WNBA Expansion Draft winners and losers: Fire choose upside, Tempo load up on shooting originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
The Portland Fire and Toronto Tempo’s first wins — and losses — come before the first tip-off of the 2026 WNBA season.
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The WNBA has just conducted an expansion draft that has filled out both the Tempo and Fire rosters before the rookie draft will see both teams make a first-round selection on April 13.
We’ve already gotten a sense of how Portland and Toronto want to build their rosters ahead of the draft. But which team is better? Who won the expansion draft?
Let’s analyze some winners and losers from an interesting Friday afternoon in the WNBA.
MORE: WNBA Expansion Draft grades 2026: Live results and analysis for every pick
WNBA Expansion Draft winners & losers 2026
Winner: Bridget Carleton
Carleton — along with 76 other WNBA players — is an unrestricted free agent as of next week. But the Fire are the only team that can offer her a maximum salary after Portland took the Canadian international with the first pick in the expansion draft.
It’s a nice spot to be in if you’re Carleton. The Fire obviously think highly of her and did their homework: Carleton is a good shooter and a good defender with high-level playoff experience from her time in Minnesota under Cheryl Reeve.
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The Fire roster is full of upside picks driven by analytics; Carleton is the first big swing for GM Vanja Cernivec and head coach Alex Sarama. If Portland sells Carleton on quick contention with this model, this is a deal that should work out for both sides.
Winner: Marina Mabrey
Like Carleton, Mabrey is an unrestricted free agent who can accept a max contract from an expansion team — or sign with a contender for a lower. This puts Mabrey in a privileged position.
Mabrey has not always been the most consistent player, and if she plays for the Tempo, Toronto will mark her fifth team in eight WNBA seasons. But she boasts four seasons with a 35 percent success rate or better from 3-point range.
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On a Tempo team that has loaded up on volume shooters — potentially around a big like Lauren Betts — she has the talent to be the best of them.
Loser: Chicago Sky
I have given up trying to figure out how the Sky operate.
Earlier this week, Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca traded the 17th overall pick in the 2026 WNBA draft for Portland’s pick, 21st overall. Chicago also sent the 26th pick (via the New York Liberty) to Toronto for… nothing.
These moves “exempted” the Sky from the expansion draft, and Chicago still has its fifth overall pick that it could use to take someone like Flau’jae Johnson, who was a teammate of franchise player Angel Reese at LSU.
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But in essence, the Sky moved down four spots in the draft order to “run it back” with a roster that went 10-34 last year and has an unhappy star in Reese as the face of the team. That doesn’t seem optimal.
Loser: Las Vegas Aces
Leaving Aaliyah Nye unprotected was… a choice.
Nye showed plenty of promise as a rookie in 2025, even if the shot didn’t come around as expected following her NCAA career at Illinois and Alabama. The Aces’ choice to move on from her already may have been a difficult one, but it also strikes me as an illogical one.
The Las Vegas roster is about to get very costly. A’ja Wilson and Jackie Young both are poised to sign new $1.4 million-per-year max contracts that will chew up nearly 40 percent of the Aces’ cap. Keeping cheap, young players on the roster and developing them is manna to an expensive squad in the middle of a championship window.
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As the saying goes, “flags fly forever.” The Aces have won three championships in four years. And Las Vegas has plenty of star power to withstand losing Nye — Wilson, Young, Chelsea Gray and Jewell Loyd is an unenviable core.
But I have to question the team’s process here after they let Kate Martin leave for Golden State in last year’s expansion draft and watched her blossom with the Valkyries.
