PHOENIX — With the WNBA trade deadline coming up on Sunday, Aug. 2, the Phoenix Mercury are among the most intriguing teams to monitor as front offices across the league evaluate their playoff outlooks.
At 10-18 and 5.5 games behind the eighth seed, one might expect the Mercury front office, led by general manager Nick U’Ren, to consider selling some of the roster’s high-impact pieces in an effort to regather some assets for next season and beyond. Internally, however, that line of thinking hasn’t exactly made itself clear.
In fact, if anything, the signs point toward the Mercury keeping this roster intact and seeing where it can take them over the final stretch of the season. But with front offices rarely telegraphing their intentions this close to the deadline, it’s equally difficult to say with certainty that Phoenix isn’t simply keeping its plans under wraps.
“I think you never know what to expect at the deadline,” head coach Nate Tibbetts said at Tuesday’s practice. “Again, my focus is the basketball. If there’s anything that I need to know about, Nick [U’Ren] will hit me then in our front office.
“Typically, I think at the deadline, most of the time in the W, there’s not a lot of moves,” he later added. “So yeah, I would expect us to just continue to focus on us and get better. That’s my focus.”
Sellers?
Phoenix’s recent roster moves have rarely been black and white. From going all-in to acquire Alyssa Thomas during the 2025 offseason, to letting Satou Sabally walk in free agency the following offseason, there’s little historical precedent to suggest how U’Ren and the Mercury are likely to approach this year’s trade deadline.
A big move to trade away a star like Thomas or Kahleah Copper would be the most aggressive possible move to drastically change the trajectory of the franchise. A smaller move to exchange a veteran role player like Sami Whitcomb for future roster flexibility would be less extreme, but also not exactly worth it for a team that still believes it can compete in the present.
“Nothing,” Thomas told The IX Sports when asked what thoughts are going through her mind as the deadline approaches. “I don’t know what to expect. I think the main goal is just focused on what we have to do to try and make our playoff push.”
This deadline is a unique one for Thomas, as the teams she’s usually a part of rarely have losing records at this point of the season. Despite being a consistent winner, the 34-year-old, six-time All-Star is in an urgent pursuit to win her first career WNBA championship. As such, speculation has naturally emerged during the Mercury’s losing stretches that Thomas could become one of the league’s most coveted trade candidates should Phoenix choose to pivot toward the future.
However, a recent report from The Athletic’s Annie Costabile stated that while trade talks involving Thomas did occur earlier in the season, they have since “gone cold.”
“There were trade talks including Thomas during the Mercury’s losing streaks earlier this season, according to multiple league sources, but they have since gone cold,” Costabile wrote.
That piece of information could be the biggest sign that the Mercury are leaning towards not being major sellers this week, instead opting to see it through for the rest of this season and reassessing in the offseason.
Additionally, Thomas is in the first year of a three-year, $3.6 million extension, meaning Phoenix is in no rush to make a franchise-altering decision. On Thomas’ end, she too kept it diplomatic about her feelings on being open to a departure from Phoenix, again emphasizing that her focus is on this final stretch of the season.
“Obviously I signed a long-term contract,” Thomas told The IX Sports. “I don’t think you can look at the whole picture right now. Right now, like I said, we’re focused on what this season holds and trying to make this final push with the little games that are left.”
With Copper also under contract beyond the end of this season, that further supports the reasoning to stand pat and attempt a playoff push — with the worst-case scenario being missing the playoffs and shifting focus toward identifying the adjustments needed to return as a contender in 2027.
“I think we just focus on what we have to do in order to make our playoff push,” Copper told reporters at Tuesday’s practice. “And then just trust the front office — if they think we need to do something, then they’ll do it.”
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One more huge reason also supports that thinking: Phoenix is finally healthy. According to Lucas Seehafer’s WNBA Injury Tracker, the Mercury’s roster has missed 81 games due to injury — the fourth most in the league. However, just before the break, Phoenix’s injury report was blank for the first time all season, as all players were available for July 22’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks.
In many ways, being back at full health serves as its own type of deadline acquisition for Phoenix. Whether that alone is enough to spark a late-season turnaround remains to be seen, but the Mercury would be doing themselves a disservice by not at least seeing how the team operates at full strength — as opposed to gutting the roster again via trade.
“It felt great,” Copper said. “Having [Whitcomb] out there, having [Natasha] Mack out there, it’s just super important for what we’re trying to do, and just what they bring is super important for us to continue to get wins and go forward.”
“I’m excited that we have our full group together,” Tibbetts added. “That was our first game together, even with some minutes restrictions. Hopefully, at some point, those will be lifted. The beauty of my job here is that I get to focus on coaching the team. That’s why I didn’t choose to be in the front office, to deal with that stuff. I don’t really enjoy that. This is what I enjoy.”
Buyers?
While these signs suggest the notion that the Mercury will not be sellers at the deadline, they do not necessarily mean they won’t be buyers either. In Costabile’s report, she also mentioned that Phoenix could have interest in forward Alanna Smith of the Dallas Wings.
Smith was drafted by Phoenix and played sparingly for the team from 2019 and 2021, but later emerged with the Minnesota Lynx as one of the best defensive players in the league — being named a co-defensive player of the year in 2025 and making the All-Defensive Second Team in 2024.
After hitting free agency this past offseason, there were rumblings of a potential reunion between Smith and Phoenix, as she’s a great fit on paper next to Thomas in the frontcourt. Nonetheless, it never materialized, as Smith signed a three-year deal to join the Wings.
However, Dallas has not utilized Smith as much as it imagined during the team’s breakout 18-9 season. The Wings relegated Smith to the bench, and she’s averaging just 14.2 minutes per game after averaging 26.5 in her three previous seasons. If the Mercury were to make a move, pursuing Smith could be the best balance of buying low on a player who can contribute in the short and long terms — albeit with some financial hurdles to jump through:
“The Mercury have $857,740 in cap space remaining this season, which means they’d have to send salary back to Dallas or otherwise clear room to land Smith,” Costabile wrote.
No matter what happens, the Mercury’s approach appears to be rooted in the same philosophy that has defined their season: controlling what they can and letting the rest unfold. With the playoffs still within reach but with little margin for error, Phoenix understands the urgency of its situation without allowing the bigger picture to overshadow the immediate task at hand.
“Just keeping it real, you know?” Copper said when asked about the team’s approach to the rest of the season. “Just being like, ‘Okay, this is where we are, this is what we need to do moving forward.’ But you have to take it one game at a time. Just overall, knowing in the back of your mind what we need to do in order to have success.”
Still built around Thomas and Copper, the decisions ahead are more complicated than simply looking at the standings. Phoenix must weigh the desire of giving its stars the best opportunity to contend with the long-term implications of any roster decision. That makes this deadline an important opportunity to choose a direction, even if that means doing nothing at all.
The Mercury’s final 16-game ride of 2026 begins tonight with a major test against the Golden State Valkyries, finally at full strength and prepared to give it all every day until the opportunity in front of them disappears for good.
“You can’t look too far ahead,” Tibbetts said. “I think you have to be realistic with your group of where we stand on that. We can’t worry about three games from now. We got to worry about today, and that’s all we can control. If we do that, the hope is that there’s good basketball in front of us.”
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