SUPER BOWL 2012

Harding Wants Out

Back in January, Mystics GM/Head Coach Trudi Lacey announced that her top two priorities for the free agency period were to re-sign Lindsey Harding and Katie Smith.

Not only has Trudi been unsuccessful so far in accomplishing either goal, but, in recent weeks, it’s been a poorly kept secret in WNBA circles that Lindsey, the Mystics’ All-Star point guard, wants to be traded to another team. Until today, however, none of the parties involved in the negotiations had made any public comment.

All that changed this afternoon, as the Washington Post’s Kathy Orton reports here on her interviews with Trudi and with Lindsey’s agent. According to Orton, the Mystics and Lindsey have reached “an impasse,” and Trudi, just in case, is preparing for life without Lindsey. (Oh, and by the way, Katie Smith may not be back either.) It's hard to imagine the Mystics without Lindsey.

In her two seasons with the Mystics, Lindsey has become one of the BCs’ very favorite players. Extremely talented, exciting to watch, a workhorse (33 minutes per game!), and a competitor with a never-give-up mentality. It's a pretty well accepted truth that elite point guards in the WNBA are very rare. Until Lindsey was acquired by the Mystics (thanks to a very successful trade engineered by then-GM Angela Taylor), the team (in our opinion) was really hampered by not having one. And now, it seems, there’s a good possibility the Mystics will be similarly hampered again.

And just when we thought the Mystics’ off-season personnel news could not get any worse . . .

Photo Credit: DC BasketCases

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Saturday update . . . In a move to improve their post presence, the Mystics have just traded away their first round pick in next season's (2012) WNBA draft to the Minnesota Lynx in exchange for 6'3" Forward/Center Nicky Anosike. Nicky is a 2008 graduate of Tennessee, where she played on the 2007 and 2008 National Championship teams. Meanwhile, the Washington Post's Kathy Orton reports that Alana Beard had this to say when asked if she's going to play this season: "I hope so. That’s my goal. I’ll be ready to go.” We hope so too; AB has worked very hard on her re-hab, and it would be terrible if she could not play.