Breaking Down the 2024 WNBA Deadline Day Deals

This year's WNBA trade deadline saw an unusual amount of activity, so we take a look at who got better, who did nothing, and who might still have moves to come

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The WNBA trade deadline is often quite a dull affair that passes without much notice. Especially in recent years, where many teams were right up against the salary cap or even well over it due to hardship signings, you could usually sleep right through the deadline and not miss much. However, this year, with nearly every team holding at least a little cap space, we had some action. A couple of deals, a noteworthy signing, and some mysterious possibilities opened up for future weeks made this year's deadline day worth staying awake for. Let's break it all down.

Myisha moved from Mystics to Minnesota

The most notable player to change teams on deadline day was Myisha Hines-Allen, who was dealt from Washington to Minnesota for Olivia Époupa, Sika Koné, and a 2026 second-round pick. It wasn't a surprise to see Hines-Allen moved - both Kevin Pelton and I dealt her elsewhere in our pre-deadline articles - but Minnesota acquiring her was something of a surprise. Rather than filling a hole for the Lynx - they don't really have a true bruiser to play in the paint and try to defend the Brittney Griners of the world one-on-one - Hines-Allen is more a case of deepening the rotation of what they already have. Mobile bigs who can defend up, switch and recover fluidly, and can hit enough outside shots to keep the floor spread on offense. Hines-Allen hasn't been having a year anything like the peak she reached back in the Bubble season of 2020 - a succession of injuries means that player may be gone for good - but she still has the same base of skills that can make her useful. For the price of Koné and a second-round pick it's an understandable move by the Lynx just to add another piece that Cheryl Reeve might be willing to use in meaningful moments.

Hines-Allen was no longer of any real value to Washington on the court. We've only seen occasional glimpses of the player that earned the big contract she's finally coming to the end of, and their post minutes are better spent elsewhere. Hines-Allen is only 28, but their future in the paint is already in the younger hands of Shakira Austin and Aaliyah Edwards. The Mystics are also far more interested in lottery balls for the 2025 draft than any small chance of sneaking into the 2024 playoffs, so if giving up Hines-Allen makes them fractionally less likely to win games, that's probably a good thing. They managed to turn the final month of Hines-Allen's contract into a second-round pick and Koné, a prospect who only recently turned 22 years old. Three WNBA teams have now taken a look at Koné and decided not to keep her around, which isn't a great sign. She certainly never seemed to gain Reeve's trust. But she's still young, and there's raw talent there in her rebounding and constant energy on the floor. She's definitely worth a look, and the Mystics can move on from her themselves for no cost after this season if they aren't impressed.

DiDi Richards was waived by the Mystics as part of this deal because they had 12 players under contract so needed to open up a roster spot in order to accept Koné and Époupa onto their roster (both had to be involved for the cap maths to work for Minnesota). Then Époupa was waived, presumably because adding a 30-year-old backup point guard was of minimal interest to the rebuilding Mystics. It may also have been because the Lynx hope to bring Époupa back. She hasn't been a big part of their rotation this season, but she has been a useful energiser and chaos element to introduce when the team needs a shot in the arm. The problem is that Hines-Allen's $180,200 salary occupies a lot of cap space, and leaves the Lynx with only $7,906 remaining. They currently have a legal 11-player roster, and that amount would allow them to add a player on the pro-rated minimum on Sept. 8 at the earliest. So Époupa may be back, but it'll be a while.

Overall, I understand this move, even if it doesn’t particularly excite me. The player Hines-Allen has been in recent seasons, even when supposedly healthy, just hasn't been that exciting very often. She'll probably be the fourth-choice big in Minnesota, just like she was in Washington. But when you're trying to make a championship run, depth like that can be important. It means they're less likely to have to go to emergency lineups like using Diamond Miller as a small ball 4, and foul trouble for Napheesa Collier or Alanna Smith might not be as disastrous as before. We literally saw that happen last night in her Lynx debut, where she fit in smoothly and helped them defeat Las Vegas. So for the limited cost, why not?

Gift of the Gabby

Seattle Storm forward Gabby Williams. Photo Credit: Chris Poss

Gabby Williams always had a lot of fans dating back to her UConn days, and after an All-Star Five performance with France at the Olympics and coming within a single point of defeating the USA, her stock was higher than ever. After the league confirmed that she was eligible to sign and play in the WNBA this year - this is a good breakdown of why that was distinctly up in the air - rumors swirled about which teams were on her list and whether staying in France could be a preferable option. There were also reports that Williams was concerned that she might be cored by whichever team she signed for, preventing her from being an unrestricted free agent heading into 2025 (a wonderful piece of work by Williams’s camp in directing the narrative). The saga came to an end on deadline day, likely by complete coincidence, when she signed a Rest-of-Season contract with the Seattle Storm.

As I broke down on X (formerly Twitter) here, Tuesday happened to be the first day where the Storm had enough cap room remaining to sign a veteran to a pro-rated minimum contract. She's not arriving until next week, so it's not like she signed the deal when her plane touched down. If Seattle was her chosen destination, that was the earliest she could sign unless they were going to make trades to open up additional cap space.

Adding Williams for nothing is obviously a useful addition for Seattle. However, I do once again feel like I have to temper expectations a little bit. While she's been a useful WNBA player, the Williams we've seen as a pro in the USA has never been as game-changing as the player who represents France or that we've seen with teams like Lyon and Sopron in Europe. She's never averaged more than 8.4 points per game or shot better than 29% from 3-point range for a WNBA season, and that's despite teams sagging off and inviting her to take those shots. It can compromise her team's spacing even though she's grown more willing to take that shot, or to utilise the space as a runway to penetrate. Given a shaky jump shot is also the primary drawback of Jordan Horston - the player currently occupying the small forward spot in Seattle that Williams could fill instead - adding Williams doesn't necessarily fill obvious holes for the Storm.

All of that said, Williams is a very talented basketball player who adds depth for Seattle and makes them potentially more dangerous. She gives them another ballhandler and creator who can take pressure off Skylar Diggins-Smith or Sami Whitcomb, and another flexible and fluid defender who can create turnovers and shut down opposing scorers. She's also been with Seattle for parts of the last two seasons, so there's a familiarity there with several of their players, even if Diggins-Smith and Nneka Ogwumike are new to her. It should be a relatively smooth addition, even if her role is rather different from what she's asked to do with France and her European club teams. This is a very positive move - I'm just warning you that the player being added isn't exactly the same as the one you just saw shoot 3-for-6 from deep in an Olympic gold medal game and scare the living crap out of the all-conquering Americans.

Desert Intrigue

The only other trade completed on deadline day saw some apparently minor pieces being moved around. The Phoenix Mercury sent Sug Sutton and a 2025 third-round pick to the Washington Mystics for the rights to Swedish guard Klara Lundquist, which doesn't appear to be particularly interesting. Sutton had faded out of Nate Tibbetts's rotation in Phoenix and is barely breaking 30% from the field this year. Lundquist was back in the weak Swedish league last season and still has some potential, but is hardly one of the hot properties of European basketball. What this trade truly appears to be about is cap space.

When players are traded in the WNBA, their entire salary for that season flips from one team to the other. Even though Sutton, for example, will have already received well over half her salary for 2024 from the Mercury, from a cap sheet perspective her entire cost for 2024 is now on the books of the Washington Mystics. Lundquist, given that she's never even set foot in a WNBA training camp, can be entirely ignored for any calculations (and may well only have been in this deal because something has to go in either direction). So this trade took Phoenix's cap space from $18,573 to $82,727, and opened up a roster spot in the process. All it really cost them was that third-round pick, given they no longer seemed to have much use for Sutton.

The question is, what are they going to do with that space? They signed Monique Billings to a 7-day contract recently, and she had a promising debut on Sunday against Chicago. However, the $18,573 was already enough to sign Billings to a Rest-of-Season pro-rated veteran minimum contract, as long as she was willing to wait a couple of days after the end of that current 7-day deal. It's possible that Billings had a better offer than that elsewhere, and Phoenix had to add cap space to match that level of cash. Las Vegas have $38,736 in cap space and could've been offering her all of it to deepen their rotation, for example. But it doesn't seem likely, given Billings was willing to sign a 7-day deal with the Mercury only a couple of days ago. So what else is all that space for?

The absolute dream scenario that jumped into my head - not saying it's likely, not reporting anything, just a dream hypothetical - was Emma Meesseman. The same ruling that made Gabby Williams eligible to play in the WNBA this season means Meesseman is eligible as well, and she remains comfortably the best female basketball player in the world who isn't currently in the WNBA. She'd also fit nicely on a Mercury squad that have basically been playing without a power forward all season, and where the roster and coaching staff includes several former teammates from Meesseman's European club teams. Tuesday was the trade deadline but not the signing deadline - free agents can be added at any time up to the final day of the regular season and still participate in the playoffs. If she has any interest, Meesseman would be a fantastic addition and immediately make the Mercury a scary proposition heading into the postseason in what could well be Diana Taurasi's final year.

If the dream scenario isn't in play, then your guess is as good as mine. Signing Billings for the rest of the season seems like a good idea, but even that still leaves an open roster spot. It's possible they don't have a specific plan for it yet and just felt the space was more useful to them than Sutton, so they made the deal in the hope they could find someone worth giving it to by Sept. 19. Natalie Achonwa? Janelle Salaün? Candace Parker? Nancy Lieberman? Who knows.

The Non-movers

Just to wrap things up, some of the teams that didn't do anything seem worthy of note. The Dallas Wings didn't do anything to generate cap space, so remain nearly $7,000 over the cap, and therefore won't be bringing back Billings or Odyssey Sims (barring yet more injuries and hardship additions). Both Billings and Sims had already signed 7-day deals with other teams before the deadline, so maybe there was never any intention of trying to bring them back, but that seems bizarre. Sims was playing 34 minutes per game as their starting point guard before the Olympic break, and a simple deal similar to Phoenix's Sutton move would've opened enough room. Maybe Sims didn't want to wait the 10 days required between releasing and re-signing a player, so moved on. Or maybe the Wings have already settled for 2025 lottery balls and don't have any real intention of trying to salvage this season and make a run at the playoffs.

New York also didn't do anything at the deadline, but are obviously in a far more positive position than the Wings. They've been handing 7-day deals to Jaylyn Sherrod, which cut into their cap space and therefore always made it look unlikely that Gabby Williams was going to head there instead of Seattle. They have $17,183 remaining in cap space, which may just go to Sherrod for a Rest-of-Season contract now that she's reached the limit of three 7-day deals. But they could also use that money and their 12th roster spot for any free agent, or - in the dream scenario of many Liberty fans - to re-sign Marine Johannès. She hasn't indicated that she’s likely to play in the WNBA this season, but the Liberty still hold her reserved rights so you never know. That space would be enough to sign her to a veteran minimum deal at any point from August 29 onwards. The trade deadline may have passed, but there could still be some twists and turns before we reach the 2024 WNBA postseason.

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