Chicago Sky Sell Picks to Protect Team from WNBA Expansion Draft

The vast majority of the WNBA’s players remain unsigned with free agency starting next week. That didn’t stop the Chicago Sky from executing a pair of trades Wednesday night.

The Sky announced two separate trades Wednesday with the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo, the two WNBA expansion teams, that will block both teams from selecting a Chicago player in Friday afternoon’s expansion draft. 

The Sky sent the No. 17 pick in the 2026 collegiate draft to the Fire and the No. 26 pick to the Tempo. The Sky, who finished tied for the league’s worst record last year, will still have three picks, one in each round: No. 5, No. 21 overall, No. 32 overall.

While the trade is novel, it is expressly permitted by the expansion draft rules. The rules lay out two ways an expansion team can make trades: 

1. An agreement to select a particular player from an Unprotected List and trade that player to a team other than her existing team,
2. An agreement to select (or not select) a particular player from such trading team’s Unprotected List

The Sky’s trades take advantage of the second clause.

In anticipation of the expansion draft, the existing 13 teams were required to select five “Protected Players” from a roster list—which included all the players that the team had the rights to by the end of the 2025 regular season. Teams submitted their lists to the league Friday, but the lists are not publicly available.

One unprotected player per team is available for the Fire and Tempo to select Friday. Each team is only allowed to select one unrestricted free agent, severely restricting the available player pool because nearly every league veteran is unsigned.

The collegiate draft is April 13. Free agency will start at some point before that.