WASHINGTON — All season long, the Washington Mystics were chasing a goal besides winning games, one that can sometimes be even harder to achieve. They wanted to stay joyful through the ups and downs of a 44-game season and beyond.
“Too many times in pro sports, college sports, high school sports, it’s miserable,” head coach Sydney Johnson told reporters after Game 2 of the Mystics’ first-round playoff series on Wednesday. “… So for me, I want them to just enjoy that journey.”
A big challenge of keeping one’s joy, though, is how merciless the playoffs are. Fourteen WNBA teams will end this season either missing the playoffs or losing a playoff series. Only one will be full of smiles and happy tears.
On Wednesday, that wave of sadness and finality hit the Mystics.
As the No. 5 seed, they lost 93-75 to the No. 4 seed Atlanta Dream. It was their second straight loss in the best-of-three series, and it sent Atlanta to the WNBA semifinals.
Though the Mystics were the youngest team in league history to make the playoffs, they were not simply happy to be there. They wanted to do more than people thought they could, just like they had in the regular season.
So when they got to their postgame press conference, there was a heaviness in the air. Guard Sonia Citron rested her chin on her fist, and forward Kiki Iriafen looked down at the table. And when they were asked to reflect on what the season had meant to them, they looked at each other for several seconds, clearly hoping that the other would spare them from answering.
“Disappointment, frustration, for sure,” Citron said in response to a separate question about the emotions she was feeling. “It’s not how we wanted our season to end.”
“I feel like I’m still wrapping my mind through everything,” Iriafen said. “It doesn’t feel real. I feel like I’m coming in tomorrow, we’re gonna practice [and] we’re gonna play again on Friday. But that’s not true.”
Your business can reach over 3 million women’s sports fans every single month!
Here at The IX Basketball and The IX Sports, our audience is a collection of the smartest, most passionate women’s sports fans in the world. If your business has a mission to serve these fans, reach out to our team at BAlarie@theixsports.com to discuss ways to work together.
Before Game 1, the Mystics had talked about treating the playoffs like any other game. After all, they’d already played Atlanta four times across preseason and the regular season, so why not a fifth? For Game 2, they kept that mindset, and veteran guard/forward Betnijah Laney-Hamilton preached to them, “We have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
“There’s not pressure,” point guard Georgia Amoore told The IX Sports pregame, explaining the logic. “We don’t have the lead. It’s not like we’re trying to defend or anything like that. We have an opportunity at home court to win this one [and] push it to a Game 3.”
However, the Mystics still seemed to have some nerves or tightness when the game began, as the Dream raced out to a 9-2 lead in the first 2 1/2 minutes. And jitters are hard to avoid on a team where all but three players experienced their first playoffs this season. Even Johnson was coaching in the WNBA playoffs for the first time.
The main problem for the Mystics throughout the series was that Atlanta was able to disrupt them starting in the second half of Game 1, and they never quite got comfortable again. They never established much of an offensive rhythm, committing 42 turnovers across the two games that turned into 50 points for the Dream.
“Atlanta’s a good team,” veteran forward Michaela Onyenwere told The IX Sports postgame, after her teammates finished their press conference. “They brought a lot out of us that was just a little bit different. … That’s what happens in playoff basketball. They find ways to take away your first, second, third options, and you have to kind of find ways to mitigate that. And so I don’t think we were able to do that the best.”
When the Mystics managed to get shots, they were often unassisted. Just 26 of the Mystics’ 50 field goals over the two games were assisted, as they frequently had to go one-on-one or were getting putbacks of their misses. And several of their shots came under duress late in the shot clock — something that Johnson and his staff had discussed with the team between games 1 and 2 but that continued to be an issue on Wednesday.
Throughout the regular season, the Mystics had been relatively good at making in-game adjustments, despite being one of the youngest teams in WNBA history. But that didn’t show up in this series. On defense, the Mystics were at odds with the officials throughout Wednesday’s game and couldn’t figure out how to adjust, committing 13 fouls in the first half and 14 in the second.
Their frustration showed early on and continued throughout the game. In the final seconds of the first quarter, Onyenwere was irate over a foul called on point guard Alicia Flórez, and Laney-Hamilton patted her on the backside to try to settle her down. Less than two minutes later, rookie center Lauren Betts was called for a foul when she thought she’d gotten a clean block. She pounded her fists down by her sides and repeatedly yelled, “No!”
In the third quarter, center Shakira Austin took a hit to the face and appeared to be bleeding lightly from her nose. Even as she was receiving treatment, she was giving the officials an earful, despite the fact that they did call a foul on Atlanta on the play.
“It’s tough,” Onyenwere said. “Obviously, we’re trying to figure out when to be physical, when to not be physical, trying to play our game. … I don’t think we adjusted as much as we needed to. So yeah, I just don’t think we were on our best, both offensively and defensively.”
Johnson tried a few things in Game 2 to get his team going, including playing rookie guard Cassandre Prosper 21 minutes off the bench after she’d played just one minute in Game 1. Prosper delivered with 10 points on 3-for-5 shooting, four rebounds and three assists. At age 21, she became the youngest Mystic and the sixth-youngest WNBA player ever to score in double figures in the playoffs, per Mystics PR.
But Prosper couldn’t spark the Mystics on her own, and Johnson left other options on the bench — most notably, rookie guard Cotie McMahon. McMahon has changed games for the Mystics off the bench all season and has even closed some games, but she only checked into Game 2 for the final 1:04. Johnson suggested postgame that McMahon’s minutes had gone to Prosper because he “had a hunch” that Prosper would do well, but it didn’t have to be either-or as the Mystics stared down elimination.
Wednesday’s loss extends a stretch of winless playoff appearances for the Mystics. Their last postseason win came in 2019, when the Mystics won a championship behind WNBA Most Valuable Player Elena Delle Donne. The franchise lost a one-game playoff in 2020 and has now been swept in best-of-three first-round series in 2022, 2023 and 2026.
Unlike in 2020, 2022 and 2023, though, the Mystics got a home playoff game this season. So Wednesday was the first home playoff game since the 2019 team clinched its title in a winner-take-all Game 5.
Three players from that championship team were in the building on Wednesday: Delle Donne, now retired, sat courtside near the Mystics bench and fist-bumped Johnson just before tipoff. Center LaToya Sanders is now an assistant coach for the Dream, and guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough now plays for Atlanta.
Upon hearing pregame that she’d be playing in the first playoff game at CareFirst Arena since she won a title there, Walker-Kimbrough decided that luck was on her side.
“Now I feel even better after you told me that that great stat that you told me,” Walker-Kimbrough told The IX Sports. “Now I’m feeling great. … We’re excited about tonight. We know a lot is at stake.”
Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women’s Sports Daily
We are excited to announce the launch of TWO new podcasts for all the women’s sports fans out there looking for a daily dose of women’s sports news and analysis. Stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to subscribe!
After the Dream validated Walker-Kimbrough’s words with a commanding performance, leading by as many as 19, all that was left for the Mystics was to pick up the pieces. The players wrapped their arms around each other at center court, and Onyenwere told them to keep their heads up and reminded them how much they’d accomplished. She was trying to help her teammates feel a tiny bit of joy again.
“What leadership is is always trying to be selfless, and it doesn’t really matter how I feel in the moment. I think that my voice is needed,” Onyenwere said. “… [My message] might not even mean anything tonight; it might not mean anything for a couple days. But I think that when all of the dust settles, we’ll be able to kind of see what we accomplished and just how proud we should be of ourselves. And so yeah, in the moment, I mean, saying things is obviously not the easiest, but I think it’s what’s needed.”
Johnson also saw a few positives through his sadness. He praised his team’s grit and toughness, calling it one of the mentally toughest teams he’s led in two decades of coaching. That as much as anything helped these young Mystics go from an afterthought in the playoff race in preseason to the No. 5 seed, and from a 16-28 record last season to 28-16 entering these playoffs.
“Every single player has gotten better … and the youth of this team, to understand how we’re trying to win, it came so quickly,” Johnson said. “So I’m just — I don’t even recognize this team. It’s been a magical ride.”
In both games of the series, Citron and Iriafen shone, despite it being their first playoff experience. On Wednesday, Citron had a game-high 25 points and seven rebounds. Combined with her 25 points in Game 1, she joined 2019 WNBA Finals MVP Emma Meesseman as the only Mystics ever to have back-to-back 25-point outings in the playoffs, per Mystics PR.
Similarly, Iriafen had 15 points and 16 rebounds on Wednesday, becoming the first Mystic ever to put up those numbers in the playoffs, per Mystics PR. In the series, she had a whopping 13 offensive rebounds, and her 30 total rebounds are the second-most in WNBA history in a player’s first two playoff games.
“They look like they’ve been here before. It’s crazy because they haven’t,” Onyenwere said. “And so just that’s what they’ve been for us for all year is super consistent, just really foundational pieces. … They have so much more to grow, which is even scarier. … But just to see them come out, be really confident, not let the naysayers say anything, [and] not let lack of experience stifle them was really, really cool to see.”
All season, Johnson has told his players that they need to let go of both wins and losses at midnight and move on to the next game. But with no next game coming, he knew the same timeline wouldn’t hold. It was hard for any of the Mystics to get past the disappointment on Wednesday night, even if they could zoom out like Johnson and Onyenwere tried to do.
At the same time, that image of the somber Mystics processing the end of their season isn’t what Johnson wants the lasting memory of his 2026 team to be. He wants these Mystics to be remembered as they were for so much of the season: joyful.
“There’s a real love that they have for each other … [but] this wasn’t just some kumbaya thing,” Johnson said. “… We won games and played for each other, and we’re selfless and joyful. So I want the world to know that’s how we roll in D.C., and you can win. And so next year, we’re going to come back stronger and want more, but we’re also going to hold to our culture, which is toughness, togetherness and a little bit of love, I guess, sprinkled in there.”
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.
