The world of professional basketball is no stranger to the “rebuild.” We’ve seen it in the NBA with “The Process” in Philadelphia and more recently with the San Antonio Spurs’ strategic pivot to land Victor Wembanyama. However, a new storm is brewing in the WNBA, and the Washington Mystics appear to be standing right in the eye of it. While fans are always hopeful for a competitive season, the cold, hard reality is that the Mystics aren’t just expected to struggle—they are arguably being engineered to fail.
To understand the current state of the Washington Mystics, one must look past the flashy highlights and the optimistic social media posts. A deep dive into their recent preseason play and roster construction reveals a team that is effectively “soft tanking.” This isn’t a team that has simply lost its way; it is a team that has been structured to prioritize the future at the absolute expense of the present.
The San Antonio Blueprint
The most striking comparison for the current Mystics trajectory is the San Antonio Spurs’ approach during their 2023-24 campaign. When the Spurs landed Wembanyama, they didn’t immediately surround him with veterans to chase 40 wins. Instead, they experimented. They played Jeremy Sochan—a defensive-minded forward—at point guard. They “threw things at the wall” to see what would stick, fully aware that the resulting mess would lead to a high lottery pick.
The Mystics are currently running that same play. By filling the roster with young talents who have immense physical tools but glaring technical deficiencies—most notably a complete lack of perimeter shooting—the front office is ensuring that while the team might play hard, they won’t win often. This is a “free hit” season. Every game is an experiment, and the outcome on the scoreboard is secondary to the data collected for the 2025 and 2026 drafts.
The Shooting Crisis: A Statistical Nightmare
In the modern era of basketball, you simply cannot win without spacing. The three-point shot is the great equalizer, yet for the Washington Mystics, it is a glaring void. In a recent matchup against the Minnesota Lynx, the Mystics shot a dismal 5-of-20 from beyond the arc. On the surface, that might seem like just a “bad night,” but a closer look at the personnel suggests it is a feature, not a bug.
Aside from Sonia Citron, who remains the team’s lone reliable perimeter threat, the roster is populated by “shooters” who statistically aren’t shooters at all. From Cass Prosper to Cody McMahon and even the highly-touted Georgia Amore, the Mystics are asking players to do things they are fundamentally uncomfortable with. When a coaching staff encourages non-shooters to “chuck” from deep under the guise of “player development,” it is a classic hallmark of a tanking team. They are forcing a style of play that they know will fail in the short term, ensuring a lower seed and a better chance at a transformative draft pick.
Flash vs. Substance: The Georgia Amore Dilemma
Perhaps no player embodies the “style over substance” era of this rebuild better than Georgia Amore. On any given night, Amore can provide a highlight reel that would make her look like an All-Star. Her “tween-tween-tween” dribble combinations and flashy step-back threes are tailor-made for social media. However, the reality of her impact on the floor is often much bleaker.
As noted by analysts, Amore is a player who will give you four points and four assists while coughing up three turnovers. She looks exceptional while doing very little to actually move the needle toward a victory. This “flashiness” is essential for a tanking team; it keeps the fans in the seats and the highlights on the news, preventing total demoralization while the team quietly slides down the standings. It is “losing in style,” a way to keep the brand alive while the competitive fire is temporarily extinguished.
The Interior Logjam
The Mystics have focused heavily on interior talent, boasting names like Shakira Austin, Kiki Iriafen, and Lauren Betts. While these are elite players in the paint, the lack of outside shooting makes their jobs nearly impossible. Without the threat of a long-range shot, opposing defenses can simply pack the paint, neutralizing Washington’s biggest strengths.
Shakira Austin and Kiki Iriafen are high-motor players, but they “can’t shoot for shit” from the perimeter. Even Lauren Betts, who shows promise at the free-throw line and in the post, cannot be expected to carry the offensive load when the floor is constantly shrunk by defenders who don’t respect the Mystics’ guards. This roster is fundamentally unbalanced, and in professional sports, imbalance is rarely an accident. It is a choice.
A Trend, Not a Fluke
For those who believe the Mystics could surprise people this year, the history of late last season provides a grim counter-argument. The Washington Mystics didn’t just stumble into this rebuild; they fell off a cliff at the end of the previous season. They lost 14 of their last 16 games—a stretch that accounted for more than a third of their schedule.
While they started hot and were even ahead of powerhouses like the Las Vegas Aces at one point, the collapse was total. They traded away key pieces like Sykes and seemed to lose their competitive identity almost overnight. The players on the floor might be playing hard—and by all accounts, they are—but the structure around them has been dismantled.
The Front Office Strategy
There is a saying in sports: “Players don’t tank, but front offices do.” This seems to be the case in Washington. The departure of key management personnel and the installation of a Coach/GM hybrid role is a neon sign pointing toward a rebuild. When a team fires a GM who wants to win and replaces them with someone willing to take the “long view,” the intentions are clear.
The goal isn’t to win 30 games and be mediocre. The goal is to be bad enough to draft a player who can help you win 60 games in three years. If the Spurs had tried to be “okay” in Wembanyama’s first year, they wouldn’t have been in a position to draft Stefon Castle. They would have been stuck in the middle—the most dangerous place to be in professional sports. The Mystics have chosen to avoid the middle by heading straight for the bottom.
Conclusion: A Long Road Ahead
For the fans in D.C., the upcoming season will be a test of patience. The Washington Mystics are going to be “way worse than people think,” not because they lack talent, but because that talent is being deployed in a way that prioritizes discovery over victory. We will see players chucking threes they can’t hit, guards dribbling into turnovers, and interior stars struggling against triple-teams.
This is the price of a “soft tank.” It is a calculated, painful, and often ugly process. But if the gamble pays off, and the Mystics can secure the elite talent needed to complement their young core, this season of “sucking” will be remembered as the foundation of a new dynasty. For now, however, the only thing fans can do is buckle up and prepare for a very long year.
