The WNBA power rankings making the rounds this morning ask a generous question: what went right for every team this season? It is my favorite kind of end-of-year exercise, because it forces the accounting to include the clubs that spent September watching. Everybody gets a sentence. Somebody always earns a paragraph.
Three players earned the paragraph.
Breanna Stewart climbed to eighth on the league's all-time scoring list, and she did it on the back of a 27-point night, which is exactly the sort of detail that makes an all-time list feel like a living thing rather than a plaque. You do not wander onto that list. You show up for a decade. Angel Reese, meanwhile, spent the season on a record-breaking pace, the kind of relentless per-game production that turns a nightly box score into a season-long argument. And A'ja Wilson led the MVP race, which at this point is less a surprise than a weather report.
The structural story underneath all of it is the postseason expansion, and I think it matters more than the standings ever show. More teams playing meaningful basketball in the last month means more rosters that get to answer the what-went-right question with a real answer instead of a shrug about development. That is how a league grows: not just at the top, but in the middle, where the fourth-best version of a season still gets a stage.
From the almanac: diana taurasi has owned the top of that all-time scoring list since 2017, and every name that climbs toward it is a reminder of how long she stayed.
What comes next is the part I actually enjoy. Rankings season bleeds into roster season, and the teams that found something real this year, a rotation piece who stopped being a project, a defensive identity that held up in the last five minutes, have to decide whether to protect it or trade it. The ones that found nothing have to say so out loud. Both conversations start now.
