NEW YORK — The Washington Mystics may have made the best decision of the 2023 WNBA Draft. They used their No. 4 overall pick, which they acquired from Los Angeles in an April 2022 trade, to take Iowa State's Stephanie Soares. And then minutes later, they sent her to the Dallas Wings for a duet of future draft picks.
April 11, 2023 at 7:24 pm EDT, which they acquired from Los Angeles in an April 2022 trade, to take Iowa State's Stephanie Soares. And then minutes later, they sent her to the Dallas Wings for a duet of future draft picks.extra COVID year allowed to players
The extra year of eligibility players can take through 2025 has muddied draft pictures, an issue certainly frustrating for teams attempting to plan in what has largely been an easy-to-determine WNBA Draft landscape in the past. The league requires players to complete at least three seasons, or meet certain. There are no one-and-done collegiate players as there are in the NBA.
Clark, one of the game’s most prolific scorers and crafty passers, will be a senior next season after leading Iowa to the national championship game for the first time in history. Her logo 3s are wow’d and awed by basketball fans and non-basketball fans alike. She led the nation in scoring her first two seasons and ranked second as a junior. As a freshman, she was third in the nation in assists per game and first the past two years.
Her production, vision and leadership are similarly lauded, and this time last year, the talk was if Bueckers, or any other star, should have to wait three years to enter the draft. Name, image and likeness deals changed that conversation, and Bueckers has some of the most lucrative NIL deals in women’s basketball. But the knock on her draft stock is health.
NC State star Diamond Johnson, a 5-5 guard who started at Rutgers, is also a part of the traditional '24 class as is North Carolina's Deja Kelly, a 5-8 guard who can take over games with her dangerous midrange jumper.
Aneesah Morrow, the 2022 Freshman of the Year at DePaul, is a part of that traditional 2025 draft class. She entered her name into the transfer portal and could up her stock more with a bigger program.
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