Well, the fans and Sykes. She was standing on the sideline, arms raised to the sky, a smile beaming across her face as she sang every word. After the longest absence of her professional career, it was good to be back.

And her return was great for the Mystics, who finally found the win column: They broke a franchise-record 12-game losing streak to start the season with an 87-68 victory. At 1-12, they are no longer the WNBA’s only winless team.

“Obviously, we’ve been itching to get a win,” guard Ariel Atkins said. “Really just stayed the course. Some people are going to be like, ‘You didn’t win a championship.’ We don’t care. We got the lid off. We got our first game. We did it together. We stuck together throughout the entire thing. And so for me, that’s the most rewarding thing.”

Sykes was back in the lineup after missing 10 games with a left high ankle sprain, and she finished with 18 points, four assists and three rebounds in 14 minutes. She was 4 for 6 from behind the arc. The aggression that is a staple of her game was there on both ends of the court; she attacked the rim and flew around defensively.

While the two-time all-defensive first-team selection was out, Washington was the lowest-scoring team in the WNBA. Coach Eric Thibault immediately put Sykes back in his starting lineup, and the Mystics seemed to feed off one of the most energetic players in the league.

The Mystics buried a season-high 17 three-pointers while shooting 54.8 percent from behind the arc. Seven of those threes came in the first quarter. On the night, eight players made a three, and the Mystics had a 23-point lead in the fourth quarter, their largest of the season.

“I would have taken a kicked-ball, half-court shot [to win],” Thibault said. “It did not matter. It was nice to not stress down at the end. We’ve been in close games almost every night, so it’s nice to get that first group out of the game for a minute. It was sweet enough.”

Atkins had 18 points, five assists and four rebounds, and Julie Vanloo added 11 points and four assists off the bench. The postgame celebration was muted, but there was an unquestionable sense of relief around the team. Vanloo reached out wide after the buzzer, looking up to the ceiling. Myisha Hines-Allen bounced up and down. Aaliyah Edwards made a “W” with her fingers. Thibault was just thankful to be done talking about the losing streak.

“We have been playing so well,” Vanloo said. “We’ve been so close so many times. We played so tough against really great teams. And I feel like we’ve been working so hard, and you just got to stay patient because hard work always pays off.”

Rhyne Howard led the Dream (5-5) with 16 points.

One development threatened to dampen the Mystics’ mood afterward: Sykes tweaked her left foot during the fourth quarter and was spotted on crutches after the game. (She did not hold a postgame media session because she was working with team trainers.) Thibault said she stepped funny but tried to return to the game and noted that no one was overly concerned. The Mystics said that she will be tested in Washington and that her use of crutches was precautionary.

Coming into this year, Sykes had been a model of durability, missing just a handful of games in her seven-season career. So the ankle injury was different for her, and the timing couldn’t have been worse for the Mystics. They have a reconstructed roster, and they were going to lean heavily on Sykes as the starting point guard with a bigger leadership role. Then, in the first quarter of the second game of the season, she rolled her ankle and collapsed.

“That first week, it was pretty dark for me,” Sykes said during Tuesday’s shoot-around. “I was angry. I was confused. I’m scared because I don’t know what’s going on with my ankle. I barely could put pressure on it. And I’ve never had an ankle injury before. So I am completely brand new to this world.”

The timing was awful for the Mystics, but Sykes believes it was good for her. Preparing for the season and her new responsibilities had weighed on her. She so desperately wanted to provide whatever the Mystics need — and it’s a lot after they said goodbye to Natasha Cloud and Elena Delle Donne — that the stress kept building.

Numerous conversations with those close to her, including her therapist, helped reshape her mind-set.

“I know that it is a process, and I think that I was taking away from that by overthinking, overwhelming myself, overstimulating myself with all these what-ifs,” Sykes said. “All these assumptions are exactly what they are — assumptions. Nothing has happened. So when something happens, then you go from there. I needed to take a pause.”