It’s free agency week in the WNBA (which is more like free agency fortnight). Less than 100 hours after the expansion draft, the Portland Fire will (soon) be able to negotiate contracts with any unsigned players. And reader? Almost every player in the league is unsigned. The possibilities have never approached infinite like they do this week.

Let’s dig into how things will work.

While writing this Monday morning, news broke that the Chicago Sky are trading Angel Reese to the Atlanta Dream for a 2027 first-round pick and a 2028 first-round pick. I see this as a huge win for Reese and the Dream, and another huge bummer for Chicago Sky fans, who are subject to what has to be the worst front-office and ownership in the entire league, and have no choice to try and support a team that is poorly built, poorly managed, and poorly prioritized by their owners. This trade sucks especially hard for the Sky, because they received two draft picks from a team that they hope will be bad – which would make those draft picks good. But the Dream are good right now, and the Sky just handed them a good young player who should be there during those two years. That’s a pretty bad return for a 7th overall pick on a rookie contract that brings a lot of fans to your stadium.

Ownership hell, as I like to refer to it, is the worst part of being a sports fan. I hope Chicago fans can voice their frustrations, have anyone on planet earth hear them, and real change can be made for that team. The city and the fanbase deserve not just better, but much much much much better.

Ok, back to free-agency.

Let’s start with the schedule, which was confirmed just yesterday, as the league and the WNBPA continue to finalize the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (which feels very strange that we’re charging ahead into the season without the constitution of the league being set in stone!).

The next 48 hours are the start of free agency, but only a slim table-setting portion of this period. In these two days, teams can offer the Core designation to their own players that qualify, as well as make qualifying offers to restricted free agents. These are things that teams can only do with their own players that are on the roster/becoming free agents, and they are both things that will happen behind closed doors, and we likely won’t hear any rumblings until signings are allowed to start officially happening.

For Portland, Sug Sutton, drafted in the expansion draft from the Washington Mystics, is a Restricted Free Agent, which means Portland can send them an exclusive qualifying offer that Sutton could sign without hearing any other offers from other teams. Presumably, this will happen, and presumably, Sutton will accept it, otherwise the drafting of Sutton would be for nothing.

This is the first time that, legally, teams can start talking to free agents about signing with their team. Talking to players before this period is called tampering, and is a punishable offense. But, it is useful to know that probably every single team tampers, and they probably do so every single season. People are going to talk to each other. Staffers are going to try to let MVP candidates know that they could come play for their team for the max salary, if they want. It is fine to have tampering rules, but I also find it to be fine that teams are not adhering perfectly to those rules.

This is a time period that I love, because agents, to help move the process along for the players they represent, may very well start leaking information. It is a great time to be on social media to watch the many rumors and the few facts fly, and to see armchair experts try to predict the future. I, personally, will be seated in my armchair.

I think Portland will have some sway here: female athletes genuinely seem to like playing here, across multiple sports; general manager Vanja Černevic seems like someone players like and respond to; Slyvia damn Fowles is a legend, and a coach for the Fire; it’s a new team, a blank slate that a great player could come and put their stamp on. And, most importantly in my mind: the roster, after the expansion draft, seems perfectly made to have a high-usage, high-scoring, established player walk through the door in free-agency and feel supported by the role players, and feel permission to be the best player. I think Bridget Carleton is a great player, and will flourish as a number 1 or 2 option on a team rather than 3, 4, or 5 like she did on the Lynx, but the free agency pool is simply too big, and too potent, to not believe a bigger star might be coming.

Starting Saturday (I’ll let you know when I find out the specific time of day), the floodgates open. Team social media managers will empty their quivers of players photoshopped in their team’s jerseys (that they probably made three days ago but weren’t allowed to post). It’s Christmas in April. Or, it can be hell on earth, if your team’s front office can’t hack it (maybe one of the teams listed above is the one coming to my mind right now).

This is appointment television. Or, appointment phone refreshing. I genuinely want to live-stream myself just looking at BlueSky and ESPN, reacting to Alexa Philippou and Sabreena Merchant and Shams firing off posts

I am very excited to see what happens, and I think we should all be hopeful about the boundless opportunities we are just days away from. BALL KNOWERS are always optimistic, always supportive, and always see the path to greatness.

Expect me to be very active in your inboxes this week. Rumors will churn, ideas will propagate, and then the real news will come fast. I look forward to gabbing with you.

Enjoy the process.

Later in the day on Monday, the Washington Mystics fired/let go/mutually parted ways with their general manager the same day that free agency started, apparently because of differences with the head coach, who is now acting as the general manager. Seems like a bad time to be deciding to make that change!