Top Stories of the Week: Mystics host ‘Athletes and Activism’ panels and home opener, Wizards front office search drags on

June has now begun! So let’s get this party started with the top stories of the week.

Mystics host “Athletes and Activism” event by The Atlantic

On Thursday, the Mystics hosted an event with The Atlantic. Jemele Hill, was one of the key presenters of the event where she moderated a discussion on “The Power of Athlete-Activists” with Natasha Cloud, Martellus Bennett and Hudson Taylor. The highlights of their panel is definitely worth your time to watch and you can see more highlights from it below.

In the panel Cloud was in, one of the key points that they talked about is about American sports culture raising children to be athletes instead of as people. Cloud also mentioned that Monumental Sports & Entertainment and Mystics General Manager and Head Coach Mike Thibault has encouraged players to speak up on things they are active about.

The Mystics hold their season opener with a big 96-75 win over the Dream

Last Saturday, we finally got a chance to see how turnout and the crowd would be in the Mystics’ new home arena. Washington won 96-75 over the Atlanta Dream in front of a sellout crowd. Every active player scored!

As you might expect, Mystics superfan Bradley Beal came to the game with his girlfriend and fellow Mystics superfan Kamiah Adams. They sat next to Mystics majority owner Ted Leonsis and President Sheila Johnson for a significant part of the game which you can see here.

We have more content from the opener, so stay tuned for that!

Oh yeah ... the Wizards’ front office search...

I didn’t forget. The Mystics superfans are also part of the Wizards organization! Beal is the Wizards’ franchise cornerstone. Leonsis is the majority owner of the team as well. And Johnson has a significant ownership stake too. You must be wondering what they’re all thinking when it comes to the Wizards’ front office executive search going longer than most would like.

Yeah, it’s not done yet.

Leonsis talked about that last week in an interview with Chris Miller of NBC Sports Washington. In short, Leonsis wants fans — that’s all of us — to understand that he’s in no hurry to hire a new President of Basketball Operations. He is not a fan of just speaking to someone for a couple interviews and deciding whether that candidate is the best person for the job for the next 10 years or more.

But as Wizards fans, we have to be skeptical of everything, and I say this with no snark intended. Fred Katz of The Athletic noted that even though Denver Nuggets President of Basketball Operations Tim Connelly was offered the Wizards’ job after just one meeting, Washington had him as their top target since former team president Ernie Grunfeld was fired. So there just had to be SOME indirect feelers between the parties, right?

That’s all I have for the week. Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone.