Washington Mystics shut down Shakira Austin as they continue to chase a playoff spot

It was the 26th game Austin has missed this season, and about an hour before tip-off, Mystics head coach Eric Thibault announced that the 6’5 center/forward would be shut down for the rest of the season.

“She just needs time to rehab and strengthen that ankle and the surrounding area,” he told reporters, “and we just felt that was the best course of action at this point.”

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Austin, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft, had a promising rookie season. She played in all 36 regular-season games that year and averaged 8.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. She also showed clear potential to develop into an All-WNBA defender and finished second in WNBA Rookie of the Year voting.

Ahead of her second season, Austin dominated in Israel and seemed poised to break out in the WNBA. But she strained her left hip against the New York Liberty that June and missed nearly two months, and she reaggravated the injury six games into her return. After the season ended, she had hip surgery and spent the offseason recovering.

Austin returned with a flourish this season, putting up 13 points, five rebounds and five blocks in the season opener against the Liberty despite being on a minutes restriction. Six games in, though, she fell and banged her surgically repaired hip, which ultimately sidelined her until after the Olympic break. While she was out, she struggled to string days together where her hip felt stable and strong, and the Mystics wanted to wait until she could find that consistency and trust her body fully before she returned to game action.

In her first game back on Aug. 15, Austin nearly put up a double-double against the Minnesota Lynx. Two games later, she poured in a career-high 24 points and nine rebounds against the Seattle Storm.

“I know who I am. I know what I’m capable of,” Austin told reporters after the Seattle game, while acknowledging she was still getting her rhythm back. “So just going out there and just continuing to prove myself right is really my mentality.”

But Austin’s star-crossed season took another turn in a rematch with the Storm on Aug. 26, when she suffered the ankle injury that’s plaguing her now. As she made a move in the paint, she stepped on a defender’s foot, and she couldn’t put any weight on that leg immediately afterward.

Austin returned on Sept. 8 after missing four games, but she played only 9:39 and never seemed comfortable, shooting just 1-for-6. The following day, she posted on social media, “I just want to feel like myself again.”

Thibault went into a little more detail on Wednesday, telling reporters, “She just didn’t feel like she had kind of the strength and the pop that she would like. [She] just didn’t feel like she could do the things she wanted to do on the court.”

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Thibault declined on Wednesday to rule Austin out for the season, but by Sunday, that had changed. He said Austin’s ankle still isn’t strong enough to play, so the team’s medical staff, in consultation with Austin, decided to shut her down and let her focus on getting back to full health. He added that the current concern is limited to her ankle and does not include her hip.

Austin appeared in just 12 games this season and played a total of 239 minutes. That’s far fewer than the 776 minutes she played as a rookie or even the 440 she logged in her injury-shortened 2023 season. But she still made an impact when she was available this season, averaging a career-high 11.8 points per game along with 6.8 rebounds, 1.3 steals, 0.9 blocks and 0.9 assists.

“It’s tough whenever you see one of your sisters go down, but also, it’s for the good,” guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough told reporters after Sunday’s game. “We trust our medical team. We trust Kira coming back, giving her body a chance to heal, and prayers to her speedy recovery.”

“It’s definitely tough,” guard Ariel Atkins added. “But I think more than anything, the basketball stuff, it matters, but you just got to make sure your teammate’s OK.”

Beyond Austin’s absence, the Mystics were also without 6’3 forward Aaliyah Edwards on Sunday. Edwards had been starting in Austin’s place, but she hurt her ankle in the first half of Friday’s game. Thibault said she had avoided any major injury and listed her as day-to-day. She was wearing a tall black walking boot on the sidelines on Sunday, but that didn’t stop her from standing up often to celebrate big plays.

Without Austin and Edwards, the Mystics had just three true frontcourt players: 6’5 starting center Stefanie Dolson, 6’1 forward Emily Engstler and 6’3 forward Sika Koné. They went smaller at times with 6’ guard Karlie Samuelson playing power forward, but they also leaned on Engstler and Koné, two young players they’re trying to develop for the future.

Engstler made her first start in more than two years on Sunday, dating back to her rookie season with the Indiana Fever. She had eight points and four rebounds in 26:30, and though she had a few turnovers late in regulation, she also drained a 3-pointer with 90 seconds left that gave the Mystics a two-point lead.

“She took those shots with confidence and didn’t allow them to detour her from taking the shots toward the end of the game,” Atkins said. “One thing about being on this team, eight times out of 10, you hear for you to shoot the basketball. … So I think at the end of the day for her, being confident is big.”

Meanwhile, Koné had 11 points and four rebounds in just 17:04, and the Mystics outscored the Dream by eight with her on the court. Her scoring matched her career high set just four days earlier.

“She was great. She [was] active on [the] boards, on stuff like free throws that got us extra possessions,” Thibault said postgame. “All that switching they were doing, she ended up with guards on her a couple times on the glass. And she just moves so well defensively. She was doing a lot for us.”

This round of injuries is yet another challenge for a Mystics team that has been in an uphill battle to make the playoffs all season. They started the season 0-12 and had three starters out for several weeks midseason. They seemed to finally be getting healthy after the Olympic break, but it didn’t last.

All told, they’ve dealt with 27 injuries this season, the most in the WNBA. Those injuries have cost them an estimated 3.7 win shares, which is tied for third in the league.

Still, the Mystics improbably battled into playoff position, winning seven of nine games entering Sunday. In that span, they rose from a last-place tie into eighth place, in position to claim the final spot in the WNBA playoffs.

On Sunday, the Mystics clawed back from a 12-point deficit in the third quarter, and the game was tight the rest of the way. There were nine lead changes and eight ties, but the Mystics couldn’t close out the game, scoring only three points in overtime.

The loss dropped the Mystics to 13-25 overall and into a three-way tie for eighth place with Atlanta and the Chicago Sky. Washington has the tiebreaker in that situation, so it remains in playoff position, but it doesn’t fully control its playoff destiny. In the final two games:

• If the Mystics go 0-2, they will definitely miss the playoffs.
• If the Mystics go 1-1, they might make the playoffs but will need help from other teams.
• If the Mystics go 2-0, they might make the playoffs but will need help from other teams.

For now, the Mystics aren’t hanging their heads. They know they’re still in the playoff race, and they’ve played their best basketball of the season over the past 10 games. Doing it a little shorthanded is nothing new, either.

“We know it was an important game,” Atkins said after Sunday’s loss. “We didn’t fill the air with a ton of pressure because there honestly isn’t any pressure on us. We’ve said it all season: [We’re] fighting to live another day, and again, we got to keep plugging away. Our chances aren’t over.

“We keep fighting, we keep getting better, and that’s what we gonna do.”