“Be careful what you wish for” is a cliche for a reason. As an expansion draft enthusiast, I was disappointed when the WNBA’s first expansion draft since 2008 ended with the Golden State Valkyries making 11 of 12 picks without a single trade. At the time, I thought the Valkyries had made a mistake by not making a trade. That turned out to be wrong. Golden State made the playoffs in its inaugural season largely thanks to its expansion draft. Kayla Thornton and Veronica Burton had the best seasons of their careers, and Golden State received solid contributions from nearly all 11 of their draftees. In hindsight, you would say the existing teams, specifically the Liberty, Fever, and Sun, made a mistake by not making a trade with Golden State to protect their players. Burton looks like a better prospect than anyone currently on the Connecticut roster, while Thornton and Temi Fagbenle would have likely played significant minutes for the injury-ravaged teams they left.

You could argue the real losers were WNBA fans, since without any trades, the expansion draft was less exciting than it could have been. I was really hoping this expansion draft would be more exciting; I just didn’t want that excitement to involve my hometown Chicago Sky overvaluing their own players yet again.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, the Sky swapped second-round picks with the Portland Fire, moving down four spots in exchange for Portland not selecting anyone on Chicago’s unprotected list. They made a similar deal with Toronto, sending a second-round pick outright (No. 26 overall) to protect their roster from the expansion draft. While I hate these trades for the Sky, I think it is a good piece of business for both expansion teams.

Chicago finished the 2025 season tied for the worst record in the league despite not controlling their own draft pick and thus having no incentive to lose down the stretch. Any time you have a chance to keep a team of that caliber together, you have to do it. All joking aside, I completely fail to see the point of this trade for Chicago. They were definitely protecting Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso, Ariel Atkins, and Ajsa Sivka, which means they could only protect one of their other 2025 draft picks: Hailey Van Lith, Maddy Westbeld, and Aicha Coulibaly, or mid-season free agent signing Sevgi Uzun. I cannot fathom why the Sky felt like that was a fate they needed to avoid.Hailey Van Lith and Sevgi Uzun look like backup point guards in this league. It's too soon to give up on Van Lith, but the knock on her coming into the draft was that she wasn’t good enough to play on the ball, and her skill set wasn’t conducive to playing off the ball. She did nothing in 361 minutes last season to change that evaluation. That being said, she should be good enough to be Chicago’s backup point guard next season, which means there was no reason to protect Sevgi Uzun.

Uzun provided much-needed stability at the point guard position after she signed with Chicago at the end of July, though that says more about Chicago’s point guard play than it does about her abilities. Uzun is 28 years old and is a career 21.9 percent three-point shooter in the WNBA. Point guards who can’t shoot are the most replaceable commodity in the WNBA. Even if Chicago lost Uzun to an expansion team, they could have found someone on the league minimum to replace her production. In fact, they probably could have just waited for her new team to cut her during training camp.

Aicha Coulibaly’s season was lost due to an ACL injury she suffered in college. We have no idea what she’s going to be in the WNBA, but given Chicago’s history in the draft, I’m not expecting much. She never shot more than 25 percent on threes in any of her five college seasons, and the last thing Chicago needs is another non-shooter.

Maddy Westbeld showed signs of life as a rookie, but it is unclear if she will ever be a rotation player on a good team. I would be hard-pressed to say she is significantly better than whoever Chicago would have drafted at 17, or even 26, in the upcoming draft.

Obviously, Chicago values these players more than I do, though I can’t fathom why. Part of the problem with this trade, however, is if they were really desperate to keep another one of these players, they could have just left Ariel Atkins unprotected. Atkins proved in Washington that she can be a complementary player on a good team, but she doesn’t have a good enough supporting cast in Chicago to allow her to play to her strengths. They’ll either have to core her or throw a bunch of money at her to stay, and while I’m skeptical Chicago could have done anything better in free agency, that’s hardly a reason to go out of their way to keep her.

The only saving grace for the Sky is that they didn’t give up a whole lot. If they really wanted to keep all eight players and bring back Courtney Vandersloot, drafting three more players would have eaten up all of the roster spots. I think moving down from No. 17 actually hurts more than giving up No. 26, but both are reasonable given the roster crunch. I just think the need to protect all of those players is incredibly shortsighted.I think we can analyze Portland and Toronto together, since these deals are more or less the same. We can argue over whether moving up four spots in the second round is more valuable than adding another pick outright later in the round. I think both are fine, especially when they gave up very little, or perhaps nothing at all, to do so. At least 10 teams left better players unprotected than Chicago. Seattle probably isn’t getting anyone selected for a second consecutive expansion draft, and while I would probably rather have Nikolina Milic and Olivia Nelson-Ododa from Connecticut over anyone Chicago left unprotected, reasonable minds can disagree. That means that anyone selected from Chicago’s roster in the expansion draft would be either the 11th or 12th player on the roster. And that is before they add anyone in the draft or free agency. In short, even if those teams took someone from Chicago, that player probably wasn’t making the roster. As we said above, there is a reason Sevgi Uzun was available off the scrap heap in July, and she was arguably the best player Chicago would have left unprotected.So Portland and Toronto get a little bit of draft capital in exchange for the rights to a player that probably wouldn’t have made the roster out of training camp. It isn’t a home run, but it is a solid first step as these teams try to emulate the Golden State Valkyries and make the playoffs in their inaugural seasons.