Jewell Loyd Shares 'Just Get Me Out' Mentality Around Storm Exit to Aces

In December 2024, news broke that longtime Seattle Storm superstar and 2023 WNBA scoring champion Jewell Loyd had requested a trade out of Seattle, where she had spent her entire career since being drafted there in 2015 and had won two WNBA championships.

Then, in late January, it was reported that Loyd was headed to the Las Vegas Aces as part of a three-team trade that also included longtime Aces star Kelsey Plum getting sent to the Los Angeles Sparks and the Sparks' No. 2 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft going to Seattle (which they used to draft Dominique Malonga).

It's no secret that there were some locker room issues in Seattle last season, specifically surrounding Loyd. And she opened up on these problems having prompted her to want to leave the Storm during a May 29 episode of her The Warehouse podcast.

"At the start of everything, I told my agent, 'Just get me out,'" Loyd said. "It physically, mentally, emotionally, cannot be worse [than Seattle]. I guarantee you. I will put my life savings on this: it can't be worse."

She then added, "I told her certain teams [for a potential trade], I'm like, 'Whatever works out.. I trust you. Figure it out.'"

She then added that she told her agent that she didn't want to know any trade updates until she knew for sure where Loyd was headed. And once Loyd got the call that she was headed to Las Vegas, she initially didn't believe it, because that's where everybody around her had wanted her to go all along.

Soon after her agent told her this, she got a call from Aces star A'ja Wilson, thus proving that she was indeed going to be Wilson's teammate for the 2025 season.