One word that could define the Seattle Storm’s last season would be ‘improvement.’ They went from being down in the dumps with a record of  11-29 and an 11th-place finish in 2023 to being 25-15 and a fifth-place finish in 2024. The Storm has been busy this offseason as they are looking to take another step up and be a genuine playoff team. Their other new additions are dwarfed by their No. 2 draft pick, the French phenom Dominique Malonga, who is the youngest to get drafted in the WNBA.

“I’m used to being the youngest everywhere I go,” she told PEOPLE before the draft, as she looks unfazed at the challenge that lies ahead of her. Her confidence is not baseless, as she turned pro at 15 and spent the last four years competing at the highest level in Europe. Now she enters the best league in the world, where she will go up against the best players on this planet. She brings confidence to Storm, as her addition will leave someone out, but who will it be?

Jackie Powell nailed down 10 out of the 11 who will be in the final squad for Storm, but was stuck on the 11th. She said on the Locked on Women’s Basketball channel, “It’s going to come down to Zia Cook, Brianna Frasier, their four draftees, which include Jordan Hobbs, Madison Connor and Serena Sundell, and then you have a last year’s draftee, Indiana alumna Mckenzie Holmes. I can only guess that Holmes will probably won’t make the team because Seattle has three centers as it is. So they might need some more shooting.”

Storm selected Holmes at No. 26 in the third round of the 2024 WNBA Draft. But she sat out the entire WNBA season last year after undergoing a procedure on her knee. She did have an opportunity to re-enter the draft this year, as she sat out an entire season, but she chose to continue with the Storm. This choice might prove to be the wrong one, as she might end up not making the 11. After an illustrious college career, she finally fixed her recurring knee problem, but now she has to deal with the squad issues in Seattle.

Dominique Malonga and Liu Yueru, both of whom are new entrants, are showing huge promise, whereas, on the other hand, Holmes is coming off a year that she spent on the sidelines as a graduate manager at Indiana. It seems that Holmes is the obvious pick to be left out. As Powell mentioned, they absolutely need some shooting; they were dead last in the league last season in their 3-point percentage, as they shot at 28.8%. Only 13 teams in WNBA history had a lower shooting percentage from deep. Out of the names that she mentioned, Madison Connor seems to be the choice they could go with if they want some outside shooting. Conor has the best 3-point percentage out of them, with 40.4% over her four college years. It will depend on how these players look at the training camp, which has already begun.

Are the Seattle Storm genuine title challengers for 2025?

Last year, the offseason additions—Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins-Smith—literally got the team to get back up from their deep slumber at the bottom half of the table. Can their signings this season take them one step further? They succumbed to the Las Vegas Aces rather easily last year, as they lost 2-0 in the first round of the playoffs.

Nneka was ‘that’ player for this Storm side last year, as with her on the court, the team seemed to be playing a few notches above their normal game. For context, the Storm outscored opponents by 223 points in Ogwumike’s minutes, the best mark on the team. She will have Malonga to partner with for this season, so that duo is something the Seattle fans can look forward to. They traded their top scorer, Jewel Lloyd, from last season, so it remains to be seen how they will cover those points. In exchange, the Storm got the No. 2 pick in the 2025 draft and reserve center Li Yueru from the Sparks. Essentially, they got Malonga and Yeuru for their top scorer.

This trade certainly signaled a rebuild for Seattle as they made the trade-off of their veteran Lloyd with the youth and talent of Malonga. The fifth-year coach, Noelle Quinn, has just three weeks, roughly 14 practices, one home preseason game, and one road scrimmage before the May 17 regular-season opener, and he will have to get things just right. Quinn, who has a 3-6 postseason record with the Storm, is under more pressure than ever before to make a deep playoff run.