2021 in Review: Our Top 10 most read Mystics pieces of the year

Here are the top 10 most-read pieces on the Washington Mystics this year. For the Top 10 most read pieces on Bullets Forever as a whole, click here.

• No. 1: Mystics suspend free agent signee Klara Lundquist — Like our Top 10 most read pieces as a whole, the most read Mystics piece didn’t focus on an active Mystics player. The Swedish national and point guard prospect was suspended, likely in part because Washington had multiple options at point guard in 2021 with Natasha Cloud and Leilani Mitchell. Also, Sweden was a participant in Women’s EuroBasket.
• No. 2: Asjha Jones takes Trail Blazers front office position — The former Washington assistant coach takes her talents to the NBA.
• No. 3: The Mystics announce that Emma Meesseman was not returning to D.C. until after the Olympics — At the time, I didn’t think Emma was playing for the season and she ultimately didn’t. But since that was announced, yeah, I wrote what I had to write.
• No. 4: Elena Delle Donne’s YouTube documentary premiere — The Mystics franchise player chronicled her recovery from her 2019 back injury in a multi-part video.
• No. 5: Elena Delle Donne says that she will be slow and methodical with her recovery on Media Day — In her availability, she also stressed that offcourt activities help with chemistry.
• No. 6: Emma Meesseman denies March reports that she was going to skip the season — After Natasha Cloud signed her contract, it was clear that Meesseman’s days as a Mystics player were numbered due to the salary cap situation if nothing else. And yeah, she did skip the season after the Olympics.
• No. 7: The Mystics’ new uniforms, especially the Rebel version are a hit — While the Mystics weren’t good on the court in 2021, they did have sharp-looking uniforms, especially their navy blue “RISE” jersey.
• No. 8: The Mystics got Erica McCall in a sign and trade deal from the Lynx — This was one of Washington’s bigger moves last season.
• No. 9: The Mystics lost Tianna Hawkins in free agency — She spent most of her career in D.C. and was part of their 2019 championship team.
• No. 10: The Mystics got Alysha Clark in free agency — Unfortunately, the All-WNBA defender missed the season due to a foot injury. But I’m hopeful she’ll be back in form for 2022.

Here are a couple honorable mentions:

• Russell Westbrook was one of Elena Delle Donne’s biggest supporters this past season — EDD would go to the practice facility early, and find out that Brodie beat her by a few minutes. He was also there to rebound her basketballs and just cheer her up. This was our 11th most read Mystics piece that was published this year.
• A Belgian sportscaster was suspended after saying homophobic and sexist remarks about the Belgian women’s basketball team — This was our most read women’s basketball piece of the season (more than any of our actual Mystics news stories in the rankings) and it was among the Top 50 pieces overall that weren’t GameThreads. Given that this piece came right after the Olympics and that Eddy Demarez, the sportscaster said many offensive things, I wasn’t surprised by the surge of traffic to the piece. Demarez has since returned to Sporza, the Dutch language network where he works, but is only working off-camera.