The 1998 expansion draft provides an imperfect blueprint for the Tempo and Fire

The WNBA is in a tricky moment as players, coaches, team owners, the league’s leadership, and fans wait for a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The ongoing negotiations between the league and the players have pushed pause on a lot of WNBA business, including the expansion drafts for the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire. Once the teams are able to hold their expansion drafts, they may end up looking back on the first double-team expansion draft in the WNBA in 1998.

Those expansion drafts were already going to be different than the one the Golden State Valkyries held in December 2024. The Valkyries operated their expansion draft under the terms of the 2020 CBA, which meant a few things.

A look back at the 2024 expansion draft

For starters, the rest of the WNBA were able to protect six players fron being drafted. It’s expected that they’ll only be able to protect five players once the expansion drafts begin, which will give the Fire and Tempo more players to choose from. While that might not seem like a big drop, it will mean that some players may be forced to part ways with players who could have otherwise grown within the franchise.

The Valkyries were also able to draft free agents, but they were still required to go through the process of free agency and sign contracts. It’s unclear how free agency will impact the expansion drafts and vice-versa this year, especially since the majority of the league will enter into free agency once a new CBA is signed. To a degree, that’s mostly because the terms of free agency are part of what is collectively bargained between the league and the players.

The 1998 expansion draft could influence the Tempo and Fire

It’s worth looking back at the first-ever double-team expansion draft in the WNBA to see how things worked — and to also make informed guesses about what might be different this time around for the Tempo and Fire.

The first double-team expansion draft in the WNBA took place in February 1998 when the league welcomed the Detroit Shock and the Washington Mystics. At the time, there were eight existing teams in the WNBA, and the Shock and Mystics rounded out the league to 10.

In 1998 the two new teams each received two players through allocation (Nikki McCray and Alessandra Santos de Oliveira went to the Mystics and the Shock received Cindy Brown and Razija Mujanović). After that, they drafted the rest of their teams from the available players.