The Seattle Storm are set to have a season that can only be described as... interesting. The team has seen some free agency shake-ups and will also be playing with a brand new coach, and it's anyone's guess as to how that will pan out this season. But the team's future? That still seems to be squarely in the hands of the 20-year-old Dominique Malonga.
Malonga was drafted to the team in 2025 and has since proven herself to be an effective force on the court. She's heading into her second WNBA season fresh off her first stint in Unrivaled, and from the sounds of it, she's going to be trying her hand at a little bit of everything this season.
Last year's preseason was filled with chatter about positionless basketball; both the Phoenix Mercury and the New York Liberty tossed the term around and deployed strategies built around it to varying degrees of success. And per the Seattle Times, this season Malonga is going to be playing her own version of positionless basketball for the Storm.
As the outlet noted, the Storm are in total rebuild mode. While that means a lot of great players, including Gabby Williams and Skylar Diggins, will not longer be on the floor, it also means the team has the opportunity to dig around a bit in what's new and see what works and what doesn't.
Enter: Malonga's opportunity to try a few things out.
The nice thing about a rebuild is that there's room to make mistakes; if something doesn't work, it can be folded into the rebuild, the strategy, the plans. Those are a little more fluid and adaptable, things can shift. Malonga will be playing alongside Awa Fam Thiam, who was drafted to the team this year, as well as Ezi Magbegor (when she returns from injury) and Flau'jae Johnson, who also joined the Storm during the 206 WNBA Draft.
Coming up with their own style of positionless basketball might not be easy, and it might not come naturally, at first. But the team has reasons to believe it can work, The Times noted. As Malonga told the outlet, the only thing that's expected of her is that she shows up and does what she does best — and that's pretty much the best position a basketball player can be in. The team wants to run hard and fast, two things Malonga said she grew to excel at during Unrivaled.
The Seattle Storm will play their first game of the regular season on May 8 when they host the Golden State Valkyries.
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