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Those numbers are shifting as teams make cuts and decide on their opening-day rosters, but the Mystics will remain very young and inexperienced. Only guard Brittney Sykes and center Stefanie Dolson have more than three years of WNBA experience, and as many as five rookies could make the opening-day roster. Plus, most of the team’s leadership is new, including first-year general manager Jamila Wideman and first-year head coach Sydney Johnson.
It’s no surprise, then, that Johnson is leaning on Dolson and Sykes as leaders and tone-setters.
“My perspective starts with, we have Stefanie Dolson and we have Slim Sykes walking in,” Johnson told reporters on April 27, using Sykes’ nickname. “Every day, that’s what I’m looking for is, are those two in the building? Those are our bookends. … They just do all the right things; they carry themselves the right way. And so if we have them two, then I feel like we can try to navigate all the challenges that are coming our way.”
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Sykes and Dolson were the ubiquitous answers when the rookies were asked at the team’s media day on April 28 which teammate they’d learned the most from so far. Through their words and actions, Sykes and Dolson are emphasizing playing hard every day, getting incrementally better and constantly communicating.
Their leadership is resonating with their teammates in part because they’ve been approachable. They set the standard for how competitive and focused practices should be, but it’s not intimidating to ask them a question or mess up in front of them.
“They’re very warm in terms of bringing people in, and that’s contagious,” Johnson said at media day. “And so that’s given our younger players — it’s like a safe space.”
Bringing young players along and developing them might be more important than ever this season. Under Wideman and Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger, the Mystics are looking to rebuild their foundation. That will be driven heavily by their three 2025 first-round draft picks and three more over the next two years.
Johnson has created a positive environment in training camp. Players have joked that he is “such a dad” in how he cares about them and empowers them to try things. He led a prolonged circling up after the first official practice, in which players praised each other and hyped each other up. He told reporters afterward that it would be “an everyday thing” to make sure everyone feels seen and appreciated.
Let’s answer four questions about what to expect from the Mystics in 2025, with so much newness and youth on the roster. Read them all or skip to one using the following links:
What will Johnson’s style of play look like?
Johnson has made it clear since he was hired that he wants to play fast, and rookie forward Kiki Iriafen was the first to quantify it.
“He wants to be able to score in the first eight seconds of the shot clock,” Iriafen told reporters after being drafted fourth overall on April 14. “So … I’m going to run that floor. That’s one thing I know I can do.”
Johnson acknowledged at media day that scoring within eight seconds is catchy — “You can almost put that on a T-shirt,” he said — but there’s much more to his philosophy. He’s trying to teach his players that eight seconds is “actually a lot of time” if they transition into offense quickly, and he wants them to learn to make decisions faster.
But if there isn’t a good shot in the first eight seconds, Johnson doesn’t want to force it. Instead, he wants his team to run good halfcourt offense, attack the rim, and hunt open close-range shots and 3-pointers.
“We have to go in [with] a mindset to play super fast,” point guard Jade Melbourne told reporters at media day. “We just have to think like everyone’s got a job in that: The wings have to run the lane quick. The point guards always have to be open and available. The bigs, if [the opposing team does] score, they’re going to just get [the ball] out and get it to us. …
“It’s different. We know we have to do something unique, being a young team, but we’ve got the pace, we’ve got the depth, and I think we’ve got a whole camp of players that are ready to come in and contribute. So that’s the exciting thing.”
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That system seems like a natural fit for Melbourne, a fast guard who rarely plays at less than full speed. “Make it six [seconds],” she joked. But it’s a less obvious match for some of the bigs. That includes Dolson, who has joked several times since signing with the Mystics in 2024 about her lack of speed.
But Dolson sees ways the system can work for her, too. She was the WNBA’s third-best 3-point shooter last season at 46.5%, and she can look for transition threes while trailing the play. She is also a strong facilitator and stays calm when plays break down, so she’ll be vital in getting the Mystics into halfcourt offense if they don’t shoot early in a possession.
“It’s like, ‘OK, eight seconds, we don’t get anything. Now what do we do?’” Dolson said at media day. “And I think that’s where I can come in and really help the team a lot.”
The Mystics will also need to lock in defensively to help them get out and run. Johnson has preached the importance of defending well one-on-one but also being ready to help if someone gets beat.
“We’re a team that defensively wants to stick to structure and principles,” forward Emily Engstler said at media day. “… The experience category [is] maybe not how we’re going to win games, but playing together and being prepared is.”
What will the point guard rotation look like?
Two seasons ago under then-head coach Eric Thibault, Sykes shifted from playing off the ball to playing more point guard, which helped unlock more of her offense. But this season, the Mystics entered training camp with point guards Melbourne, Sug Sutton and Georgia Amoore and needing more depth at the other guard spots. So Johnson decided to have Sykes focus on scoring as mainly an off-ball guard, and she is embracing that change.
“[I’m] able to open my gate again and be off the ball, get to see the game from a different perspective,” Sykes told reporters at media day. “… I get to see things develop, and I trust my teammates. So when the ball comes to me, I know it’s either to score or to create for somebody else. But [I have] little less responsibility, and that’s OK with me.”
However, Amoore, the No. 6 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft, injured her ACL on Tuesday and will miss the entire season. On Saturday, Johnson said Sykes might have to play a little more point guard than he’d intended in Amoore’s absence, but he still wants to use her primarily off the ball.
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How much Sykes can stay off the ball depends partly on how well Sutton and Melbourne play. Johnson started Sutton in the team’s first preseason game on Saturday because she’d taken the best care of the ball in practice. She missed all five of her shots but finished with seven rebounds and five assists against three turnovers in a team-high 31 minutes.
“I’m a vet at 26 years old, and I’m able to lead and kind of tell the younger players what to do on the court and help them in different ways,” Sutton told reporters at media day about her excitement for this season. “So I’ve really embraced that.”
“Sug is one of those people at the end of practice where everybody agrees that she has done a tremendous job, not just in that day of practice, but the entire week,” Sykes said after Saturday’s game. “She stays poised. She uses her voice very well, and she accepts any challenge you give her.
“And her challenge [on Saturday] was to make sure that she could lead us at that point guard position and keep us calm. And I think she did an amazing job at that.”
Melbourne, already an Olympic bronze medalist at age 22, also got plenty of minutes on Saturday in place of and alongside Sutton. She finished with 3 points, three assists and two steals against two turnovers in 22 minutes. Meanwhile, Sykes had a team-high 18 points, including 14 in the first half as the Mystics built an early lead.
How will Johnson divide the frontcourt minutes?
Whereas the backcourt has some question marks when it comes to depth, Johnson has an abundance of options in the frontcourt. They begin with the 6’5 Dolson, who started all 39 games she played last season, and 6’5 center/forward Shakira Austin, who missed Saturday’s game for what Johnson characterized as precautionary reasons. Earlier in the week, Johnson had said that as long as Dolson and Austin are healthy, they’ll be in the lineup this season.
In addition, 6’3 forward Aaliyah Edwards started 17 games as a rookie and could take a sophomore leap — though she may not be available to begin the season due to a lower back contusion. Without her and Austin, the 6’1 Engstler started on Saturday alongside Dolson. Her versatility seemed to fit well in Johnson’s system, as she ran the court, handled the ball in transition, rebounded and shot 3-pointers.
The 6’3 Iriafen was a consensus All-American last season on a USC team that made the Elite Eight and will get minutes off the bench. And 6’3 Sika Koné gives Johnson even more options as a young player who impressed at times as her minutes increased late last season.
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One thing Johnson is looking for from his bigs is the ability to stretch the floor and operate outside the post. Dolson and Engstler have already shown they can shoot the three, and Austin, Edwards and Koné can stretch to the elbow. Iriafen made only 28.6% of her 3-pointers last season, but she said at media day that the Mystics staff has encouraged her to shoot from deep and that she’s excited to show she can be a threat from there.
If Iriafen can make some threes, she will likely get some playing time on the wing in bigger lineups. She showed in college that she can stick with wings defensively in addition to having the strength to play inside, and the Mystics will likely want to find her minutes wherever they can to accelerate her development.
“Kiki is strong as hell,” Engstler — another candidate to play on the wing — told The Next on April 27. “We were playing the other day, and I was like, ‘Kira, you gonna switch with me? Because I’m not boxing Kiki out no more.’ …
“Sometimes when you’re a stronger big, you’re not expected to be mobile. She can run. So there’s so much skill in Kiki’s game. [She] can shoot the three, can run the floor, [is a] super strong post player [and] has that turnaround game like Shakira. So she’s kind of like the best of both worlds out of all of us, in my opinion. … I think she’s gonna have a phenomenal year and a really long WNBA career.”
Can this young Mystics team compete with the experience around the league?
The focus for the Mystics this season is on building and development, not on making the WNBA playoffs. But the first 13 minutes of Saturday’s preseason game provided a glimpse of how they might be able to fluster opponents.
The Mystics built a 15-point lead over a Fever team playing without star guard Caitlin Clark. They pushed the pace and moved the ball well, which helped them shoot 52.9% in the first quarter.
“Anybody could have shot the ball at any moment,” Sykes said postgame about the first quarter. “… That just goes to show the type of basketball that we’re trying to play. We’re trying to spray the ball, share the ball and put the ball in the basket.”
“[The Fever] had to react to us,” Johnson added. “… They had to kind of turn it up.”
The Fever did respond, and the Mystics ultimately lost their double-digit lead, in part because of 22 turnovers. But rookie guard and No. 3 overall pick Sonia Citron had a strong debut, scoring 15 points on 5-for-6 shooting to complement Sykes’ production. And the Mystics’ defense limited the Fever to 30.3% shooting all game.
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Putting an opponent on its heels for 13 minutes won’t win games on its own. But it’s the kind of small win the Mystics will want to identify and build on to get to those complete 40-minute wins.
In the first week of the regular season, the Mystics will have two good opportunities to get their first win and generate some momentum. After opening at home against a strong Atlanta Dream squad, they’ll travel to the rebuilding Connecticut Sun and to the expansion Golden State Valkyries. Those road results should be early indicators of whether this youthful roster can challenge more veteran teams or needs more time to grow.
Want more team-by-team previews for the 2025 WNBA season? Read them all here!
