The Seattle Storm are at a crossroads.
Do they want to keep competing for championships right now, or do they want to start a rebuild around Dominique Malonga, the No. 2 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft?
The thing is, they haven’t really competed in recent years despite their efforts. At least not deep into the playoffs.
Was last year’s first-round exit the last straw? Will the front office give the organization a new direction under first-year head coach Sonia Raman?
Here’s more on the three biggest decisions
facing Seattle. And Storm fans, don’t hesitate to share your hopes, fears, wishes and worries in the comments.
1. Should Seattle keep 35-year-old superstars and unrestricted free agents Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins?
The Storm haven’t been out of the first round of the playoffs since Breanna Stewart left and Sue Bird retired after the 2022 season.
In 2023, they rode with Jewell Loyd to an 11-29 record. Instead of a rebuild, they signed then-33-year-olds Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins as free agents during the 2024 offseason. In 2024, with Loyd, they finished in fifth place and lost in the first round. In 2025, without Loyd but with four All-Stars (Ogwumike, Diggins, Gabby Williams and Brittney Sykes), they finished seventh and took a game from the eventual champion Las Vegas Aces before first-round elimination.
Is it time to end the Ogwumike-Diggins experiment?
Malonga has been hailed as having incredible upside, potentially even more than 2025 No. 1 pick Paige Bueckers, which is saying a whole lot.
She is 6-foot-6, athletic and a dunker. Her rookie averages of 7.7 points and 4.6 rebounds weren’t super high, but they were weighed down by limited playing time early in the season. She ended up having five games of at least 15 points and seven rebounds; all five came in August. Then, she had double-doubles in two of the three playoff games, including the win.
At Unrivaled, she registered 16.4 points (No. 16 in the league), 9.4 rebounds (No. 5) and 0.9 blocks (No. 11) per game while shooting 55.1 percent from the field (No. 6). So, despite the slow start in the W, she has generated a lot of buzz, and it’s clear that fans want her to be the future of the franchise.
Ogwumike and Diggins are all-time greats and still have a lot to give, but age is something to at least keep in mind about your players when they hit 35. Both will be 36 by the end of the 2026 season. Besides, is another first-round exit really worth it? Wouldn’t it be better to give up some talent this year in order to make runs at championships in the not-so-distant future?
If the Storm do keep the duo, or one of them, they have to be careful not to overpay. We’re not talking about prime Ogwumike or prime Diggins.
I’m curious what other WNBA fans think of Ogwumike’s and Diggins’ potential at this point in their careers. I think it’s very high for both. As our Josh Felton said, “The fit might be complex, but the talent is too special to ignore.” Do you agree, or is it just time to move on?
As for Malonga, do you think she will end up being an all-time great player? Or are people getting too carried away based on what she did in Unrivaled?
2. Who should the Storm select with the No. 3 pick in the 2026 WNBA Draft?
The good news for Seattle is that they are in an almost-perfect position to continue building around Malonga because they have the No. 3 pick in the 2026 draft.
I’m big on former Notre Dame and TCU point guard Olivia Miles at that spot, if she’s available. She is a generational passing prospect, who also is an elite rebounder with length and turned into a high-volume scorer as a college senior in the 2025-26 season. She would be a great person to bring in to get the ball to Malonga.
With that being said, the memory of shooting just 28.8 percent from 3 (dead last in the W) in 2024 still stings for the Storm. Last year, they improved to 34.2 (fifth), but Ogwumike (36.7) and Diggins (36.5) were a big part of that, and we don’t know if they will be back.
Could this potentially cause Seattle to take a look at UConn’s Azzi Fudd? Fudd was fifth in the country this year with a 3-point clip of 44.7 percent, and was first with 117 makes! Like Miles as a passer, Fudd is a potentially generational long-distance shooter.
Our Eric Nemchock’s latest mock draft considered Miles to be too tempting for the Minnesota Lynx to pass on at No. 2. Eric then has the Storm taking Fudd. ESPN’s latest mock, which came out on Feb. 13, has Fudd going No. 1 and Miles going No. 3 to Seattle. Eric has Awa Fam going No. 1; ESPN has Fam going No. 2.
If for some reason Fudd and Miles go first and second (which is possible because of Fudd’s ties to No. 1 pick holder Dallas’ Bueckers and Miles’ recently risen stock), it might be tempting to have two do-it-all frontcourt players in Malonga and Fam, with Fam starting alongside Dom at the 4. However, there would also be a really good player in center Ezi Magbegor in the mix. Magbegor has been cored by the Storm.
If Miles and Fudd are off the board, Seattle’s likely best option for a passer would be UCLA’s Kiki Rice. For a shooter, it’d be LSU’s Flau’jae Johnson.
Who do you think will be the better WNBA player when it’s all said and done: Miles or Fudd? Who do you think would be the better fit for the Storm right now?
3. How much should Seattle pay unrestricted free agent Gabby Williams?
The Storm’s two reigning All-Stars besides Ogwumike and Diggins are 32-year-old Brittney Sykes and 29-year-old Gabby Williams.
Sykes’ efficiency improved a lot this past Unrivaled season, which likely changed Seattle’s opinion of her. She shot 10-for-37 (27 percent) from beyond the arc in 17 games with the Storm last year, including the playoffs. At Unrivaled, she was 30-for-75 (40 percent).
I find Williams more intriguing than Sykes, though, because of her slightly younger age and greater upside. Though she closed with a 28-for-119 (23.5 percent) stretch, she started the 2025 WNBA season 22-for-45 (48.9 percent) from deep. It’s hard to say a stretch of 45 attempts was a fluke. She was looking like a whole new 3-point shooter, and the rest of the league was on notice given her other skills.
Williams is as athletic and as tenacious on defense as they get. The energy she brings is second to none, and her impact on a game is huge. Those things don’t always show up in the box score, but one thing that did in 2025 was her league-leading 2.3 steals per contest.
At 29, she has a chance to be a key piece surrounding Malonga for quite a while.
The Storm have to decide how much they want to pay a player with Williams’ intangibles who hasn’t averaged more than 11.6 points per game in a season.
Do you think she can be a superstar? In your eyes, is she really that much more valuable than Sykes and 2023 All-Star Magbegor?
