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Top Stories of the Week: The Wizards enjoy their time in London, Mystics enter WNBA free agency period

Check out last week’s main storylines around the professional basketball teams in D.C.

By Albert Lee
New York Knicks & Washington Wizards Media Sessions
Ian Mahinmi speaks to the British press in London, United Kingdom last week.
Photo by Dan Istitene/Getty Images

The Wizards didn’t play many games last week, but it was still a fun time nevertheless. So let’s go through the week that was!

The Wizards beat the Knicks in London

The Wizards traveled from the capital of the United States to the capital of the United Kingdom to play against the Knicks. They had a good time in pre game festivities and the Mystics came along as well.

Washington won the game 101-100 after Thomas Bryant attempted a last second shot that was goaltended! On the surface, this looks great. The Wizards won six of their last nine games and are just three games behind the Miami Heat for the eighth seed in the NBA playoffs with a 19-26 record.

But the Wizards are still a flawed squad. They are still likely missing the playoffs this season even if owner Ted Leonsis says that the team will “never, ever tank” when he spoke to Candace Buckner and Scott Allen of The Washington Post. They are just standing pat.

Marcus Atkinson wrote about the pros and cons of embracing a “never tank” mentality yesterday which is definitely worth your time.

The Mystics begin free agency

Perhaps Leonsis wants to embrace the Wizards as a “never tank” team because the Mystics never tanked in the Mike Thibault Era since 2013. They had their bumps and bruises, but they’re contenders now! It’s true that the Mystics have a lot more to play for than the Wizards, but the WNBA is a different league with different rules and circumstances.

Teams in the league are now able to start negotiating with free agents. The Mystics did not core anyone, which we anticipated all along given how Thibault has run shop.

We wrote something up a couple weeks ago on what to expect during free agency and this year’s WNBA free agency period started with a bang. Apparently, Maya Moore isn’t committing to the Lynx after getting cored. If she wants a trade, we wrote something up on that too.

And more

  • Tomas Satoransky is going to be a dad!
  • Speaking about Satoransky, he spoke to Carlo Garganese of Goal.com that LeBron James is the Cristiano Ronaldo and Kobe Bryant is the Lionel Messi of soccer.
  • People in other parts of Europe outside of Praha call Tomas Satoransky an NBA star. This is more or less a Dutch translation of the Goal.com piece on Sportnieuws.nl, a sports website based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
  • The Wizards don’t want to trade anyone. But it’s undeniable that Bradley Beal is their top trade chip. Ken Berger of Bleacher Report has a full length column on that. In it, you can also read that John Wall is practically unmovable, which we kind of figured a long time ago.

Alright, that’s enough from me. Enjoy the rest of your weekends everyone.