For Washington Mystics, a ‘clunky’ game is a good sign as three starters return

Her first attempt was a 3-pointer with four seconds left on the shot clock and a hand in her face. She drained it, looking as if she’d been back for weeks.

Sykes then missed a long 2-pointer, drove and spun in a right-handed layup, and missed a stepback 3-pointer. All four shots came in 1:51 of game time.

“I liked the aggressiveness,” Mystics head coach Eric Thibault told reporters postgame. “Maybe a little amped up to start. Trying to get a couple months back all at once.”

Sykes assisted on the next possession, and then two teammates who were also returning from injury got involved, with center/forward Shakira Austin finding guard Karlie Samuelson for a 3-pointer.

Those three players — all starters — have missed a total of 49 games this season. Sykes dealt with a sprained ankle and then a sprained foot, Austin was managing the hip she’d had surgery on in the offseason, and Samuelson fractured her finger. But all returned on Thursday for the Mystics’ first game after the Olympic break.

“I’m excited to be back out there with the team,” Austin told reporters postgame. “[I’m] low-key tired of being a practice player.”

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Heading into Thursday’s game against the Minnesota Lynx, the anticipation was high, both for the return of the injured trio and for the chance to compete again after 2.5 weeks of practices. Thibault joked that his early arrival to his pregame press conference showed just how eager he was to have nearly his full roster available. (Reserve wing DiDi Richards sat out with an Achilles issue.)

Thibault described the mix of emotions as “some excitement, some curiosity, some just relief that … you get to play somebody other than yourselves.”

As expected, the early returns were bumpy. Thibault had said earlier in the week that the first game back from a break is “always a strange one,” and postgame, he evaluated his team’s performance as “a little clunky,” with “fits and starts for our flow.”

There were highlights, such as when Austin slid over as the help defender and authoritatively swatted Lynx guard Courtney Williams’ pass out of bounds, but there were also 16 Mystics turnovers as they tried to reestablish chemistry. There was a 14-0 Mystics run in the second quarter, but the Lynx won the fourth quarter 21-10 to give them the 79-68 win.

Among the players returning from injury, Sykes led the way with 11 points, four rebounds and three assists, but she shot just 4-for-12 from the field.

“That’s always the game plan, to be aggressive,” she told reporters postgame about her early flurry of shots. “And being aggressive doesn’t just mean scoring. It just means putting the other team in a position where they got to make a decision.”

Samuelson pitched in seven points on 3-for-8 shooting and three rebounds. She played 29 minutes as the only member of the trio not on a minutes restriction. (Sykes played 22 minutes and Austin got just under 20.)

Austin added nine points on 4-for-9 shooting, but more importantly, she had a season-high 10 rebounds as well as three steals. “That presence, defensively and on the boards, is just a game-changer,” Thibault said.

Austin often used her defensive rebounds as opportunities to bring the ball up the court herself, or she’d pass to a guard and get the ball back just over half court. At times, it worked well — Samuelson’s early 3-pointer came from Austin rebounding the ball and dribbling all the way to the elbow before kicking it out. But Austin also had three turnovers, all while handling the ball.

“[It’s] definitely part of the vision for her,” Thibault said. “Part of the growth is letting her make a few mistakes doing it. … When you talk about development of younger players, part of it is figuring out when’s the right time? When’s the time to make the simple play? When can you just initiate for us? And you saw … some really good plays off of it and some ones we can clean up.”

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For both Sykes and Austin, the road back from injury was long and, at times, scary. Though Sykes had dealt with severe knee injuries in college, she’d never had an ankle injury before this season. She described herself as “angry” and “confused” in the days after it happened.

“That first week, it was pretty dark for me,” she told The Washington Post.

For Austin, the original hip issue that sidelined her last season was her first major injury as a professional. Dealing with an in-season setback and offseason surgery, she wondered whether she’d be able to play again.

She returned for the beginning of the 2024 season and started strong, outplaying reigning WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart on opening night. But after falling and banging her hip in a game on May 31, she was searching for consistency in how her hip felt day-to-day, and the Mystics held her out until she could reach that point.

“It’s just been really good for me getting out there, getting more balanced, feeling more explosive,” Austin said on Thursday. “It’s just all stuff that I felt like I was lacking. … So this past month, for the most part, literally just … getting back to me and not worrying about what anybody else thinks, and trusting myself and my own body. So now, it’s going to be some dust I got to shake off, but I definitely feel like myself again.”

Sykes and Austin had different rehab protocols and timelines, but they leaned on each other as they worked to get back on the court. Because of Austin’s injury, they played only 17 games together last season, which was Sykes’ first with the Mystics. So they used their time sidelined this season to get to know each other better on and off the court. 

“Slim has really helped me with guiding this new chapter for me and making sure that I support myself and I’m doing what’s best for me,” Austin said, using Sykes’ nickname. “And … this whole time, we’re both learning more about each other [and] how to continue to grow.”

“It’s like a little big-ass sister,” Sykes quipped, referencing how Austin is six years younger but nine inches taller than her.

As those comments show, their relationship ranges from serious discussions to lighthearted comments. Austin also recently posted on the social media platform X that Sykes “sends me EVERY cat video she comes across.”

Though neither player feels like the best version of herself yet, they’re both excited to be able to work through it in games rather than in practice.

“I’m not waiting. I’m just, I’m playing through the feeling,” Sykes said. “There’s a couple times during the game where I’m like, Damn, it’s not there yet, or I miss a chippy or … a shot that I’d normally hit, and I’m just, I don’t have the pop that I normally have.

“It’s going to take time, and … it’s just keeping that that grace for each other and keeping that confidence to know that what we’re trying to do, it’s going to come.”

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As a group, the Mystics are striking a similar balance between not wanting to wait and having patience. Sitting in last place with a 6-20 record, the Mystics are 4.5 games back of the final playoff spot with 14 games left, so they need to start stacking wins quickly. Having three starters back gives them the best chance to do that, but they have to be patient with their teammates as they build back up.

The Olympic break helped by giving the team time to practice with the returning trio. That helped ease those players in, which Samuelson said during the break she was grateful for. 

“I think it would be a lot to just get thrown into games right away without getting some practices under my belt,” she told The Next.

On Tuesday, Thibault said the second week of practices looked more cohesive than the first, and reintegrating the trio was “a little bit invigorating” for the team during the break. But those practices couldn’t fully replicate a game atmosphere, and the chemistry is still a work in progress.

“All the stuff that we wanted to find out the first month the season that we didn’t really get to, we get to do now,” Thibault said before Thursday’s game.

That’s not optimal this late in the season, but Sykes doesn’t think it’ll take long for the team to be firing on all cylinders. “If you look at our team, even from the first game when we played New York to now, our team has had to figure out how to play with whatever pieces [were] available,” she said. “So we’re not new to trying to figure out the chemistry. …

“We just got to go back, look at the film, realize, OK, this is what it looks like. This is what it feels like. This is what it doesn’t look like. This is what it doesn’t feel like. It’s as simple as that.”

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With three key players back, the Mystics are optimistic about what they can accomplish. They came out of the Olympic break focused on climbing into playoff position, despite a daunting first week back that features three games against top-four teams.

“It’s kind of like a dawg mentality for us,” forward Emily Engstler told reporters on Tuesday. “I mean, what do we have to lose, right?”

She added, “We’re excited to come out healthy, but also to show the league that our first half is not going to look like our second, and I think we’re going to go out and make a statement. So I think a lot of teams need to be ready to deal with that.”