Lynx trade 2026 first-round pick for shooting guard Karlie Samuelson

Kent Youngblood, The Minnesota Star Tribune on Apr 14, 2025

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MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Lynx continued to make moves heading into tonight’s WNBA draft.

The latest: The Lynx traded the 2026 first-round pick acquired from Chicago in Sunday’s deal to Washington for 6-foot guard-forward Karlie Samuelson.

The pick from Chicago was acquired in exchange for the No. 11 pick in Monday’s first round. So, essentially, the team acquired a veteran sharpshooter with a career 39.7% 3-point shooting percentage in exchange for the second-to-last pick in Monday’s draft.

Considering the Lynx roster, it is a move that makes sense with a new CBA pending; just about every significant WNBA player will be a free agent after the coming season.

The Lynx have all five starters and seven of their top eight players back from the 2024 team that made it to Game 5 of the WNBA Finals.

The only significant loss from that group was 3-point shooting wing Cecilia Zandalasini, who was taken by the Golden State Valkyries in the expansion draft.

Samuelson, 29, would seem to fit that roster spot well. The former Stanford star — an older sister of Katie Lou Samuelson, who played with Lynx star Napheesa Collier at UConn — entered the league as an undrafted player in 2018. After appearing in just 42 games with four teams over her first five seasons, Samuelson found her stride starting in 2023.

Over the next two seasons — with Los Angeles and Washington — she started 42 of the 63 games she appeared in, averaged 8.0 points and shot 36.9% on 3-pointers.

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