Torrent crowds are great. Don’t tell anyone but I think they might be better than Storm crowds.

I actually wasn’t kidding. Draft order is determined by points after you are eliminated and our opponent is the other expansion team so this really IS the most important game of the year!

Go Torrent! They just got eliminated from the playoffs so obviously that makes this the most important game of the year.

The cap goes up max 10% per season, right? But for year 1 to year 2 they agreed to a one-time exception where it could go up more, right? Do we know what that number is?

Doubling down on the Janiah Barker draft pick, which said the same basic thing.

100% was looking forward to seeing if Mack could translate her success in Australia.

Well we have 6: Ezi, Dom, Fam, Dolson, Mackenzie Holmes, and Katie Lou Samuelson is probably best as a stretch 4.

Right! Just wait a day or two … feels like they might have gotten blindsided here as the roster has a very Olivia Miles sized hole in it.

They just signed Dolson for real money in addition to Ezi too. I love the potential for Dom + Fam long-term but the current roster makes no sense. Hopefully it’s still possible to trade Ezi somehow?

Exactly. Our guard room is so weak I wonder if they’d reach for Kiki Rice. Or maybe (hopefully) they have a trade lined up they know they can do in that scenario and that gave them the confidence to sign Ezi. Minnesota seems like they need a big even if Dallas doesn’t so hopefully we get Fudd/Miles.

I agree that “not tradable for a year” seems like the most plausible way to write that rule. In any case that’s Ezi signing up for the rebuild project, and she’s in no matter who we draft tonight. (I had heard rumors she might want out and/or it might depend if we got a big at #3.)

Well by year 2 it will likely be less than the regular max, but yeah this was mostly me fishing for whether you’d seen real language for that yet on whether she can be traded before then. I’m guessing “no sign and trade for more than the max” means either not in year 1 or not ever if over the max.

Since it’s more than the max, this means she can’t be traded, right?

The plan is to draft Juju and then Sarah Strong (both of whom are the same age as Malonga).

I feel you, but our odds of getting Juju and Sarah Strong both go up if we trade Ezi …

I thought it would take more than that to get her to play for that org.

LA seem irrationally committed to winning now. That said, I’ll believe Chicago won a trade when I see it and no sooner!

(The connection with the Core tag is that the team using it MUST offer a 1-year supermax. Teams can also offer as many supermaxes as they like, but only to players who were already theirs. Well, limit 3 since you can't fit 4 plus 9 other players under the cap.)

yep! Seems like she will be open for business, and we should certainly join that line.

You can't offer a supermax to anyone who wasn't already on your team. I agree we should offer the max, but only Vegas can give her the supermax.

Oh and they get to keep Muhl's rights for after her rehab too in this scenario. I love this fake trade I just made up.

They would have to have told us if New York was like "here's a draft pick, please draft Kane" right? (I kinda wish the Storm had paid a 3rd round pick to get off of Lexie Brown's contract ... though maybe (hopefully!) the issue there was with Quinn?)

Here's hoping the Storm can figure out a way to extract some value from Ezi, because I still don't think they can afford to pay her what she's worth. (Not if they keep Nneka and Skylar, anyway.) You have to Core Ezi and have her decline the supermax and then work out a sign and trade.

The bar for a UFA was pretty high. It had to be someone an expansion team wanted more than Carleton or Marina Mabrey. I'm pretty sure LA had to expose Azura Stevens, for example, and she didn't get picked. I can't imagine Seattle protected Sykes I think she was just below that line.

I guess they did protect Ezi. Surely Sandy would have taken her over Marina Mabrey, right?

I’m going off her 1st team all WNBL season in Australia that got her snapped up by a Chinese team for their playoff run. (Agree she hasn’t shown enough in the W yet.)

100% agree that the supermax now being 20% of the cap is going to make cheap deals a lot more valuable. (I think I would protect Mackenzie Holmes for Seattle, for example. She seems *very* likely to get drafted if they don’t.)

Yeah she wasn’t the only UFA you protected that I disagreed with. 😀 Just the most wasted (my opinion, of course). I seem to like useful players on min contracts more than pretty much everyone else.

There’s no way Cunningham is worth a max/Core contract, is there? Seems a wasted protection to me …

I’m looking forward to reading your lists!