It is no secret that the Washington Mystics are a team living a double life. On the one hand, they are the youngest WNBA team, have two All-Stars with Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen, and are above .500. But on the other, the Mystics’ front office is prioritizing youth, nearly to a fault. Washington made no serious attempt to sign free agents from other teams before the 2026 season. And most players, including Citron and Iriafen, are on rookie scale contracts.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that even
with the new WNBA Collective Bargaining Agreement that the Mystics have one of the lowest team salaries in the league. According to Her Hoop Stats, the Mystics have the second lowest total team salary at $5,163,161. The Portland Fire are the only team with a lower team salary at $4,987,988.
Much has been said about the WNBA’s salary cap being at $7,000,000 this season which is allowing players to make multiple times what they made last year. But what about a salary floor?
The new WNBA CBA is available here. In page 89, the CBA states that the salary floor is 85 percent of the cap. In 2026, that is $5,950,000. The Mystics and the Fire are the only teams with total salaries below $5,950,000. So assuming these salaries are 100 percent accurate and the season ended today, then what happens?
The salary cap is there to prevent teams from trying to “overpay” for super teams. The floor is there to prevent owners from being “cheap.” So the Mystics will have to pay $5,950,000 to players anyway. The shortfall is $786,839. That amount will be paid to each player proportionately based on how much of the team salary the player is getting.
Shakira Austin is Washington’s highest paid player this season with a salary of $1,190,000 or about 23 percent of the Mystics’ team salary. Assuming the shortfall is this figure, Austin will receive about 23.06 percent of that, or another check of $181,296 on top of her regular salary. Other players will receive smaller checks, relative to their cap hit compared to Washington’s collective salary.
On the one hand, one can call this a bonus check. It is. But on the other, this extra money is because the Mystics didn’t sign players to a total salary cap hitting the floor. Team front offices are generally disincentivized from not meeting the salary floor, so it’s possible that the Mystics (or the Fire) could sign or trade for players with higher salaries before the playoff waiver deadline on Aug. 24. The trade deadline is on Aug. 2.
Before anyone accuses Michael Winger and Sydney Johnson for being cheap for cheap’s sake with the Mystics, it is clear that Winger’s strategy is to emulate the Wizards’ deconstruction phase from 2023-26. The only difference is that the Mystics were able to start deconstruction with two first round picks from the 2025 season who are legitimate All-Stars. And they’ve made the Mystics too good to tank unlike the Wizards, pre-AJ Dybantsa.
