With the WNBA’s first-ever 44-game season approaching its midpoint, some identities are beginning to take shape, while others are hardening. Big names like Napheesa Collier and Paige Bueckers are exceeding their already massive expectations, while emerging characters like Natalie Nakase and Naz Hillmon are just starting to leave their mark.
Oddities that began as small-sample-size anomalies are now turning into historic, record-breaking seasons. Collier is having one of the most efficient campaigns ever, while the expansion Valkyries are likely going to shatter 3-point records. With almost two months of action in the books, and with All-Star rosters settled and players packing for Indianapolis, we thought it would be a good time to turn our attention to the awards races. Here are my picks as we near the halfway point.
MVP: Napheesa Collier, Minnesota Lynx
The latest example of Collier’s precision, perfection, and reliability? As of this moment, Collier—whose 95.4 percent accuracy from the free throw line would rank fifth all time—has nailed 45 straight from the charity stripe, putting her 14 away from breaking Elena Delle Donne’s WNBA record for consecutive makes.
True to the formula that has fueled her constant, incremental improvement over her career, Collier’s offseason goal to become a 90-percent free throw shooter became a reality through habit and repetition. “No,” she told reporters who asked if she’d changed anything about her regimen, quickly summing up her no-frills approach: “No bounce,” she said, pantomiming a free throw release. “That’s it. It doesn’t look cool, but it helps me lock in.”
Collier is also making a career-high 5.0 free throws per game, a nod to the fact that she is leaving everything on the floor. Perhaps it’s also a sign of her place in a league that is shifting. Is it possible that Collier, a longtime hipster favorite, is finally getting a superstar whistle? Unrivaled, the 3-on-3 winter league she helped create, has turned her into a household name, and in what could be her first MVP season in the WNBA, she’s certainly purporting herself like one, putting up career highs in points (23.9, which also leads the WNBA), field goal percentage (52.8), and blocks (1.5 per game).
She finished second in All-Star voting this season, collecting 1.17 million votes, behind only Caitlin Clark.
Numbers and popularity aside, perhaps the greatest MVP case for Collier lies in how her reliability has given the 17-3 Lynx the illusion of reliability. Phee’s dominance is powering a potent but flawed juggernaut.
Courtney Williams is as likely to go 2-for-11 as she is to explode for 25 points. Injuries to Kayla McBride and Karlie Samuelson, plus an off year from Bridget Carleton, have hurt Minnesota’s accuracy beyond the arc. Cheryl Reeve, toggling between Russian standout Maria Kliundikova and the precocious but young sophomore Diamond Miller, is still searching for frontcourt depth behind Alanna Smith and Jessica Shepard. On any given night, Minnesota relies on different production from different players.
And yet, the Lynx are racking up wins at a historic rate because Phee’s versatility and awareness can make up for whatever is lost. On a night that Williams—Minnesota’s shooting guard turned point guard—is off, Reeve can sub in Natisha Hiedeman, knowing that Phee can adeptly manage the game, like she did against the rising Mercury. If Smith is in foul trouble? Phee can slide down to de facto rim protector. Earlier this season, Collier dropped 33 points on the Sun, leading a 15-point fourth-quarter comeback while the rest of the starting lineup went 4-for-26.
Phee is standing out more than ever, but her biggest strength, as ever, is how well she can mold herself seamlessly to the needs of the game.
Honorable mention: Alyssa Thomas, Phoenix Mercury
Only two players in WNBA history have dished over eight dimes per game while maintaining an assist-to-turnover ratio better than 2.5:1. The first is Courtney Vandersloot, one of the best table-setting point guards of all time. The other is 6-foot-2 powerhouse Alyssa Thomas, who is dishing out a career-high (and league-best) 9.5 assists for the 14-6 Mercury.
So how is a 33-year-old, 12-year vet putting together her best season yet?
There are a couple of reasons. Thomas, who has played through a torn labrum for a decade, can only get so much lift on her jumpers. But she’s made adjustments through the years, and she’s now putting up career highs in efficiency across the board. Her tornado-esque (stand up, Joakim Noah heads) push shot was crucial to the Mercury’s come-from-behind victory over the Lynx on Wednesday, in which she scored a career-high 29 points:
Her accuracy is also forcing opponents to play her honestly in a positionless system that has stretched her versatility to its logical extreme. Thomas, like Phee, has never been known as a flashy player. But she can do a little bit of everything. Pulling down boards and initiating the break, she’s a one-woman wrecking ball in transition. And now she’s flanked by multiple shooters who can set screens that either create open shots from beyond the arc, or allow Thomas to feast in the post against opposing guards.
After years of flying under the radar, Thomas has become a do-it-all guiding light for young playmaking bigs like Angel Reese and Aliyah Boston. She is the perfect big for this modern moment.
Defensive Player of the Year: Alanna Smith, Minnesota Lynx
There was a time when Smith, a 2019 first-round pick, was pushed and muscled out of the WNBA entirely. But a comeback season on the high-octane 2023 Chicago Sky offered a squinting simulacrum of how the 6-foot-4 forward could help maximize Napheesa Collier’s versatility, skill, and speed.
That offseason, Collier herself told Cheryl Reeve, “We need to get Lan.”
“Unassumingly,” Collier told The Next’s Terry Horstman, “she’s so hard to guard in the post. You didn’t hear about her a lot. She was a little bit underrated, but I knew every time I played her, it was a really tough matchup, and those are the kind of people you want on your team.”
The Lynx signed her that offseason, and Smith anchored them all the way to the 2024 WNBA Finals, earning second-team All-Defensive nods. This season, she’s taken things to the next level. Smith is now the floor-spacing, switchable, rim-protecting anchor of the no. 1 defense in the WNBA, on pace to log 50 blocks and 50 3-pointers—a feat accomplished by just four other players in history.
She can pick up guards at the level of the screen, protecting Courtney Williams and Karlie Samuelson, while allowing Collier to guard the less physical of the frontcourt threats. She’s adapted to the physicality of the WNBA by simply accepting it, constantly playing through some kind of injury—whether it was the back injury that drove her to tears during the WNBA Finals, or the recent knee contusion. Hell, the WNBPA's entire argument for better retirement plans could be a highlight reel of Smith falling on her back. As she told Reeve, “Aussies always get up.”
In the post, Smith’s long, quick arms make entry passes feel impossible. Manage to sneak one in, and you’ve set your teammate up for an exercise in futility, thudding up against one of the most deceptively strong frames in the game. Like any elite defender, so much of the work Smith does is preventative, but she’s also an explosive play-saver on help. Smith is blocking more shots than anyone not named A’ja Wilson, including a game-winning rejection against Rachel Banham this weekend.
As the arc of basketball history has bent towards pace, space, and small-ball, Smith has met it with emphatic swats.
Honorable mention: Gabby Williams, Seattle Storm
Williams, who leads the WNBA in steals, is a hypnotic ball hawk. Like any good pickpocket, she pounces on loose dribbles and errant passes. But Williams’s combination of athleticism, anticipation, and IQ allows her defense—an inherently reactive part of the game—to dictate the decisions of opponents.
Peep this moment against the Mercury, where she fakes out Kalani Brown by pretending to help on the diver, only to reverse course and intercept the 3-point kickout:
She trails plays and goads opponents into thinking there’s an opening, forcing them to recalibrate just how much of the area around her is dangerous terrain, effectively warping the court.
Seattle’s defensive quadrant of Nneka Ogwumike, Ezi Magbegor, and Skylar Diggins operates like an amoeba, toggling between traps and switches seamlessly, but Williams is both the head of the snake and the skeleton, the player who has the versatility to keep up with guards like Allisha Gray and the strength to hold off Bri Jones in the post. If Seattle’s team rebounding was a hair better, they’d likely be a top-three defense.
Rookie of the Year: Paige Bueckers, Dallas Wings
Bueckers leads all rookies in points, assists, and steals, while her efficiency numbers are creeping back up to UConn levels, and her reads continue to improve.
The Wings started the season 1-11, but they’re 5-4 in their last nine games, owing to a slew of injuries that have opened up lineup combinations that have maximized Bueckers’s ability.
The NaLyssa Smith trade opens up more playing time for Li Yueru, an adept screener, roller, and popper whose presence has created more space. The absence of DiJonai Carrington (rib injury) and Arike Ogunbowale (thumb) has given JJ Quinerly, a 5-foot-8 speedster, an opportunity to start alongside fellow rookie Aziaha James. Alongside Bueckers, the trio orchestrated a medley of transition drives, dishes, cuts, dump-offs, and triples that ran the Mercury off the court this past weekend. Quick, guard-heavy lineups also unlock Bueckers’s off-ball ability, though Dallas is still a high-level playmaker away from unlocking her full potential as a cutter. In the meantime, her teammates can just dump it down to her for easy assists on tough middies.
After the game, the sight of three rookies in the same sideline interview offered shades of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Phoenix got their lick back on Monday, but this is a formula that can work. (I’m calling it “PB & JJJ.”)
I’d also love to use this space as an opportunity to highlight a nitty-gritty aspect of Bueckers’s game that I find intriguing: her closeouts on defense, where she beelines toward opponents with the speed of a bullet train:
Bueckers, a nominal point guard who often played the 4 as a junior for a hobbled UConn team that made an unlikely Final Four run in 2024, has always had great positional size. It’s part of the reason Dallas can even play three-guard lineups. She’s only an inch shorter than Napheesa Collier, and shares a few important traits with her: speed, processing ability, and great instincts. As Bueckers continues to grow, I wonder if she’ll eventually be the same kind of defensive skeleton key, unlocking multiple lineup possibilities. That future could be coming sooner than anyone thinks. Now that Quinerly and James are proving their W chops, there’s a hyper-quick, defensively versatile, junky four-guard lineup just waiting to be unlocked when Carrington comes back from injury. For Bueckers, the possibilities are just beginning.
Honorable mention: Washington Mystics’ Sonia Citron and KiKi Iriafen (who I’ve gone in-depth on here and here)
Most Improved Player: Allisha Gray, Atlanta Dream
Those who believe this award should be reserved for younger, up-and-coming talents may take issue with this pick, but making the leap from star to superstar is a Herculean task and Gray has made it look natural.
After going through the Smesko system (less than 4 percent of her attempts are coming from the midrange area, a career low), both the quality and quantity of her offense has improved. Gray is putting up career highs in points, rebounds, assists, and shot attempts.
Her rise is an affirmation of Atlanta GM Dan Padover’s first big trade, coach Karl Smesko’s system, and Gray’s talent. In Dallas, where she was drafted, Gray was at worst a rare 3-and-D wing with elite positional size and preternatural rebounding instincts. Now, her talents are being maximized by a perfect synergy of system, personnel chemistry, and self-improvement.
Her combination of elite range (41.6-percent accuracy on 5.9 attempts, both career highs) and downhill strength makes her an impossible cover on dribble handoffs, especially off bone-crushing screens from Brittney Griner, Bri Jones, and Naz Hillmon, all of whom have received more assists from Gray than any other teammate. That’s despite her being flanked by creative guards like Rhyne Howard and Jordin Canada. Peep the falling pass over two Liberty defenders to a wide open Jones, and the bullet between the outstretched arms of Ezi Magbegor and Nneka Ogwumike:
This kind of scale-up, from All-Star to borderline MVP candidate, simply doesn’t happen very often at 30 years old.
Honorable mention: Veronica Burton, Golden State Valkyries
Burton’s rise has been a collision of improvement and opportunity. Trapped in a logjam of Connecticut’s cavalcade of wings last season, Burton averaged just 12 minutes per game as a stopper off the bench. With the expansion Valkyries this year, her minutes have doubled and her production has nearly tripled. Burton has been working on her range, and coach Natalie Nakase’s system dictates that you let it fly. On Wednesday, it culminated in a career-high five triples against the Fever. Her growing range also allows her to toggle on and off the ball in the Valkyries’ multi-guard configuration.
Her game management might be even more impressive, though. She’s the only player this season to have multiple games with double-digit assists and zero turnovers.
Nakase has also repurposed Burton’s defensive bona fides as a guard into a zone-heavy scheme that relies on her to rotate down low. So far, it has worked to devastating effect.
As Burton continues to work on her range and her reads, she could grow into one of the best 3-and-D playmaking guards in the league, the kind of player any title team would salivate over.
Sixth Player of the Year: Naz Hillmon, Atlanta Dream
Hillmon provides an alternate look off the bench to the Dream’s twin-towers configuration and is quickly becoming Karl Smesko’s preferred finisher, leading qualifying bench players in fourth-quarter and crunch-time minutes.
And why not? Atlanta’s starting lineup is a staggering 18 points per 100 possessions better when Brittney Griner is swapped out for Hillmon, who makes the Dream faster, spacier, and generates more steals—all core tenets of Smesko-ball.
This is not Griner’s fault as much as it’s a matter of lineup synergy. Griner and Bri Jones, two back-to-the-basket bigs, clash and crash into each other. Hillmon’s presence, in that context, is a panacea, creating space for Jones’s post-ups and drives from Allisha Gray, Jordin Canada, and Rhyne Howard.
Hillmon’s range has expanded dramatically under Smesko, owing much to the tutelage of assistant coach Chelsea Lyles. Her average shot distance has doubled this season, and over half of her shots come from beyond the arc. Against the Valkyries on Monday, she nailed a career-high four 3s, including two open crunch-time daggers, created by the threat of Jones in the post.
Griner, it's worth noting, celebrated on the bench, making the 3-point goggles sign over her eyes.
On defense, Hillmon’s quickness offers extra versatility and gives away little physicality. She sets rock-solid picks. She defends at the level of the screen. She’s an excellent communicator. In time, she may play herself out of qualifying for this award and earn a full-time starting role.
Honorable mention: Natisha Hiedeman, Minnesota Lynx
The StudBudz are a dynamic duo, on and off the court. When Courtney Williams doesn’t have it, Cheryl Reeve has no qualms about finishing games with her understudy and streaming partner, Natisha Hiedeman. Whereas Williams is the queen of the midrange, Hiedeman offers a different look. She’s a shifty scorer who utilizes her skinny frame to slip through defenders and get to the rim, where she’s making over three-quarters of her shots, thanks to a knack for creative finishing. She’s also leading qualified bench players in assists.
Coach of the Year: Natalie Nakase, Golden State Valkyries
No team has surpassed expectations like the Golden State Valkyries, who are on pace to become the first expansion team to make the WNBA playoffs in over 25 years.
Nakase was tasked not only with setting the culture for a roster, but also for an entire franchise. So far she’s proven to be the right woman for the job, taking a hodgepodge of bench players and overseas talent and making them cohere despite constant turnover.
In 19 games, they’ve played 17 different players, and used 10 different starting lineups. Despite that, they’ve gone 10-9 and stayed true to their core principles: shooting a ton of 3s (more, in fact, than any team in WNBA history), rebounding their misses, and defending with effort and collective IQ. They use multiple ball handlers and fast, hard-diving bigs who’ve proven to be interchangeable. Golden State isn’t chock full of stars, but they know who they are and what they do well.
Nakase is also maximizing the talent on the roster. Under her tutelage, Veronica Burton—whose playmaking ability was subdued in a Connecticut Sun offense run by Alyssa Thomas last season—leads the Valkyries in assists. Kayla Thornton, the Liberty’s former bench spark plug, has become a first-time All-Star.
No one has done more with less, though she’d probably abhor that characterization of the Valkyries’ talent, which is what makes her a special coach: She sees things in her players that others don’t.
Honorable mention: Karl Smesko, Atlanta Dream
There were a lot of questions about Smesko-ball after the Dream signed two back-to-the-basket free agent bigs in Brittney Griner and Bri Jones, but Karl Smesko has made it work. His 3-point-happy system has translated to the WNBA (the Dream are second in the W in 3-pointers hoisted) while powering Allisha Gray, Naz Hillmon, and Rhyne Howard into career years. Jones, who found herself glued to the bench during Connecticut’s playoff run last season, has stretched her range and her defensive capabilities under Smesko, making the kind of adaptations that will prolong her career. Griner hasn’t translated as well, but Smesko has given her the freedom to explore her range, and he’s utilized her ability as a screener to create space for actions on the other end of the floor, while opening up Atlanta’s bevy of shooters.
