SAN FRANCISCO — Is one week into the WNBA season too early to be thinking about next year’s free agency period?
Of course not.
This past offseason didn’t result in the dramatic reshuffling many had anticipated, despite 80% of the league being free agents. Certainly, some marquee moves happened — All-Stars Satou Sabally signed with the Liberty and Gabby Williams landed with the Valkyries. But many of the league’s biggest names stayed put, with the Liberty, Aces, and Dream all locking their stars into multi-year deals.
Still, it’s notable that some of the biggest fish in the sea signed short-term deals. The Lynx’s Napheesa Collier, the Fever’s Kelsey Mitchell, the Sparks’ Kelsey Plum, and the Aces’ Jackie Young will all be back on the market after this season.
Who wins those superstars in 2027? And will the league see a fundamental shift in how players make those decisions?
Players have always weighed a range of factors — personal and professional — when choosing where to sign. But during the WNBA’s recent era of player empowerment, one pattern emerged: Top players gravitated toward organizations investing in better resources, such as practice facilities, medical and performance staffs, and charter travel.
The Liberty, Aces, Mercury, Storm, and Lynx raced ahead on many of those fronts. Now, the new collective bargaining agreement could be the great equalizer. By securing minimum resource standards that apply across the entire league, the players union forced the stragglers into action.
Now, every team must have a dedicated practice facility by 2028 — and several new ones are underway. The Sky and Portland Fire are both opening new facilities in 2026, with the Sky maintaining a “late spring/early summer” timeline and the Fire set to move in “midway through the season,” according to a source. The Wings, Liberty, Fever, Sparks, and Tempo have also announced new facilities at various stages of planning and development.
Staffing upgrades are also mandatory. Each franchise is now required to employ multiple athletic trainers, a strength and conditioning coach, a physical therapist, a massage therapist, and a director of sports medicine, while providing access to a nutritionist. Under the previous CBA, only an athletic trainer and a team physician were required.
“These are all things that we’ve needed in order to thrive,” veteran point guard Natasha Cloud told the Sun-Times. “Every other professional league with male counterparts has had that.”
Players say that health, performance, and equality with men’s leagues all motivated the new policy. Sky center Elizabeth Williams said another core goal was freeing players to consider other factors in free agency.
“[With minimum standards], players feel like they’re not just choosing because this place has a facility or this place has the staff that is adequate for them,” Williams told the Sun-Times. “They’re choosing because it’s where they feel like they can grow as a player. A system that works for them as opposed to just a place that has what they need.”
Williams has advocated for league-wide change in her role as players union secretary, but also within the Sky organization. Since joining the team in 2023, she has lobbied principal owner Michael Alter for expanded staffing and upgraded infrastructure. Many of those improvements are finally coming to fruition — upgrades which she believes would have come with or without the new CBA as a mandate.
However, if the Sky wanted their new facility and staff to be a competitive advantage, they should’ve made those investments several years ago.
Players predict their impact in free agency will fade.
“Now that every team’s gonna have one soon, we’re not gonna be like, ‘I wanna go somewhere that has a facility,'” Rachel Banham told the Sun-Times. “That’s not going to be a conversation at all. Now it’s: Who’s really good? Who’s gonna win a championship? It’s going to be about basketball rather than other things.”
Cloud also expects the minimum standard to shift players’ mindsets toward more basketball-related issues.
“You don’t have to be like, ‘Do I have resources for my body? Do I have resources for my mind?'” Cloud said. “So now you get to worry about: How does the team play? Am I going to get along with the personalities? How is this organization as a whole?”
That said, players will always weigh the quality and reputation of team ownership, and the fact the Sky took so long, and required so much pressure to modernize, will likely linger in the league’s collective memory.
But the Sky’s ability to land their free agent targets this past offseason — including Cloud, who has been a vocal critic of ownership groups less willing to invest — indicates that the franchise and league-wide changes may indeed be leveling the playing field.
Which brings us back to the superstar free agents on the horizon in 2027. If the quality of hoop is the deciding factor, where might Plum, Mitchell, Young, and Collier find their best fit?
Their current teams remain the strongest contenders to keep them. Young’s Aces and Mitchell’s Fever entered the season looking like frontrunners, as did the Dream and the Liberty. Through the first week of games, Golden State, Dallas, and Minnesota have been playing a brand of basketball that pops.
The Sky still need to prove theirs does, too. The season opener against the Fire showed some promising elements, like a smooth pick-and-roll connection between Skylar Diggins and Kamilla Cardoso, and the kind of dynamic shotmaking from Rickea Jackson that this roster lacked a year ago.
But the Sky are still waiting on half a starting lineup—DiJonai Carrington, Azurá Stevens, and Courtney Vandersloot—to return from injury.
And even at full strength, this roster has its flaws. In his second season at the helm, coach Tyler Marsh will have to cover for a lack of 3-point shooting and interior defense. Whether this group is good enough to pique the interest of a superstar isn’t a question that can be answered in May.
But it’s never too early to start thinking about it.