The Las Vegas Aces traded the exclusive negotiating rights for center Amanda Zahui B. to the Washington Mystics for second-round draft picks in 2024 and 2025, according to a Sunday tweet from the WNBA.
Zahui B. averaged 9.2 points, 5.1 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game in 30 games played for the Los Angeles Sparks in 2021. Though she was taken second overall by the then-Tulsa Shock in the 2015 draft, Zahui B. built up her WNBA career in five seasons with the New York Liberty.
She was placed in the full-season suspension list in early May, keeping her from playing in the 2022 season while draftees Rae Burrell, Olivia Nelson-Ododa and Amy Atwell made the final roster, wrote ESPN women's basketball reporter Alexa Philippou in a 2022 tweet. The 29-year-old center wrote she was “at peace” while playing overseas and her name “is clearly in the mix” in a July tweet.
The Aces originally acquired the rights to Amanda Zahui B. and a second-round pick after they traded forward Dearica Hamby and a first-round pick to the Sparks before Zahui B. was traded to the Mystics. The Aces and Hamby dealt with “off-the-court issues” that led to the two sides parting ways less than a year after she signed an extension to stay with the team through 2024.
“Imagine expressing your fears as a woman and being pregnant in this profession/world…. Then to be reassured that you were supported.. and your back was “had”…. only to then be used against you,” Hamby wrote in a mid-January tweet. “Lmao.”
The Aces signed forward Candace Parker from the Chicago Sky on Feb. 1, adding to a roster that features a two-time league MVP in forward A'ja Wilson, a first-time All-Star in guard Kelsey Plum and a 2016 WNBA champion in guard Chelsea Gray.
“My family is my reason and my purpose,” said Parker in announcing her decision to sign with Las Vegas. “They have given me the greatest joys I’ve ever experienced, and continue to show me new levels of love and devotion I never knew existed.”
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