A sprint to the regular season started immediately after the players’ union and WNBA finally agreed upon a landmark collective-bargaining agreement. The WNBA offseason will begin with the expansion draft, followed almost immediately by free agency, which is rumored to open the week of April 6. The free agency will lead directly into the WNBA draft. The draft will conclude, and training camp will start soon thereafter.
It all starts with the expansion draft, though, and for the Lynx, their offseason plans hinge on its outcome. This year’s expansion draft is unlike any other. For starters, two teams will be joining the league: the Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo. Last year, the Golden State Valkyries entered the league alone.
The rules for the expansion also changed because over 70% of WNBA players are now unrestricted free agents. The league will allow each expansion team to select one unprotected unrestricted free agent. However, the players the expansion teams choose won’t be forced to play for those teams. Instead, it gives the expansion team the player’s rights as if they had played the 2025 season with them. In some cases, that allows the expansion team to offer a more lucrative deal to the player.
Outside of that, the process will be fairly normal. Each team will take turns drafting non-protected players, and each team can select only one player per team. They can choose to select up to 12 players in the expansion draft, or they can forfeit picks and take their chances in free agency at any time. The draft will start with Portland selecting their unrestricted free agent pick and alternate from there. Each existing team will be able to protect five players from being drafted.
The Lynx are in a unique position. As it currently stands, only second-year forward Ola Kosu is under contract and committed to play 2026 with the Lynx. Miai Hirsch and Dorka Juhasz are under contract with the Lynx. However, Hirsch has yet to play a WNBA game, and Juhasz sat out the entire 2025 season to focus on life outside basketball and playing in Europe this winter.
Every other player on the 2025 roster is a free agent and could be selected as the expansion team’s unrestricted free agent signing if the Lynx don’t protect them. Conversely, Kosu, Juhasz, and Hirsch could be selected in the traditional rounds of the draft if the Lynx don’t protect them.
The Lynx have four players who are locks to be protected
Napheesa Collier is a back-to-back MVP runner-up, 2024 DPOY, and the face of the franchise. The Lynx have to protect her, even if the chances of her signing with an expansion team are slim. Minnesota would lose the right to sign her to a home-team supermax contract if she were selected. That would create ramifications throughout the organization, given what Collier had meant to the franchise.
Kayla McBride has been the heart and soul of the Lynx perimeter defense. Even at 33, she provides a dynamic scoring punch from behind the arc or off the dribble. With Collier expected to miss some time at the beginning of the season, McBride will become imperative to keeping the team afloat in Collier’s absence.
McBride has also left breadcrumbs of her interest in returning, including staying in Minneapolis, working out at Mayo Clinic Square, and attending the Gophers women’s basketball team’s NCAA tournament games, all of which indicate she’s a lock to return.
There is a case for not protecting her and hoping she declines a contract if she’s selected in the expansion draft. However, McBride would be an appealing player to start a franchise with, especially given her leadership and the all-around play that has made her a multi-time All-Star. For the Lynx, it makes sense to avoid the potential chaos and protect the battle-tested vet.
Alanna Smith is next on the protection list. She’s coming off a Co-Defensive Player of the Year season in which she anchored the Lynx defense all season. She defends the rim, can guard on the perimeter, and the Lynx have based their entire defense on Smith’s back-line help and switching ability. That fact alone makes her imperative to protect. However, she’s also a gifted screener on offense, with a unique ability to shift her hips and dive to the rim or fade outside for a three.
The chemistry she’s built with Cheryl Reeve has grown to include Smith, who also plays an integral part in the offense, with nearly every possession starting with a Smith screen. Like McBride, there could be a case for not protecting Smith and trusting that she would decline a supermax from an expansion team. Still, the reality of protecting her and avoiding a potential breakup makes life a lot easier for the Lynx.
Courtney Williams rounds out my picks for the Lynx’s protected players. The all-star guard concluded her second season with the Lynx as one of the best mid-range shooters in the WNBA, finishing with 6.2 assists per game, the second most of her career.
Her chemistry with Smith and Collier is a major reason the Lynx finished as the WNBA’s top offense a year ago. Williams is like McBride, a player a team would love to start a franchise with; her passion and ability to adapt and mentor younger players would be great. Like Smith and McBride, protecting Williams simply makes her resignation easier.
The final protection spot will be a very difficult decision
The established options
They could protect Bridget Carleton, who started the past two seasons at small forward. She’s a gifted defender and sharpshooter from beyond the arc. Carleton has worked her way up the Lynx system from a non-rotational player to an integral part of the team. However, they have never featured her on offense and could have reached her potential as a valuable starter rather than an All-Star.
They could protect DiJonai Carrington, the player they acquired last season at the deadline, for former second-overall pick Diamond Miller. Carrington offers a defensive tenacity that earned her an All-Defense team nod in 2024 and Most Improved Player honors.
Offensively, she plays with a pace that was not something the Lynx desperately needed last year. Carrington missed games last season with a shoulder injury before breaking her foot and winding up on the injured list and missing most of the Lynx’s playoff run.
Natisha Hiedeman served as the backup guard and the fire to Williams’ ice last season. Hiedeman excelled at attacking the basket, finishing in the top 10 in rim finishing despite being an undersized guard. Together with Williams, she formed StudBudz, which took the internet by storm. Hiedeman comes with a winning pedigree, making the playoffs every year of her career and reaching the finals with Connecticut.
She finished second in 6POY in 2025 for the Lynx. The reality with Hiedeman is that she has the talent of a starting guard in the WNBA and will likely have contract offers paying her as such, which could be out of the Lynx’s price range.
Jessica Shepard was the backup big last season and excelled in her role. She had a triple-double off the bench. She excelled as a rebounder and a post playmaker, moving the ball, but also showed a scoring punch off the bench that puts her in a similar situation to Hiedeman. Shepard is a starting-caliber center in the WNBA, and it’s hard to imagine she won’t receive contract offers that pay her accordingly. Shepard finished third in 6POY, right behind Hiedeman in 2025.
The unknown
Juhasz also has a case to be protected. The former UConn Husky started 27 games as a rookie and showed promise, averaging 6.0 points per game, 6.5 rebounds, and 2.6 assists. However, in the 2024 season, her role shifted drastically when the Lynx went from rebuilding to contending. Her minutes dropped from 24.2 to 16.1, and she became a bench player who played sparingly as Smith and Collier took the starting spots.
With Shepard returning to the team, Juhasz took the 2025 WNBA season off and decided to take a break from basketball. She returned to Euroleague play and even won league MVP honors for February. However, Juhasz has not publicly committed to returning to the Lynx in 2026. Her role would likely remain as a bench big.
My safe bet
Kosu for me remains the safe bet to protect. Minnesota has her under team control for two more seasons. At just 20 years old, she showed promise for the Lynx last season. She’s raw as a shooter but has an innate sense of where to be on the floor. Kosu’s physicality and athleticism left the team in awe all season, something Reeve explained to me last year.
“It’s what stood out for her. Sometimes, when you watch video, it doesn’t do it justice,” Reeve said. “So, like her first shoot around, she did a couple things where there were audible gasps like “JESUS””
Kose is no sure thing to become a WNBA star. Still, she’s at least under contract, and the Lynx can anticipate her being at training camp. The raw tools and the year of investment the Lynx spent putting into her development, at least for me, suggest that she will be the fifth player protected.
The reality of the expansion draft and this free agency for the Lynx is that some fans will be leaving. The first step will be to protect and survive the expansion draft. However, free agency will start the following week.
It’s unlikely we will ever know who they protect. We might get hints or clues from who moves or gets picked on Friday. However, with the CBA completed and the offseason set to unfold at breakneck speed, we will know soon who is on the Lynx, even if we never know who they protected.
