On Tuesday, the Seattle Storm punched their way into the WNBA Playoffs with a 74-73 win over the Golden State Valkyries, eliminating the Los Angeles Sparks despite LA upsetting the Phoenix Mercury on the road.
With that, we know which five teams won't be in the playoff field. But of those five teams, which has the brightest future? Not all lottery teams are created equal, though it's worth noting that the four teams that missed the playoffs last year all missed the playoffs this year.
Taking into account the current roster, impending free agents, front offices and future draft picks, let's rank the five non-playoff teams from darkest future to brightest future.
5. Chicago Sky
When one of the only young players with star potential on your team is already insinuating she might want out after just two seasons, you're going to have to do a lot of work to climb out of the cellar.
The Sky should not be last on this list — not when they have Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso. But what do they have beyond that? They've mismanaged their draft resources horribly over the past few seasons, including dealing this year's first-round pick to Minnesota.
You could say that was a failed bet on themselves, but I refuse to trust a front office that traded away a pick with the second-best odds of landing at No. 1 in exchange for the No. 11 pick last year. I liked Hailey Van Lith more than most people, but you can't trade such an important pick for Hailey Van Lith. You can't assume that your team will go from "one of the worst in the league" to "not one of the worst in the league" when your biggest offseason move was to bring in Ariel Atkins.
Chicago has one of the worst front offices in American sports. How am I supposed to trust this team to ever be anything?
4. Connecticut Sun
If you'd asked me to make this list preseason, the Sun would have been last, and there would have been a HUGE gap between them and the rest of the field. The team traded away all its veteran pieces this past offseason, and things looked really, really bleak.
Things still look a little bleak, especially with the Sun sending their first-round pick to the Sky, and the team also stuck in a weird limbo where ownership is trying to sell the team, but no one really seems to know what that sale will look like since the league is insistent on getting involved. However, the Sun showed us some real grit in the latter part of the season, turning around a team that looked like it might be one of the worst in league history.
Connecticut has two players it can build around in Leila Lacan and Saniya Rivers. That, of course, comes with the usual caveat that French players are notoriously hard to predict as far as whether they show up in the league each year, but for now, let's call Lacan a key piece of the future in Connecticut.
3. Dallas Wings
The Wings have the single most important player out of everyone that missed the postseason, but does the team have much else going on? That probably depends on how this year's draft lottery goes.
GM Curt Miller did a good job finding rosterable talent later in the draft this year and smartly traded for a Vegas 2027 seventh as well as former lottery pick Diamond Miller, but there's no guarantee that any of that works out.
What Dallas has to do this offseason is find young talent in the draft and veteran talent in free agency to put around Paige Bueckers. This third-place ranking is very tentative — we've seen the Wings make a lot of mistakes before when it comes to roster building, and we're entering what might be the most important offseason for the team since its move to DFW.
2. Los Angeles Sparks
How bright the Sparks future is will depend on how the team navigates free agency this year.
Kelsey Plum showed in 2025 that she can be the best player on a team, and after a very slow start, the team came alive late and just needs one win in its season finale to finish at .500. If Plum re-signs this offseason, the Sparks will be a huge playoff threat next year and might deserve to move up to No. 1 on this list.
But this is where the uncertainty of this upcoming offseason comes into play. Plum is a free agent, as are Dearica Hamby, Azurá Stevens and Julie Allemand. The Sparks will have to make sure they at least bring back Plum and Hamby to keep this momentum going.
1. Washington Mystics
The Mystics rank first on this list because of two key things. First is how well they did in the 2025 WNBA Draft, emerging with the second-best player in Sonia Citron and arguably the third-best player in Kiki Iriafen. Add to that No. 6 overall pick Georgia Amoore, who missed her rookie year with an ACL injury but could help with the team's point guard rotation in 2026.
But beyond that, this front office just seems to know what it's doing. Look at the Brittney Sykes trade, for example. Sykes is a very good player, and the Mystics had an outside shot at sneaking into the No. 8 seed with her, but that would have just led to a first-round exit and Sykes potentially leaving for nothing in free agency. Instead, the Mystics managed to coax a first-round pick out of Seattle. Draft picks are very important heading into this offseason, and the Mystics have three firsts.
It just seems like the Mystics have the best chance of anyone at this point to be the next organic power in the league, a team built around its own young players that can make a huge leap to contender status. They'll need to add a veteran talent or two at some point, especially at point guard, but overall, this roster feels like it's just a couple of pieces away from being really, really good.