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SEATTLE — A day after the Seattle Storm’s 2022 season ended with a 97-92 loss to the Las Vegas Aces in Game 4 of their WNBA semifinal matchup, the team held exit interviews amid uncertainty about who will return to the building for training camp next spring.
That starts with WNBA MVP runner-up Breanna Stewart, who will be an unrestricted free agent for the second year in a row. Since the Storm signed fellow All-Star Jewell Loyd to a two-year contract as their primary player last off-season, the designation is no longer available for use with Stewart.
Before Stewart decides whether she wants to continue her career in Seattle after winning championships in 2018 and ’20 with the Storm, who drafted her No. 1 overall out of UConn in 2016, she must first determine whether the rule inbound prioritization of the WNBA will allow her to play in the league at all next season.
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Stewart said Wednesday. “It is indeed. I just do not know. I know I’m going to Australia soon [to play for U.S. women’s national team in the FIBA Women’s World Cup]. I will play for Fener [Turkish club Fenerbahce] in January. We’ll see what happens with prioritization, which is a whole other game.”
In the first year of the priority rule, players with more than two years of experience are required to report to their WNBA teams by opening night. Apart from a few exceptions regarding national team play and personal emergencies, any player who has not returned from overseas play by that date will be ineligible for the entire 2023 season.
That’s a problem for Stewart, one of the WNBA’s most famous players, who usually plays for international clubs during the league’s offseason. The Turkish Women’s Basketball Super League has yet to announce a schedule, but last season’s finals (won by Fenerbahce) ended on May 15 – nine days after the WNBA regular season began.
It’s possible the overlap could be avoided, especially because the WNBA’s opening night could fall later in 2023 without a major international competition like the World Cup on the schedule. However, the league announced earlier this year that the 2023 regular season would expand to a record 40 games, four more than the teams played this year.
Priority is also an issue for Storm forward Gabby Williams, who signed to play with French club Asvel in 2022-23 and is also a WNBA free agent. The French LFB’s regular season will run until April 25, leaving a limited window to complete the playoffs before the WNBA deadline.
“My schedule is not final right now,” Williams said. “Everything, of course, depends on the playoffs. I would love to come back to the WNBA, but what’s best for my career, what the WNBA decides to do with players like me is complicated.”
If Stewart is able to play in the WNBA in 2023, she will have her choice of teams. Although she always considered her return to the Storm last offseason a foregone conclusion to be part of teammate Sue Bird’s final WNBA campaign, Yahoo! Sports reported that she met with New York Liberty owners Joe and Clara Tsai.
“It really reminded me of being recruited in college,” Stewart said of the free agency experience. “I just had the opportunity to get an insight, to see how other franchises and organizations do things. Obviously with Sue coming back it was very much a given that I was going back to Seattle, but I was able to test the waters and I will do it again.”
Watching the grade Bird received after completing a two-decade career spent entirely with the Storm will factor into Stewart’s decision-making in free agency.
“You can’t help but think about the way Sue has been here her whole career,” she said, “the way this city has always protected her and wanted that. It will be a decision that really Martha [Xargay, Stewart’s wife] and I will probably talk about the next months and hopefully it will become much clearer for me.”
Stewart and Williams are the most prominent of the seven free agents on Seattle’s 2022 roster. Only two players, Lloyd and center Mercedes Russell, are under contract. Russell was limited to five games in 2022 with a non-basketball injury that caused a recurring, atypical headache syndrome, though treatment resolved it and allowed her to resume her work toward basketball training.
In addition to Bird, backup point guard Brian January also announced his retirement at the end of the season, leaving the Storm’s depth chart empty at the position. Seattle did select Australian guard Jade Melbourne in the third round of the 2022 draft and retain his rights, but Storm coach Noel Quinn has made it clear the team will add experience this offseason through a trade or free agency.
“Point guard is an important piece, the first piece to building your team,” Quinn said. “Do you think you have an incredible leader at that position, a point guard, to lead Stewie, to lead Jewell, to lead us to where we need to go. The backup position is just as important.”
Bird, who has started more than three-quarters of the games in Seattle’s franchise history (580 of 764), cautioned against the idea of a new point guard trying to fill the same role she filled with the Storm.
“I understand why the narrative is filling the shoes,” Bird said, “but I think whoever becomes the next point guard on this team, they’ve just got to make it their own and that’s all they can focus on. It’s not about comparison.”
As Byrd noted, the bullish outlook for Seattle with so few players under contract means the Storm have money to spend in free agency. Lloyd, who becomes the Storm’s longest-tenured player following Bird’s retirement, is confident free agents will show interest in joining her.
“I think I’m at a place now where I think people want to play with me, play with Stewie, play here. Taste what we’ve had,” Lloyd said. “Obviously you have to recruit the players you want a little bit.
“At the same time, I’m going to let things happen organically and naturally. I’m not a college recruiter. If people want to play with me, we’ll talk about it, we’ll have a conversation about it, and if it makes sense, then OK. If it doesn’t make sense, fine.”
No player will be more important to recruit than Stewart.
On Tuesday, she and Lloyd broke their own record for combined scoring in a playoff game with 71 points. Stewart’s 42 tied Angel McCaughtry for the most in the WNBA postseason, and Lloyd’s 29 were her playoff career highs.
“She’s someone I really enjoy playing with,” Stewart said. “Just thinking about where we started when we were 14, 15 to where we are now, it definitely makes you think about how exciting we can continue to be as we get into our prime, into our prime. It’s a duo that’s hard to stop.”
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