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A’ja Wilson defends Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. | Getty Images
Ahead of their Saturday night game against the Los Angeles Sparks, the Washington Mystics are 19-14, a record that is good for eighth in the WNBA standings and six games ahead of their closest competitor for the final playoff spot.
For a season that started with far more questions than answers, head coach Sydney Johnson and his team have found a recipe to compete with the leagues top talents, and are now posing new, more welcome questions about playoff contention.
Just last week, they took their next step towards postseason preparation, claiming veteran forward and 2024 WNBA champion Betnijah Laney-Hamilton off waivers after the New York Liberty released her.
After spending most of the 2026 season out of the rotation for the Liberty, what should the Mystics, and Mystics fans, expect from Laney-Hamilton? Here’s a look at Betnijah’s potential tangible and intangible impact in DC.
Has Laney-Hamilton taken a step back?
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The elephant in the room is why New York decided to terminate Laney-Hamilton’s contract and allow her to find a new team.
She was a long-time starter during the Sandy Brondello years in Brooklyn, and made an All-Star game in 2021 after averaging more than 16 points in back-to-back seasons. She was one of the leagues more consistent floor spacers and wing defenders—an archetype that will always be of value.
So where was the disconnect with first year Liberty head coach Chris DeMarco?
Laney-Hamilton certainly hasn’t been at her peak this season, but she’s coming off a meniscus tear that required her miss the entire 2025 campaign. She’s also 11 years into her WNBA career, and while she’s only played nine of those years due to injuries in the other two, 253 games, in addition to overseas basketball, is a lot of strain.
In her 17 games for DeMarco, Laney-Hamilton struggled to live up to her floor-spacing reputation that kept her on the court under Brondello. This season with the Liberty, She shot a measly 24 percent from 3, while over half of her field goal attempts came from distance. She also had an even assist-to-turnover ratio for the first time since her rookie year. Her ability to be an ancillary playmaker for the Liberty’s stars without risking turnovers had been a nice facet of her off-ball capabilities, but that connectivity hadn’t been showing under DeMarco’s system.
Laney-Hamilton certainly hadn’t been hurting the Liberty, whose 21-14 record is enough to put them well within title contention. She just hadn’t been impacting games the way she once could, and the New York coaching staff felt like their minutes were better used elsewhere.
What will BLH bring to DC?
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Before mentioning any on-court attributes, we have to talk about experience.
The Mystics have found ways to win, but they lack a veteran presence who can guide their first and second-year stars through the playoff experience. Laney-Hamilton joins the Mystics not onlyas the only player on the roster to win the WNBA Finals, but the only player to ever have been past the first round in the playoffs. Prior to her arrival, Shakira Austin and Michaela Onyenwere were the only Mystics to ever see WNBA postseason basketball, and both had been sent home in the first round of each of their playoff series.
Laney-Hamilton’s playoff experience gives the WNBA’s youngest team a much-needed locker room voice.
On the court, Laney-Hamilton’s role may be more of a “we’ll take whatever you can give us.” If her 3-point stroke comes back, she will certainly absorb many of the minutes that rookies Angela Dugalić and Cassandre Prosper had been splitting. If not, she may look more like an oscillating rotation piece.
She’s 3-for-5 from 3 in her first two appearances in a Mystics uniform, and played meaningful minutes in both of the Mystics’ losses to the Las Vegas Aces earlier this week. She was the only Mystic who had a positive plus/minus in both games.
Her scoring volume will be one of the more interesting stories through the last stretch of the season. Will she play well enough to find herself taking five to eight shots a game, or will she continue to hover below that mark? The Mystics desperately need shooting, so most of that volume may hinge on her ability to find a rhythm from 3. While her physicality and experience will add to Washington’s already great defense, it’s her offense that will move the needle more and determine if she can serve as an impactful piece.
Whether or not Laney-Hamilton returns to 2024 form for the Mystics, her locker room presence projects to be a huge help to a team that is so vastly unfamiliar with postseason WNBA basketball, and rarely can you find that value off waivers this late in the season.
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