The Washington Mystics opened training camp without Natasha Cloud, and the former title guard remains unsigned as the new season gets underway. Emma Meesseman and Tina Charles are in the same spot, leaving three former Mystics from last season still without a WNBA team.
Cloud is the name that stands out first. She averaged 10.1 points and 5.1 assists per game for New York last season, production that suggests she still has enough left to help a high-performing team. She also wrote recently on Threads about the slow pace of her free agency, turning a roster question into a public one.
That matters in Washington because the Mystics look very young and do not have a proven point guard on the roster. They also have the cap space to sign Cloud to a maximum deal, and the team may need one more free agent anyway because it likely will not make enough to hit a minimum salary cap figure. In that setting, Cloud is not just a familiar face from Washington’s 2019 WNBA championship run. She would also be the mentor guard to Georgia Amoore right away.
The friction is plain: a team that could use her has room for her, but she is still sitting outside the market while camp starts. Meesseman, Charles and Cloud were all Mystics once, and all three played in the WNBA last season. For Washington, the unresolved part is less about sentiment than fit, and Cloud’s availability may end up shaping whether the Mystics use this camp to build around youth or to add one more veteran who changes the room immediately.