Is Brittney Sykes the Seattle Storm’s key to punching a playoff ticket?

“I just wanted an opportunity to compete for a championship and playoffs,” Sykes told media on Sunday after she defeated her former team in her return to the DMV. “That just speaks to who I am and the competitor that I am. That’s no slight towards Washington; they’re just in a different space. So, I’m just very appreciate and grateful that it was able to work out the way it did. Washington got what they wanted, and I ultimately got what I wanted — types of games like this where we’re literally just trying to make sure that we compete for playoffs and make that championship run.”

The Storm currently sit sixth in the WNBA standings and have been vocal about their championship goals. But Sykes has experienced a mixture of team successes and struggles through her first eight games in a Storm uniform.

Sykes joined Seattle in the middle of a six-game losing streak and wasn’t able to immediately help turn things around, despite her strong individual performances. The Storm lost Sykes’ first three games after the trade before finally breaking the streak in Vancouver against the Atlanta Dream. After the following loss to the Phoenix Mercury, the Storm embarked on what is now a three-game winning streak.

Despite the less than championship-level results her new team is producing, Sykes has already impacted the Storm in a multitude of ways. In her first eight games with the Storm, Sykes has averaged 12.8 points on 39.8% shooting from the field and 38.5% from three, 3.8 free-throw attempts, 2.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.4 steals and 0.6 blocks in 30.9 minutes per game.

Compared to her 25 games played for the Mystics this season, Sykes’ is playing the same amount of time while scoring less with higher efficiency, recording roughly one fewer rebounds and assists, and taking fewer free throws. Many of those differences come down to lower usage surrounded by veteran All-Stars, as opposed to her role among the young Mystics. So, Sykes and the team feel good about how the transition has been going.

“Slim has acclimated almost seamlessly to our team,” Storm forward Nneka Ogwumike said after Sykes’ second appearance for Seattle, referring to her with a nickname, Slim, that is used by her teammates almost more often than her name. “She’s exactly what we’ve been needing.”

A couple of different and important things have aided Sykes’ smooth acclimation. For one, some of the plays that the Storm runs are similar to what the Mystics ran, so head coach Noelle Quinn has confidence in employing strategies that Sykes is already familiar with. Additionally, in Seattle, Sykes reunited with several former teammates from her time playing for the Los Angeles Sparks — guards Erica Wheeler and Lexie Brown, injured forward Katie Lou Samuelson and Ogwumike.

“I mean it’s chemistry,” Sykes told The Next ahead of the historic matchup in Vancouver. “I missed giving a pocket pass to Nneka [Ogwumike], and then just playing in the open floor with E[rica Wheeler], just getting open shots for Lexie [Brown]. [Katie] Lou [Samuelson] isn’t here but I loved playing with her too in LA. So just having all those types of familiarity really helps me.”

However, a lot of the credit belongs to Sykes herself for how she’s been able to contribute to her teams.

“I just believe she’s one of the hardest playing players in the league,” Mystics head coach Sydney Johnson said ahead of playing against Sykes for the first time in 2025. “The challenge with her specifically is how hard she plays and how much she gets into the paint. I mean, she just is almost unstoppable. I mean relentless. Great physicality, great speed, and because she doesn’t take many plays off she’s always putting a threat to defenses. And then she’s a steal threat as well, so she brings a lot. That’s why Seattle coveted her. That’s why she played so well for us.”

More defensive possibilities

Beyond the plain statistics, one of Sykes’ most obvious contributions is her defense. It’s been her calling card throughout her professional career, and it’s what Seattle saw in her when they made the move to bring her on.

The Storm were already an incredibly strong defensive team led by the trusty Gabby Williams, Ezi Magbegor and Skylar Diggins, but Sykes has added another level and a new dynamic.

The 5’9 guard is long and athletic with a 6’0 wingspan, enabling her to get big blocks and steals. She can also put pressure on the ball or on the wing in different lineups, changing what Seattle can do defensively. The change was perhaps most evident when Seattle faced Atlanta in Vancouver and Quinn switched her defensive scheme to make Sykes guard Rhyne Howard most of the game while Williams defended Allisha Gray.

When the teams faced off two days earlier, Howard had scored 25 points on 8-of-18 shooting from the floor, and five-of-12 from three. In Vancouver, Howard had to do her damage from the free throw line, only taking 10 total shots and hitting one three.

“Howard is a little bit more unpredictable, and I think Slim does a good job with unpredictability because of her athleticism and her quick twitch and ability to stay in plays and things like that,” Quinn said of why she made the change.

Whereas Williams prides herself on her ability to get steals and stops from knowing her opponent’s tendencies thanks to extensive film watching, Sykes provided an option to defend a less predictable player. 

Sykes also takes a lot of pride in her defense. The former Mystic was vocally “pissed off” about the final defensive moment against the Mystics where Sug Sutton was able to shoot an open three-pointer to tie the game at 82 with 6.1 seconds left. The play in question resulted from Sonia Citron setting a screen for Sutton and Sykes failing to switch defensive assignments with Williams, leaving Sutton open. But Sykes showed her defensive IQ — and self-awareness — shortly after.

“That was on me, [I] take full accountability,” Sykes said after the game. “Sometimes I might get a little too nose-deep into guarding who I’m guarding, and I forget that we’re supposed to switch. And I was stuck the glue on Soni [Citron] because I didn’t want her to get the three … and that was one of those things where I needed to react a little bit quicker.”

Sykes’ defensive effort translates to other parts of the game as well.

“You can’t teach effort and instinct, and I think she has those things innately,” Quinn said. “I think she helps us offensively as well but that’s triggered by what she does defensively — getting in passing lanes, being aggressive. So we’re going to continue to lean on her for those athletic guards that we see.”

Another scorer and playmaker

Even though Sykes isn’t scoring quite as much as she did in Washington she has already provided a big boost to Seattle’s offense. She’s making buckets, pushing the pace, putting pressure on the rim and creating opportunities for her teammates.

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“I make a running joke that’s like ‘everything that I did against them now I just do it with them,'” Sykes said after her second Storm appearance in Los Angeles. “So just getting to the paint, making sure that I get open for shots. But at the same time, just getting on transition, pushing the ball, delivering the ball where it needs to go, whether it’s to our bigs down low, and just getting them activated — emphasis on points in the paint. And then just finding my way, creating a shot for me. And if that’s not there, dumping it off, getting it off, just pushing our pace and making sure that we can get up and down. And that we’re doing it on both sides.” 

DIME by Slim 🤩
Bucket by Dom 💪 pic.twitter.com/dYxLGWE4Sf

— Seattle Storm (@seattlestorm) August 24, 2025

Sykes has scored in double figures in six of her eight appearances since the trade, including a 27-point performance against the Sparks in her second game. Quinn has praised Sykes as an outright scoring threat with her explosiveness to the rim and ability to get into the paint and to the free throw line as well as her ability to initiate the offense.

To some extent Sykes is still finding her place in the offense. Her field-goal attempts have been down to single-digits after her first two games (but not if one counts her free-throw attempts as Quinn thinks folks should). Seattle has struggled to draw fouls and get to the line all season, so Quinn continues to highly value Sykes’ 3.8 free throw attempts per game, even if it is lower than the 6.3 per game she averaged with the Mystics this year.

Sykes has also shown off her ability to make big shots, most recently landing a massive three-pointer against the Mystics with 15 seconds left in the game to give her team a three-point lead.

“I think that’s kind of the nature of the team that we have, on any given night, the hot hand could be anyone,” Quinn said. “Now Slim has had a few under her belt and is understanding our offense and where she can be dynamic, where she can play-make, where she could get to the rim. … In general I think it was about her getting comfortable in the group, getting comfortable with her play and our flow, our philosophy, our verbiage, and I think she settled in pretty nicely.”

A postive voice in the locker room

Despite the numerous vocal leaders on Seattle’s roster, Sykes has brought her own leadership qualities, which particularly blossomed earlier in the year as the leader of the rookie-laden Mystics. She still comes across as a leader as she works to integrate with her new team in a situation made difficult by a tight timeline.

“There’s verbiage that she has to learn, a new system, but what didn’t change is just how she shows up — how she plays, her pace, her intensity, her veteran leadership,” Quinn praised ahead of Sykes’ first game back in Washington. “I hear her voice a lot, and you would think a player coming to a new situation during this juncture of our season that would be a little difficult to do, but I think she’s taking it in stride.”

Per Quinn, less than two weeks after Sykes joined her team, her presence in the locker room as a vocal leader pouring into the group has been her foremost impact on the team.

“She’s coming into a situation where the pieces that we have, we don’t have a lot of time, but she’s so positive with it, and understands that she can impact us, not only on the court, but again, just with her energy, her positivity, her talk,” Quinn said before the team’s August 17 loss to Phoenix.

Even after her very first appearance in a Storm jersey, on August 8 in Las Vegas, Sykes’ new teammates were already praising those off-court contributions.

“Having Slim [Sykes] here has just been a great boost of energy that I think we need, not just on the court, but the intangibles as well,” Storm forward Gabby Williams said postgame. “She instantly came in and started being a voice for us in a time that’s been, you know, a really rough part of our season. But just having kind of this new, fresh energy did feel great.”

Sykes demonstrated some of her leadership in her return to D.C. as well.

“I knew coming in Washington is a very scrappy team and I even said it in our huddle, like we’re going to have to take this, they’re not going to go away,” Sykes explained postgame.

Looking towards playoffs

Now that Seattle has gotten over the hump of the repeated losses and currently rides a winning streak, the focus is fully on the playoffs. The Storm’s most recent win in Washington could represent a big step in that direction.

Though the Mystics currently sit outside of the playoff picture, they had defeated the Storm during the previous two meetings between the teams this season. It took a game-winning buzzer-beating shot from Ogwumike to hold off the Mystic’s strong comeback push and win 84-82, but it represented Seattle’s ability to win close games.

“You have so many close losses it’s one of those things where you’re just trying to get over that hump. And we knew once we got over that hump, we were going to hit the ground running,” Sykes said after the relieving win. “It was definitely one of those games today where we had to get over the hill in Washington. So for us, we know that going into playoffs, these are the type of games that are probably going to be happening more times than not. And what better way to prepare than to have these type of games and get comfortable in these tight situations.

“So today was another opportunity for us — we executed,” Sykes continued. “You know, the ball fell to our side. But I’m for sure knowing that our team is going to go back, watch the film and do what we need to do, so that we don’t have too many of these type of games.”

With some wins now under their wings and Sykes bringing a lift on both ends of the court (and in the locker room), the Storm are ready to play some of their best basketball of the season, down the stretch and into playoffs.

Jenn Hatfield and Rob Knox contributed reporting to this piece.

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