Ultimate WNBA trade deadline guide: Buyers, sellers, trade candidates and how the new CBA impacts it all
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- The WNBA's 2026 trade deadline is set for Sunday at 3 p.m. ET, after which teams cannot make trades for the remainder of the season
- Kelsey Plum averaged 23.9 points before her June 21 leg injury; the LA Sparks are weighing whether to move the All-Star guard ahead of her impending free agency, with the Golden State Valkyries floated as a potential landing spot
- The WNBA's hard salary cap of $7 million this season makes in-season trades structurally harder than in the NBA's soft-cap system, and WNBA teams cannot trade draft picks as far out as NBA teams can
- A widened lottery field has created more sellers than usual: the 8th-place Washington Mystics hold a 4.5-game cushion over the 9th-place Portland Fire, and league expansion to 15 teams kept playoff spots at eight
- The 2027 draft class featuring JuJu Watkins, Madison Booker, and Hannah Hidalgo is unusually deep, giving lottery teams extra incentive to acquire extra picks rather than push for the 8th seed
- The new CBA raised max contracts from 14% of the cap last season to 17% this season, making it harder to absorb a max player not living up to the deal and potentially harder to trade someone on a max
- The Chicago Sky are positioned as sellers at 13th place, six games out of the playoff cut; they owe the Mystics a 2027 first-round pick swap and their 2028 first-round pick outright, limiting their ability to tank but pushing them to recoup any draft capital
Why it matters: With 15 teams but still only 8 playoff spots, a 4.5-game gap between the 8th-place Mystics and 9th-place Fire has opened with two months left, creating more sellers than the WNBA typically sees at the deadline. A deep 2027 draft class headlined by JuJu Watkins adds extra incentive for non-contenders to cash out, potentially reshaping title races if a star like Plum is moved.
