Concerns Grow Within The WNBA Community After Former No.1 Draft Pick Remains Unsigned Before 2026 Season
Jun 22, 2025; San Francisco, California, USA; Connecticut Sun center Tina Charles (31) before the game against the Golden State Valkyries at Chase Center. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images ©Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images How does a player with a résumé like Tina Charles end up without a team? And the 2026 WNBA season is just three days away.
As one of the league’s most decorated veterans and the most accomplished unsigned free agent currently available, concerns within the WNBA community are beginning to grow louder by the day. American sports broadcaster Cindy Brunson gave voice to that concern in a post she made on X on Monday. “There has to be a roster spot for her, period,” she wrote.
And when you lay out what Tina Charles represents, it’s hard to argue with her opinion. As she also pointed out, Charles is not just a former No. 1 draft pick.
She’s the all-time leader in WNBA rebounds. She’s also a former league MVP, and a two-time scoring champion, among other achievments. The idea that no team has found room for that kind of player is, as Brunson suggested, genuinely difficult to reconcile.
What makes it even harder to understand is that Tina Charles hasn’t given anyone a reason to walk away based on performance. Her 2025 season with the Connecticut Sun, the team that originally drafted her back in 2010, was anything but the output of a player fading into irrelevance. She led the team with 16.
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