The 2026 season is a-go, but first, the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire have to draft a team.
After months of back-and-forth and some extremely late-night marathon negotiating sessions, the WNBA and its players' association have officially—players won big in terms of revenue share , while the league avoided missed revenue as a result of a lockout—but the next few weeks will still be a bit of organized chaos.
Why, you ask? Well, with bargaining in the rearview, there is a lot to get done before the regular season can begin on May 8, including an expansion draft for two new teams—the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo—as well as the annual college draft on April 13.The league will hold the expansion draft on Friday, April 3, at 3:30 p.m. ET.Whichever team wins a coin toss—the Tempo or the Fire—will choose between either the first pick in the expansion draftthe sixth pick in the first round of the college draft on Monday, April 13.Across two rounds, Portland and Toronto will select from a pool of players made available by the league's other teams. It will be a snake-draft format, so whoever has the first pick in the first round will have the second pick in the second round. Otherwise, both teams will alternate selections for a maximum of 12 picks.player from an existing team per round, which means just two players can be drafted from each of the existing teams in total. This is so that one team's roster isn't annihilated while another's is left untouched.Ahead of the expansion draft, each of the 13 existing teams must designate up to five players as "protected," thus shielding them from selection by the Fire and the Tempo. If Portland or Toronto chooses a player that is an upcoming free agent, "the selecting team will receive whatever rights to such player that the existing team would have had if that player was not selected in the Expansion Draft," per the WNBA's release. To note, Tempo and Fire can only select in the draft one player who will be an unrestricted free agent.How will each team navigate the college draft? The Fire and Tempo will also have a chance to make selections in the annual draft on April 13. During that event, both teams will alternate picks so that "whichever team holds the sixth pick in the first round will then have the seventh pick in the second round and the sixth pick in the third round," per a WNBA press release. The opposite will be true for the team that holds the seventh pick in the first round.Brigid Kennedy is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in November 2024, she covered political news, sporting news and culture at TheWeek.com before moving to Livingetc, an interior design magazine. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, dual majoring in television, radio and film and marketing managment . Offline, she enjoys going to the movies, reading and watching the Steelers.
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