Washington Mystics guard Sonia Citron dribbled the ball near half court with just over 30 seconds left in the third quarter against the Phoenix Mercury on Tuesday. She curled around a high ball screen from center Lauren Betts, drawing both of their defenders. She saw the double-team coming but took one more dribble, letting Betts roll farther into the paint, before lobbing the ball to the 6’7 rookie for an and-one.
On their next possession, the Mystics ran the same action. Though Betts’ defender didn’t help as much on Citron that time, Citron still found an angle to get the ball to Betts for another layup.
Those were two of Citron’s career-high nine assists on Tuesday, as she played at times as the Mystics’ de facto point guard. She doesn’t consider herself a point guard, instead describing herself as a guard who can handle the ball. But she’s been running the show increasingly often for the Mystics, and she’s been extremely effective at it.
“I would never know that she’s not a point guard,” Mystics guard Lucy Olsen told The IX Sports on Aug. 15. “She just handles it so well … and whatever you need her to do, she’ll do.”
When the Mystics drafted the 6’1 Citron third overall in 2025, they didn’t expect her to play this much point guard, according to Shelley Patterson, the team’s head of domestic scouting. It arose out of necessity after the 2025 trade deadline, when the Mystics dealt veteran guard Brittney Sykes. From there, it kept building, even though the Mystics have a deep point guard group this season.
“I think it just naturally kind of [happened],” Citron told The IX Sports on Aug. 19. “And just throughout [this] season, just they put me in situations where the more I do it, obviously, the more comfortable I’m going to be.”
As a rookie, Citron brought the ball up on 8% of the offensive possessions she played, per league data provided to The IX Sports. This year, that’s up to 20%.* And with her at the helm, the Mystics are scoring 115.1 points per 100 possessions this season — well above their season mark of 103.2 and nearly on par with the Indiana Fever’s league-best offense (115.9).
Unsurprisingly, Citron’s assist numbers have increased along the way. She’s averaging 4.3 assists per game this season, up from 2.4 in 2025. Her assist rate, which measures the share of teammates’ field goals that she assists on while she’s on the court, has increased by more than 50%, from 13.5% last season to 22.3% this season. Her turnovers have also increased slightly, but by less than her assists, so her assist-to-turnover ratio is also better this season.
In particular, Citron has found teammates at the rim more often this season. She is averaging 2.1 assists per game at the rim this season, and those assists make up 48% of her total. Last season, she averaged 0.9 assists per game there, or 39% of her total.
But Citron’s point guard skills aren’t only growing year by year — she is also making considerable strides month by month. The share of possessions where she is bringing the ball up has climbed from 5% in May 2025 to 16% in May 2026, 22% this July and 29% in August.
Similarly, Citron’s assists per game, assist rate and assist-to-turnover ratio have all steadily increased over her two WNBA seasons. For example, she averaged 2.0 assists per game in May 2025. That went up to 2.9 per game this May, 4.4 in July and 5.3 in August.
“It’s a great luxury,” Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello told reporters on Aug. 19 about Citron playing the point. “… She’s developed so much in just a short period of time. It’s fun to see. She’s a big guard. She can handle the ball. She can do everything. … I think that was a good move to put the ball in her hand.”
Citron is now on pace to finish the season with more total assists than Georgia Amoore, the team’s starting point guard this season, or Sug Sutton, the starter in 2025, despite playing in fewer games than either of them.
Meanwhile, Citron’s scoring has also increased from 14.9 points per game in 2025 to 16.8 this season. Combine that with generating nearly twice as many points per game from her assists this year, and she is creating more of the team’s scoring: 26.6 points per game this season, up from 20.4 last season.
Before turning pro, Citron had only played point guard a little bit in high school and AAU. She told NOTUS recently that a true point guard like Amoore reads the game and adjusts on the fly, whereas she just calls a play “and that’s what it is.” But Citron takes pride in getting better at every part of her game and has worked hard to be a better facilitator. And the Mystics pride themselves on player development and are eager to help Citron expand her skill set.
“The more you can do, the more valuable you become,” player development lead Clinton Crouch told The IX Sports in September 2025. “And Sonia has an amazing feel for the game where she’s going to make the right play. And for players that make the right play, you want to find ways to put the ball into their hands to make the game easier for everyone else. …
“Now she gets to see the game from a different lens, a different angle, and she understands where the ball should be. So I think it’s going to be really good for her career long-term.”
Over time, shifting from playing off the ball to on the ball has become less of an adjustment for Citron. She has gotten more comfortable on the ball by getting game experience, but also by studying film and doing drills that put the ball in her hands.
Putting Citron at the point has gone smoothly in part because she is so unconcerned with her own statistics. She’ll read the defense and shoot if she’s open and pass if she’s not. And she instinctively knows how to find her teammates.
“Soni knows me like the back of her hand,” second-year forward Kiki Iriafen told The IX Sports on Tuesday. “She knows where I want the ball. She knows my spots.”
“When you’re used to receiving the basketball, then when it’s your time to deliver it, you … know how they would want to receive a pass,” Crouch said. “You understand spacing. You understand drive and kick — how to draw defenders and find the next pass. … Honestly, I think she’s a little too unselfish. But I think it’s amazing what she’s been able to do.”
By Citron’s own admission, she is calmer in tight games this season than she was as a rookie. She’s also been more vocal, which helps her lead the offense.
“[She’s] soft-spoken, but she’s talking all the time now, whereas last year she was picking her spots and she was deferring as a rookie,” head coach Sydney Johnson told reporters on Aug. 9. “This year, she knows this is her team.”
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And though Citron doesn’t see herself as a point guard, she’s found an approach that works for her. Patterson, who was a standout point guard at Washington State and has worked in the WNBA for decades, recently gave Citron advice about running the point without changing her game too much.
“She’s like, ‘Don’t see yourself as a point guard. Just see yourself as a lead guard,’” Citron said. “… So just kind of shifting my perspective to just play the same … [and] not making it bigger than it is.”
“If you think about someone like a Steph Curry … he’s not a point guard, but he can definitely lead and score, and that’s how Soni is,” Patterson told The IX Sports on Tuesday. “So … changing the words just changes the mentality. It takes the pressure off of trying to be, ‘I’m the point guard, and I got to think through [things] like a point guard/quarterback.’ No, you can think of yourself as bringing the ball down the court and within the confines of our offense, help it to run, and help it to run better.”
So regardless of what position she’s playing, Citron tries to stay aggressive, and that mindset helps her with both scoring and assisting. She knows she has to hunt her own offense to open up others.
“When I say ‘aggressive,’ that doesn’t mean shots to me,” Citron said in July. “I think that just means it’s a mentality, like making people guard me. And if they do guard me, then my teammates might be open. … I just see it as the way of playing.”
Two games against the Los Angeles Sparks nearly three months apart illustrated the strides Citron has taken handling the ball — and the challenges that poses for opponents. On May 29, Citron had 21 points, eight assists and four turnovers. Afterward, she told reporters, “They were definitely physical, definitely trying to make it hard for us. I think there was a couple times I could have handled it a little better, but I think that’s just the growth that I have to do in handling the ball and being able to handle pressure.”
On Aug. 15, Citron put up another 21 points and eight assists. But she committed only two turnovers, despite running the point for the entire fourth quarter.
“She’s [a] special player,” Sparks head coach Lynne Roberts told reporters before that game. “… Watching [the May 29] game versus what they’ve been doing lately, it’s very different. … They’re running her a little bit more at [the point] and making her a decision-maker. But her off-ball movement coming off screens, she’s still one of the best at that. So we have our hands full.”
Citron’s coaches and teammates have also noticed how much more comfortable she is on the ball.
“When we started to play what I call a bigger lineup with her at the point, it’s actually unlocked some things in her game and for our team,” Patterson said. “And now that we’re used to it … the pressure is off of her now that she’s not just thrown into it. Now she’s expecting to do it … and she’s embracing it.”
“Her poise has definitely carried over from last year, but you can just see she’s much more confident,” Iriafen told reporters after Tuesday’s game. “She’s able to understand the game, read the game out there, and it’s contagious for the rest of us.”
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Sometimes as Patterson watches Citron play, she has to remind herself that Citron is just 22 years old and hasn’t even played two full WNBA seasons. Citron is already a two-time All-Star and has accomplished so much, yet there’s still so much more to come.
One day, Patterson said, Citron might even consider herself a point guard as she continues to get reps at the position and hone her basketball IQ. But however Citron wants to label herself now or in the future, the way she’s setting the table for the Mystics is suiting them quite well.
* The data on the share of possessions where Citron is bringing the ball up, and the team’s efficiency with her doing that, reflects games through Aug. 25. All other data reflects games through Aug. 28.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The IX Sports. The IX Sports’ editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
The IX Sports’ Dylan Kane contributed reporting for this story.
