Quiet WNBA Expansion Draft Clears Way for Busy Free Agency

The WNBA expansion draft had the potential for fireworks with more than 100 players set to enter free agency. But neither expansion franchise walked away with a true superstar.

The Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo unveiled their selections for the 2026 WNBA expansion draft Friday afternoon on ESPN. The most notable selections were Minnesota Lynx forward Bridget Carleton, who the Fire chose with the No. 1 pick, and Connecticut Sun wing Marina Mabrey, who will join the Tempo. 

Carleton has been the Lynx’s starting forward for the past two seasons, including last year when the team finished with the league’s best record. Mabrey is a borderline All-Star player who has averaged double-digits in scoring in all but one of her seven WNBA seasons.

The majority of the other selections Friday were younger players like 2024 first-round pick Carla Leite—also an expansion draft selection by the Golden State Valkyries last year—or European veterans like Julie Allemand, the Tempo’s first pick. 

The expansion teams had two rounds to make up to 12 selections, and could select just one player per existing team in each round (besides the Chicago Sky, which gave up draft picks to the Fire and Tempo in exchange for them not selecting Sky players in expansion). The 13 existing teams protected five players each from a roster list based on the players they had the rights to at the end of the 2025 season. The protected players list was not revealed.

Carleton and Mabrey were the only players with at least five years of experience who were drafted. Each team was only allowed to select one of those players. While they are both free agents, they will be given the “Potential Unrestricted Free Agent” tag, which gives their respective teams a chance to offer a supermax deal worth $1.4 million in 2026. 

With the number of free agents available, there was a chance existing teams would risk leaving some star players unprotected, especially after superstars like Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu, and A’ja Wilson publicly declared before the draft that they planned to stay with their current organizations, despite being free agents. 

Because the protected lists were not revealed, it’s unclear whether there were any All-Star players available, or whether the two expansion franchises passed on any stars. 

Fire GM Vanja Černivec said the organization identified before the draft that they wanted Carleton to be their Potential Unrestricted Free Agent.

“Bridget immediately stood out,” Černivec said on ESPN. “Then the strategy went: ‘How do we make sure she ends up on our roster? The obvious logic was she’s going to be our No. 1 pick.”

For Tempo GM Monica Wright Rogers, the decision not to select Mabrey with their first pick was strategic since they knew the Fire could not select any other Potential Unrestricted Free Agent.

“Portland selected their UFA first, so we didn’t necessarily need to select our UFA right away,” Wright Rogers said on ESPN. “And so we went for teams that had more valuable players that we knew could compete and put us on a path for success immediately.”

In the Tempo press conference after the draft, Wright Rogers noted that she wanted to select a core-eligible unrestricted free agent. Core designated players are signed to a one-year supermax contract, and can only sign or negotiate contracts with the team that designated them. 

Rogers said this decision was made to open up opportunities to attract other players in the upcoming free agency period.

With the expansion draft done, the WNBA will soon enter free agency that may come with plenty of movement given the number available players. The league has yet to announce when free agency will begin, but it’s expected to start before the WNBA rookie draft on April 13. 

The season tips off May 8.