There’s a possibility that Brittney Griner won’t be in a Phoenix Mercury uniform next season.
The All-Star Griner is testing the WNBA free agency market for the first time, the Associated Press reported. She’s taking meetings with multiple teams in Miami, where she debuted with her offseason team Phantom BC on Saturday during the Unrivaled league’s opening weekend.
Griner has spent her entire WNBA career with Phoenix after being drafted by the Mercury in 2013.
The WNBA free agency market opened Tuesday (Jan. 21), and free agents can officially sign with teams on Feb. 1.
“I want to show off my skills for free agency,” Griner said, about playing in Unrivaled.
The 34-year-old Griner, selected among the WNBA’s 25 Greatest Players of all time, is an unrestricted free agent.
She appeared with Team USA in the 2024 Phoenix All-Star Game. She’s previously re-signed with the Mercury without testing the FA market. Griner returned on a one-year deal in March 2024. She helped lead the Mercury to its last title in 2014.
Last season, she was the Mercury’s second-best scorer (17.8 points per game) behind Kahleah Copper (21.1 ppg). Griner led the team in rebounds (6.6) and blocks (1.5). Phoenix was eliminated in the playoffs’ first round by the eventual championship runner-up Minnesota Lynx.
There are several other notable free agents among the 37 participants in the winter 3-on-3 league Unrivaled. That includes the WNBA defending champion New York Liberty’s veterans Breanna Stewart and Courtney Vandersloot, Connecticut Sun’s Alyssa Thomas, Las Vegas Aces’ Tiffany Hayes, and Dallas Wings forward Satou Sabally.
Griner’s Mercury teammate Natasha Cloud said on Thursday that Unrivaled is “the best place to be able to recruit free agents,” like her own pitch to Sabally while together on Phantom BC. That team lost its first two games against Laces BC, 86-48, and Vinyl, 84-71, on Saturday and Monday.
“There’s a ton of free agents here,” Unrivaled co-founder Stewart said. “It’s like a one-stop shop to kind of do everything.”
New York, Connecticut, and Dallas have extended core qualifying offers to Vandersloot, Thomas, and Sabally. Their current teams hold exclusive negotiating rights on those players’ next moves because they have a core designation. That entails offering UFAs one-year guaranteed supermax deals that can be negotiated at longer terms, or a potential sign-and-trade to prevent them walking to another team for nothing in return.
Teams can have a core designation on one player, which lasts for two seasons. That excludes Griner from being designated, after the Mercury did that in 2020.
Other UFAs who are former MVPs are Seattle’s Nneka Ogwumike, Atlanta’s Tina Charles, Washington’s Elena Delle Donne and Phoenix’s Diana Taurasi. The WNBA’s all-time leading scoring and Mercury’s three-time champion Taurasi still has not announced whether she’s returning in 2025 or retiring from her 20-year career.
The Phoenix Mercury have the fourth-most in salary cap space ($798,966) behind the WNBA’s expansion team Golden State Valkyries ($1,116,962), Connecticut ($1,116,162), and ($923,625), according to Spotrac.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mercury’s Brittney Griner testing WNBA free agency for 1st time ever
