, and she always had my back through thick and thin. She guided me through this experience. …

“It’s going to be an emptiness for me not having her here. … Her locker was empty, and it kind of broke my heart.”

Vanloo’s comments came about 80 minutes after the trade deadline, at the end of a tough night for the Mystics between the loss of Hines-Allen and another loss on the court. But the Mystics have been resilient all season, rebounding from an 0-12 start, and they will continue to push forward even without Hines-Allen’s endless stream of energy.

The Mystics’ front office will push forward, too, and continue to prepare for the future. The moves it made Tuesday weren’t easy, but they were signs of a franchise willing to look in the mirror and do what’s needed to contend again sooner rather than later.