WASHINGTON (AP) — With a new general manager and coach, the Washington Mystics are just beginning the process of trying a build a contender again.
One part of the plan is obvious. The Mystics want to develop a reputation as a player-friendly organization.
“We want this to be a home, where players can find themselves and really want to be here," coach Sydney Johnson said. "I think in doing so, perennial success will follow.”
The Mystics formally introduced Johnson as their new coach and Jamila Wideman as GM on Wednesday. Washington is coming off two straight sub-.500 seasons and has been quiet in free agency this offseason. At their news conference, Johnson and Wideman focused less on Xs and Os and roster building strategy and more on creating the right culture.
“These two in particular have spent so much of their lives pouring into other people," said Michael Winger, president of Monumental Basketball, which runs both the Mystics and the NBA's Wizards. "With little to no fanfare — they don’t celebrate themselves — but countless people have become better humans, better athletes, better advocates because of them. That was so incredibly important to us, that we could have leaders who understood that there is so much more to the athlete behind the jersey, behind the sneakers.”
With a new collective bargaining agreement expected after this season, free agency in 2026 could be a big opportunity for teams that need to add talent. Wideman cautioned against putting too much emphasis on just next offseason, but it was easy to read between the lines as she and Johnson talked about the future of the Mystics.
They want Washington to be an attractive WNBA destination.
Wideman believes Washington has a lot to offer, especially for international players. The team's current roster includes Aaliyah Edwards (Canada), Sika Koné (Mali) and Jade Melbourne (Australia).
“This place, this city, speaks for itself. We’ve also got to speak to players why," Wideman said. "As the league becomes more and more international, I think we’ve got something really special in this city in the sense that there are so many communities and there is such diversity.”
Wideman played at Stanford, graduating in 1997. She played in the WNBA's inaugural game that year and was responsible for the first assist in league history. She spent the past six years at the NBA, most recently as the league's senior vice president of player development.
Johnson was the Ivy League player of the year in his senior season at Princeton in 1997. He later coached the men's teams at Princeton and Fairfield. He began his coaching career as an assistant at Georgetown under John Thompson III, who is now a senior vice president at Monumental.
Johnson was an assistant coach for the WNBA's Chicago Sky last year.
The Mystics won their first championship in 2019 behind star Elena Delle Donne, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic and injury issues, she played only 51 games over the next four years. Then she sat out last season after the team gave her a core player designation.
Washington started 2024 with 12 straight losses, and although the Mystics nearly rallied to make the playoffs, they finished 14-26. The team replaced GM Mike Thibault and coach Eric Thibault with Wideman and Johnson.
Those two now start with a fairly clean slate.
“There’s a lot we can’t control. To win, to win championships, it’s luck, it’s dependent, it’s a lot of stuff," Wideman said. "What we can do is do our best to control what’s in our hands. One of the things in our hands I think is simply building culture.”
AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball
FILE - Fairfield coach Sydney Johnson watches during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome, File)
Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company's 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Microsoft accused one of the workers in a termination letter Monday of misconduct "designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event.” Microsoft says the other worker had already announced her resignation, but on Monday it ordered her to leave five days early.
The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up toward a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft's AI ambitions.
“You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military," Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. "Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
The protest forced Suleyman to pause his talk while it was being livestreamed from Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft's founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft said Suleyman calmly tried to de-escalate the situation. “Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” he said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and “all of Microsoft” had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people, before being escorted out of the event.
A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event.
Aboussad, based at Microsoft's Canadian headquarters in Toronto, was invited on Monday to a call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being fired immediately, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.
An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
In its termination letter, Microsoft told Aboussad she could have raised her concerns confidentially to a manager. Instead, it said she made “hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations” against Suleyman and the company and that her “conduct was so aggressive and disruptive that you had to be escorted out of the room by security.”
Agrawal had already given her two weeks notice and was preparing to leave the company on April 11, but on Monday a manager emailed that Microsoft "has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”
It was the most public but not the first protest over Microsoft's work with Israel. In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting the contracts.
“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Microsoft had declined to say Friday whether it was taking further action, but Aboussad and Agrawal expected it was coming after both lost access to their work accounts shortly after the protest.
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests over a contract it also has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California targeted a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.
CORRECTS DATE - A pro-Palestinian demonstrator, Ibtihal Aboussad, is escorted away by security as they interrupt Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during a presentation of the company's AI assistant, Copilot, ahead of a 50th Anniversary presentation at Microsoft headquarters, Friday, April 4, 2025, in Redmond, Wash. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond)
