Considering a W29

[Doctor MJ]

So, as many of you know, the WNBA has come up with a X greatest in X years thing every 5 years beginning with their All-Decade team of 10 after 10 years. This means that if this norm continues, we should expect to see a W30 (or 30 in 30, or 30@30, etc) next year. And with this in mind I thought it would be fun to talk through candidates a year ahead of time.

Something that makes this maybe more compelling to me is that the WNBA has a tendency to announce these things during the season, which meant that you might say that the current W25 might be more accurately called "Top 25 in 24 and a half-ish seasons. The 2026 season will have some effect on the voters, but anyone who hasn't yet won a championship, probably won't have had another chance before a W30 is announced.

So first and foremost doing this for fun and knowledge, but if there's interest, it could culminate in a group vote.

For now, I'm just going to share some lists of players to consider. I expect I'll add some commentary in the days to come.

[Doctor MJ]

The Official W25 in alphabetical order as typically presented.

Seimone Augustus
Sue Bird
Swin Cash
Tamika Catchings
Tina Charles
Cynthia Cooper
Elena Delle Donne
Sylvia Fowles
Yolanda Griffith
Brittney Griner
Becky Hammon
Lauren Jackson
Lisa Leslie
Maya Moore
Deanna Nolan
Nneka Ogwumike
Candace Parker
Cappie Pondexter
Katie Smith
Breanna Stewart
Sheryl Swoopes
Diana Taurasi
Tina Thompson
Teresa Weatherspoon
Lindsay Whalen

If we look to order them by when they were first added to these Top 10/15/20/25 lists along with their debut WNBA season:

From the 10 (2006):

Sue Bird (2002)
Tamika Catchings (2002)
Cynthia Cooper (1997)
Yolanda Griffith (1999)
Lauren Jackson (2001)
Lisa Leslie (1997)
Katie Smith (1999)
Sheryl Swoopes (1997)
Tina Thompson (1997)

From the 15 (2011):

Becky Hammon (1999)
Cappie Pondexter (2006)
Diana Taurasi (2004)
Teresa Weatherspoon (1997)

From the 20 (2016):

Seimone Augustus (1996)
Swin Cash (2002)
Maya Moore (2011)
Deanna Nolan (2001)
Candace Parker (2008)
Lindsay Whalen (2004)

From the 25 (2021):

Tina Charles (2010)
Elena Delle Donne (2013)
Sylvia Fowles (2008)
Brittney Griner (2013)
Nneka Ogwumike (2012)
Breanna Stewart (2016)

I'll shout out the two other players who made versions of the list prior the 25:

Ticha Penicheiro (1998), who made the 15 & 20.
Dawn Staley (1999), who made both the 10 & 15.

I'll also note the weirdness of Weatherspoon, who did not making the original 10, but did make the 15/20/25. despite not playing any more. There was an undeniable changing of preference from Staley to Spoon that was revisionist, and yet also made a lot of sense, as I would say that Staley getting in over Spoon in the first place smacked of crediting Staley for her Team USA prominence.

[Doctor MJ]

So then beyond those who have received such accolades before, who else deserves consideration?

I want to start with the top players from the deeper past who were not chosen to receive the honor, and thus probably never will, but in some cases, I think they were absolutely robbed:

Listing in order of debut:

Taj McWilliams-Franklin (1999)
DeLisha Milton-Jones (1999)
Katie Douglas (2001)
Penny Taylor (2001)
Angel McCoughtry (2009)

And then major players to consider in part because of accomplishments in the time since the W25:

Courtney Vandersloot (2011)
Alyssa Thomas (2014)
Chelsea Gray (2015)
Jonquel Jones (2016)
A'ja Wilson (2018)
Napheesa Collier (2019)
Jackie Young (2019)

I'd note that even if we ignore the previously-maybe-robbed, I see 7 players coming in with that 2nd list with strong candidacies, and there isn't room for all of them to get in... without pushing W25-ers out.

[Doctor MJ]

And breaking down the players I listed before by primary franchise city - and putting those not in W25 in red:

ATL: McCoughtry
CHA: Staley
CHI: Sloot
CON: AT / Charles / Douglas / Jonquel / Taj
DET: Deanna / Swin
HOU: Cooper / Swoopes/ Thompson
IND: Catchings
LAS: DeLisha / Lisa / Nneka / Parker
LVA: A'ja / Chelsea / Jackie
MIN: Fowles / Seimone / Maya / Phee / Smith / Whalen
NYL: Spoon
PHX: Cappie / Griner / Penny / Taurasi
SEA: Bird / Jackson / Stewie
SAS: Hammon
SAC: Griffith / Ticha
WAS: Delle Donne

And just tipping the cap, franchises not represented above:

Cleveland Rockers
Miami Sol
Portland Fire

And cities who have or had hosted WNBA teams not explicitly represented:

Orlando (Miracle) who became the Connecticut Sun, Taj & Douglas played in both cities.
Utah (Starzz) who became the San Antonio Silver Stars, and then the Las Vegas Aces.
Tulsa (Shock) & Dallas (Wings) who are what became of the Detroit Shock.

[Green Chile]

Fantastic thread. Thank you for doing this.
I definitely didn't know about the Spoon-Staley swap.

On predicting W30, I'm still a relatively new fan so, I wouldn't know about a lot of the earlier players. From the way I've heard people talked about Angel McCoughtry, I would have thought she would have been on W25.

Just trying to pick the 5 newcomers (if they don't boot anybody) is really hard for me.

A'ja is obvious.
Outside of that, I could see so many great debates about the rest.

Probably the only player I'd go ahead and exclude is Jackie. She's amazing, but with these hard choices, it's easy to use the age excuse with her.

[Green Chile]

As impossible as these decisions are now (and were), it seems like it's about to be even more difficult.

W35 and W40 will be insanely hard choices.

[Doctor MJ]

Thinking about a helpful way to go through the candidates and give some love to the greats, I think a chronological study makes sense. I'll start with the players of the 1st year which, naturally, introduces quite a lot at once.

The 1997 Originals.

To build the first WNBA rosters, the big names they sought were from the 1996 Olympic Team USA which won Gold and began a Gold Medal streak that has continued unbroken ever since.

While most of that roster would first play with the rival ABL, the WNBA acquired 4 significant players:

Lisa Leslie, 23, USC alum, star of Team USA
Sheryl Swoopes, 25, Texas Tech alum, a Team USA co-star
Rebecca Lobo, 22, UConn alum, young up & comer
Ruthie Bolton, 29, Auburn alum, a Team USA co-star

Between Leslie, Swoopes & Bolton the WNBA grabbed 3 of the 5 key players on Team USA, with the other two being the legendary UGA duo of Katrina McClain & Teresa Edwards, then 30 & 31 respectively.

The W's focus on young talent was clearly front and center then when they then built their league and publicity not around that trio but instead around yes the Angeleno Leslie in LA & and the Texan Swoopes in Houston, but with the Yankee Lobo in NY in Mississippian Bolton's stead.

While Lobo would not pan out as a worthy league tentpole, the further careers of either Leslie or Swoopes would dwarf the combined further careers of all the other players, and so the WNBA getting those two was huge.

Alongside from these big names, there was also a top player coming out of college, and thus the #1 pick of the fist WNBA draft, in Tina Thompson of USC, and then there was the matter that the Houston Comets would win that first lottery in addition to being assigned on of the two Team USA stars in Swoopes, and this would immediately make the Comets a key team to beat from the jump.

But then, the imbalance would turn out to be far harder than that, because unknown to all involved in American basketball, a then 33-year old American who had been playing in Europe after a career in the shadows of others seen as greater talent, would also be allocated to the Comets, and she would be the one more than anyone else who would take the league by storm: Cynthia Cooper, yet another USC alum.

To say that the Comets ended up getting 3 of the 4 best players in the first season of the WNBA is only an overstatement due to Swoopes having maternity leave for much of that season. Once she got back to 100%, there was no doubt of it.

After those 4, the player who would emerge as the next significant in WNBA history in the eyes of the consensus would be a teammate of Lobo's on the Liberty: Teresa Weatherspoon.

In 1996, Weatherspoon was 30 like McClain, and had spent her time after leading La Tech to an NCAA title in 1988, and had spent the 8 years between then an the formation of the W playing in Europe like Cooper and others. She was clearly a respected pro, but also like Cooper, slotted in as more of a sidekick - in her case, to Lobo - and really didn't seem to be envisioned as a player who would become iconic.

But as the Liberty kept making deep runs to almost-chips, but not actually breaking through to a chip until 2024, T-Spoon would emerge as the franchise avatar and elevated her into consistent "Top X in X" territory.

Finally, to name one more player, who hasn't been on these Top X lists, but I would say the next most deserving after the 5 above who are now regularly on these lists (Leslie, Swoopes, Thompson, Cooper, Spoon) is... another Comet. The Brazilian Janeth Arcain.

Now here, it's quite understandable for people to have traditionally drawn the line with including 3 Comets (Swoopes, Thompson & Cooper). It's not just that they are the clear Big 3 of the team, it's that Arcain got relegated to 6th man status in '98 & '99, which means that for 2 of the 4 Comet chips, she really like she was the 4th best player on the roster.

But in that last championship year, she would be clearly be the 4th of a Big 4, and in 2001 when Cooper retired and Swoopes missed time, Arcain emerged as a clear co-star level player for the remaining Thompson.

On top of that, while it's not about her actual WNBA career, I do think it's worth noting that Arcain was the star of Silver Medalist Team Brazil in the 1996 Olympics, and part of the core of a Golden Generation for Brazil. And I would say this is relevant just to further illustrate that Arcain was no mere role player, but rather a star-type player, who was slotted in - correctly I'd say - as mostly being needed as a role player during the 4-year dynasty, and she proved superb at it.

Profiling each of the key players based on their successful WNBA careers:

Lisa Leslie



Born 1972, From California, went to USC
6'5" center, 12 year career, all with Los Angeles Sparks.

W25
3x MVP, 2x Finals MVP & Champion, 2x DPOY
2x BLK champ, Career 3rd in BLK
3x TRB champ, Career 6th in TRB
2x 3rd in WS, Career 10th in WS
1st Dunk in WNBA history
Career: On +7.8, On-Off +12.9

Leslie was a classic 2-way star of a big. She was a defensive anchor, but she was also the focal point of her offenses her entire career up until she had a baby at age 34, then played a bit of David Robinson to Candace Parker's Tim Duncan.

While I have limited enthusiasm for building an offense around a Leslie like player (as I do Robinson or Duncan because of how the game has been shown to be optimized), the Sparks did run effective offenses around Leslie, and on defense I would consider her the great player of the early WNBA, and the GOAT WNBA Defensive Big to this day.

A quote from coach Michael Cooper's The Players' Tribune piece from 2015, the year Leslie was enshrined in the Naismith Hall:

There's only one LIsa Leslie

"Lisa was a student of the game. She was the rare basketball player who made it a point to learn something new every year. One year it was getting her more refined as a low post player, the second year was working on her free throws because she was getting fouled a lot (even though she shot 77 percent, she wanted to be at 90 percent). The following year, she wanted to work on three-point shooting, so we improved that area. All we did was shoot threes. Imagine a dominant big man today shooting threes, a couple hours a day, four days a week, before anyone’s even awake yet. Not sure it would happen. But that was Lisa. The next year after that, she came to me and said she wanted to learn why Hakeem Olajuwon was so good in the post. She wanted to do Olajuwon’s moves. So she watched tape of him non-stop. She worked on perfecting the Dream Shake."

Sheryl Swoopes



Born in 1971, From Texas, went to Texas Tech
6'0" forward-guard, 12 year career, 10 with Houston Comets

W25
3x MVP, 3x DPOY, 4x Champion
2x Scoring champ
2x STL champ, Career 6th in STL
3x TRB champ, Career 6th in TRB
1x 1st in WS, Career 15th in WS
Career: On +6.6, On-Off +7.4

1B star on the Comet 4-peat that kicked off the WNBA. The early apex predator on the wing in WNBA history. Exceptionally athletic. Has a case for being a better defender than Leslie, and a case for better player overall too.

A quote from ESPN's Michael Voepel in 2016, when Swoopes was enshrined:

When Sheryl Swoopes was at her best, there was no one better

"Swoopes helped change the way the women's game was played. Her speed, precision, skill level, coolness under pressure, opportunistic defense -- they set a standard for what the WNBA could be.

There was a lightning-strike element to Swoopes. She did everything quickly without looking as if she were rushed. And when it was crunch time, Swoopes wanted to be the player who made things happen. Usually, that's exactly what she did."

Tina Thompson



Born 1975, From California, went to USC
6'2" forward, 17 year career, 12 with Houston Comets

W25
4x Champion, 8x All-WNBA
Career 4th in Points
Career 10th in Rebounds
Career 9th in WS
Career: On +4.6, On-Off +5.5

The Comets power forward and ever-reliable two way player. A great career, but also unusual. #1 draft pick who defines her career blending in with greater talents. In that first title year, she was the #2, but then with Swoopes getting back to 100, Thompson was the 3rd primacy player until Cooper's retirement.

She wouldn't get the MVP accolade love that Cooper & Swoopes got, but she also wouldn't be involved in the battle of egos between Cooper & Swoopes that led to Cooper's retirement and then showed that Swoopes wasn't really capable of leading an elite offense. Thompson was the good soldier who, had egos & health permitted it with her teammates, could have been essential to them winning even more titles.

From an ESPN article upon Thompson's 2018 induction:

Tina Thompson's storybook career takes her all the way to Naismith HOF

Here's a quote from the coach of the Houston Comet dynasty, Van Chancellor:

"When we drafted her as the first pick, we knew how aggressive she was, how hard-nosed and smart she was, but more importantly, we didn't know how well she could shoot the 3 ball," he says. "There's no way you thought you were taking a player with her height who could shoot the ball that well from the outside."


Cynthia Cooper



Born in 1963 in Illinois, high school in California, went to USC
5'10", 5 year WNBA career after 10 years pro (Spain, Italy), 12 with Houston Comets

W25
2x MVP, 4x Champion & Finals MVP, 4x All-WNBA
3x Scoring champ
3x WS Champ
Career: On +15.8, On-Off +13.6

The story of Cooper is among the most interesting in sports.

At USC, Cooper gets completely overshadowed by Cheryl Miller, the first breakout mainstream star in American women's basketball, who led the Trojans not just to an NCAA championship, but Team USA to its first Olympic Gold Medal.

On the USC team, Cooper ended up as something of of 6th-man-microwave scorer role so far as I can tell, though honestly, I don't remember her at all. From there she would become significant enough that on the Cooper was on the 1988 Gold Medal team as their 3rd leading scorer behind the aforementioned UGA Bulldog duo of Edwards & McClain.

From there, Edwards & McClain would remain part of the Team USA core in 1992 that took Bronze while Cooper would get relegated to a lesser role (10th in FGA - though 5th in points), and then in 1996 where Cooper would not join them.

So, a naive interpretation of this would be that Cooper was never good enough to be the focal point of Team USA, and that she probably peaked as a basketball player around 1988 - that is, around age 25.

And that interpretation certainly appears to be "what American basketball knew" when the WNBA was built with the assumption that the stars of Team USA were the best American players.

Which led the WNBA to not consider Cooper to be a superstar, and so they didn't protect against overpowering a team and let her join Swoopes (and Thompson!).

From Andscape's Houston’s Comets, the rise and fall of the WNBA’s first dynasty, a quote from the WNBA's first president Val Ackerman:

"“I think we blew it. None of us realized just how good Cynthia Cooper was, because if we had, she would not have been assigned to the Comets. … If we had any inkling of how dominant a player she was, we would have … spread it. We just didn’t know.”

Cooper would prove to be THE great player of the '90s WNBA, and lead a dominant 4-peat that no dynasty has matched in dominance in the W, or the NBA, in the time since.

So what the hell happened?

I think the simplest answer for the root of the confusion is the fact that in 1984, the 3-point shot was neither part of the NCAA nor the Olympics game. The Cynthia Cooper that came back from Europe and step on the court in the W would lead the league in 3's while shooting with a 41.4%.

While it's entirely possible that Cooper would have been in Miller's shadow even with a 3 - Chery's brother was Reggie after all - I would say it's clear that the absence of the 3 in the game early in Cooper's career contributed to her being seen as something other than a tippy top tier talent.

Then there's the matter with Miller's career ending injury allowed space for someone else to be the "franchise player" of Team USA, and even though Cooper might be said to have finished 3rd in that particular race to Edwards & McClain, this seems to have led to her being tierred a step below the top again, such that come 1997 people not only saw her as that step-down, but as a post-prime player.

Of course, Cooper was more than just a 3-point shooter. He led the league in free throws while leading it in 3's, and led the league in scoring on sky high efficiency while leading her team in assists.

In the words another Icon:

"She made very difficult things look easy," said Sue Bird, who joined Cooper in the Hall of Fame this summer. "When you watch the highlights - the Euro Step, her ability to shoot from anywhere, creating off the dribble -it's so impressive. She reads defenders one-on-one probably better than anyone you can think of."

And yeah to be clear, absolutely brought a Euro Step back with her from her time in Europe too. Cooper wasn't the only pro to go play in Europe, but in no one else do we get the same impression of a player going off, learning the right way to play basketball when there's a 3-point stripe on the court, then came back and took revenge on her home nation for always doubting her.

Last thoughts on Cooper:

The dominance of this 34 year old, who would continue her reign through age 37, I would say really through a wrench in the WNBA's planned media blitz around a younger generation born in the '70s rather than the '60s. While with every other choice along these lines the W seemed to be correctly about who would poised to dominate women's basketball to end the millennium, the fact that this one much older player came in and ran circles around them not only meant they weren't focused on the right star to promote when they began the league, but the duo they promoted who largely panned out (Leslie & Swoopes) had to deal with the spectre of not leading dominance like Cooper did.

And then of course after that, the parity got stronger, and the narrative of the WNBA had to grapple with the fact that they just weren't getting another dynastic run as dominant as the one that started the league, and aside from the latent struggles in promoting new stars without such dominance, people just started acting bizarre - imho - in trying to essentially relegate Cooper without knocking her. Somehow WNBA GOAT conversations around the time when the WNBA had their official GOAT vote in 2021 seemed to just implicitly agree that they shouldn't talk about the star of the Houston Comets that much in a way that felt like "obviously the W is so much stronger now".

For my part though, while I'd agree the W has gotten stronger with time, I'd say that there's an exaggeration of the scale of it when specifically talking about Cooper & '90s WNBA which doesn't actually hit Swoopes or Leslie quite the same way.

Teresa Weatherspoon



Born 1965, From Texas, went to Louisiana Tech.
5'8" guard, 8 year WNBA career, 7 with New York Liberty, along with 8 years pro before this (Italy, France, Russia).

W25
2x DPOY, 4x Finalist, 4x All-WNBA
1x AST Champ
2x STL Champ
Career 9th in WS
Career: On +4.4 On-Off +5.5

T-Spoon, like Cooper, was also on the 1988 & 1992 iterations of Team USA, but even lower on the pecking order, and so similar to Cooper, she wasn't the featured face on her franchise (Liberty) when publicity started, that was the aforementioned Lobo.

And similar as what happened in Houston, the 30-something vet would out up outshining the younger putative face of the franchise. But while in the case of Cooper this came with Cooper just clearly being better than all the youngins around, with Spoon it wasn't obvious based on the box score why she was held in such esteem.

We should probably start there with the fact that the 5'8" Spoon would be DPOY in each of the league's first two seasons. While Leslie & Swoopes would soon enough snatch the mantle away from Spoon, still fascinating that - at least by consensus of the time - it was such a small player who topped them all.

This is where I would tend to point out that it really isn't any universal basketball truism that shotblockers are more valuable than ballhawks. That's how it's been in the NBA for 70+ years, but it's never been true at all levels, and I'd say the simple reason is that merely being the tallest player on the floor doesn't mean you're tall enough to block a lot of shots. Shotblocking can be valuable enough in the NBA to drive a DPOY campaign certainly, but I'd say it's generally not been as big of a factor as it's long been in the NBA.

So with Spoon, we are talking about a ballhawk, and we're also talking about a renowned shut down defender. But more than anything else, I'd say she's seen as a leader and a culture setter:

From an ESPN article upon Spoon's 2019 induction:

Naismith Hall of Famer Teresa Weatherspoon always demanded the best of herself and teammates

Here's a quote from teammate Crystal Robinson:

""Everyone that Spoon played with has a great affinity for her," said Robinson, now an assistant with the Dallas Wings. "But Spoon wasn't always nice. She was very demanding. You didn't get things done, she was going to tell you.

"Spoon actually implemented a rule defensively that if you got beat off the dribble twice, you had to ask for a sub. Go to the bench and get yourself together, then come back in and help us. Spoon set a standard, and she lived that standard. So you couldn't help but follow it; there wasn't any wavering."

I'll give one more profile here for the player next on the list, imho:

Janeth Arcain



Born 1969, from Brazil
5'11", 8 year WNBA career, all with Houston Comets, not entirely clear to me when her pro career in Brazil begins, but it seems to have started no later than 1986, which meant that she'd been a pro for 11 years before coming to the W.

Not on W25 or any precursors
4x Champion, 1x WNBA,
Peak 4th in WS.
Career: On +9.6, On-Off +5.1

Arcain has never made any of the "W" lists that here Big 3 teammates Cooper, Swoopes & Thompson did.
Also, she's never made the Naismith Hall, though she has made the Women's Basketball Hall and the FIBA Hall.

There's nothing in Arcain's time in the W that would have me put her above those 3, and I think it makes complete sense to end with a threshold that puts her on the outside looking in, but I will say that I really do think that just purely in her W career, she's the 6th best W29 candidate among those who debuted in 1997.

She pretty firmly took the mantle as the top role player for those Comets during the dynasty, and then in 2001 with the Comets missing both Cooper & Swoopes she "became" a higher primacy star quite effectively.

In the words of Cooper as referenced by the 2019 article from High Post Hoops:

And One: Janeth Arcain, underrated Hall-of-Famer:

"She morphed in to any player we needed her to be."

But I also think it's at least ruminating on the fact of Arcain's non-American basketball roots.

I would consider the Brazilian Arcain to pretty clearly be the top international player among those who joined the W at its 1997 beginning.

I would note that Arcain was part of a Golden Generation (and a half?) of Team Brazil that became a massive Gold thread at every tournament, even if they only peaked at Silver in the Olympics. The other core players in that Brazilian Triangle, for the record, were Hortencia Marcari (born 1959) and Maria Paula (1962), with Marcari being the one singled out (to this point) for the Naismith.

Accomplishments outside the WNBA are obviously outside direct consideration for W-based awards, but I do think they can set our mind at ease about some things.

Arcain was literally leading Team Brazil to an Olympic Silver in 1996, and then continued to lead her Brazilian professional teams to titles as their high primacy star while she played a role player in the W.

Basically, I'd say Arcain represents a fantastic example of a player who simply had to shift her role significantly depending on the team, and whatever the role, she proved pretty adept at thriving in it.

Alright, just to put a bow on this with a nod to the rest of the 1997 W, the most noteworthy players from the 5 (of 8) franchises in that first year:

Phoenix Mercury - 6'3" F-C Jennifer Gillom of Ole Miss born in 1964.
Charlotte Sting - 5'10" guard Andrea Stimson of NC State born in 1967.
Cleveland Rockers - 5'10" guard Merlakia Jones of Florida born in 1973 in Alabama
Sacramento Monarchs - the above mentioned 5'9" guard Ruthie Bolton of Auburn born in 1967 in Mississippi
Utah Starzz - 6'5" forward Elena Baranova born in 1972 from Kyrgyzstan

[Green Chile]

Excellent read. Thanks Doc.

The Cooper story is just so fascinating.