After a nearly four-month delay to their season due to COVID-19, the WNBA announced it will tip off in late July, providing the Washington Mystics a chance to defend their 2019 title.

All games will be played at the IMG Academy, a 600-acre student-athlete boarding school located in Bradenton, Florida. And, like every other American professional sport attempting to play this season so far, there will be no fans in attendance.

Teams will play a 22-game regular schedule, down from what would have been a 36-game season, with a traditional playoff format, according to a press release from the league.

Unlike Major League Baseball, which is in the midst of an ugly battle over prorating player salaries, the WNBA agreed to pay the entirety of their players’ salaries.

“Despite the disruption caused by the global pandemic to our 2020 season, the WNBA and its Board of Governors believe strongly in supporting and valuing the elite women athletes who play in the WNBA and therefore, players will receive their full pay and benefits during the 2020 season,” reads the league’s press release.

The league also said that it will support players who choose to speak up about social justice. “The WNBA opposes racism in all its forms, and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are the latest names in a list of countless others who have been subject to police brutality that stems from the systemic oppression of Black Lives in America, and it is our collective responsibility to use our platforms to enact change,” WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in the release.

Last summer, Mystics guard Natasha Cloud spoke out about D.C. gun violence, organizing a media blackout to call attention to a series of shootings at a D.C. elementary school in Southeast.

While the WNBA has not announced an official start date, the New York Times reports that July 24 will be opening day.The league also didn’t provide exact testing protocols, besides saying that testing will be performed upon players’ and staff’s arrival to IGM Academy and throughout the season. ESPN is also reporting that players with children will be allowed to bring a caretaker.

The last time we saw the Washington Mystics, it was October 2019 and they were celebrating the team’s first championship on their home court at the Sports and Entertainment Arena in Congress Heights. Regular season MVP Elena Delle Donne, University of Maryland grad Kristi Toliver, and Finals MVP Emma Meesseman led the way in an 89 to 78 win over the Connecticut Sun in the fifth and deciding game of the 2019 WNBA Finals.

The team and fans were supposed to celebrate the championship together with a parade that was to start at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in May, but it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team and league went through some changes this offseason, including a new collective bargaining agreement, the Mystics trading Toliver to the Los Angeles Sparks, and losing assistant coach Marianne Stanely to the Indiana Fever, which named her their head coach in September.

Nonetheless, the Mystics are poised to be formidable again and possibly favorites to repeat during this shortened season with Delle Donne and Meesseman both returning to the hardwood in D.C. gear.