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Meschel VopelESPN.com
They are three of the greatest players in the history of women’s basketball. They each won multiple WNBA championships and Olympic gold medals, helped the league grow and surpassed the WNBA record. And one of them will be 40 on Saturday.
Diana Torashi, Sylvia Fowles When Sue Bird WNBA has redefined some statistical categories. But their dominance is most obvious at the top of the three biggest statistics in the game. Taurashi is the WNBA’s greatest scoring leader in history, Fowles is the greatest rebound leader in history, and Bird is the assisting leader in history.
Taurashi is the 18th WNBA season, Fowles is the 15th, and Birds is the 19th. Longevity is on the way to the top, but lasting excellence makes them stand out.Bird, 5ft 9 guards Seattle Storm42 years old in October, Fowles, 6-6 Minnesota Lynx Center, I will be 37 years old that same month.
6-0 guard as Taurashi Phoenix Mercury, 40 years old. Take a look at each player’s run to the record, other WNBA legends that passed along the way, scoring, rebounds, and assist charts for the players behind.
Taurashi: A unique scorer
Taurashi, who says he has no plans to retire soon, is considered the best player in women’s basketball history. She was named GOAT by fans last year because the WNBA celebrated its 25th season and she was ranked as the best player in WNBA history on the ESPN panel last September. Taurashi is known as a scorer for two distinct characteristics. She has a release that looks amazingly quick and easy no matter where she’s shooting from her coat. And she has the complete belief that she should be the person who takes the shot, no matter how high the stakes are.
Even someone like Taurashi, who is often expected to take shots to win the match, must accept that she misses some of them. But three-time WNBA champion and 2009 regular season MVP Taurashi has never avoided her responsibilities.
And she has responded mainly to that. The 2004 draft No. 1 Taurashi is the five-time WNBA scoring champion, the only player in league history to score at least 600 points for six consecutive seasons, and the only player to score 800 points multiple times during the season. Player (2006, 2008). Taurashi also owns a WNBA career record of field goals made, 3 point field goals, average season score (25.3) and season points (860).
Taurashi became the league’s top scorer on June 18, 2017, passing Tina Thompson (who scored 7,488 points in 496 career games) in his 377th career game.
Records that may never match. Taurashi earned an average of 15 or more points per game in 15 different seasons of her career. This is the most player in league history. And twice this season, she scored at least 30 points and became the oldest player in the league.
Taurashi now has 1,856 points more than any other player in the history of the regular season. As ESPN Stats & Information points out, the difference between Taurashi and runner-up Thompson is a bigger gap than 16th-placed Thompson and Angel McCourtley (1,691 points difference).
Perhaps the only remaining question is whether Taurashi, who has 9,344 points, can earn another 656 points to reach 10,000.
Taurashi averages 15.5 PPG this season. If she achieves that average in all games in the future, according to ESPN Stats & Information, 42 regular season games will be required to reach 10,000 career points. However, if Taurashi is comparable to the average career score of 19.3 PPG, ESPN Stats & Information says it will take 33 regular season games to earn 10,000 points.
Phoenix has played 11 games so far in 2022 during the expanded 36-game regular season. If Taurashi stays healthy, doesn’t miss the game, and maintains or achieves one of the above score averages, she could exceed 10,000 career points at some point next season.
(Note: Candice Dupley, who has not officially retired but did not play the game in 2022, is the closest active player on the score chart and is fourth overall with 6,895 points. Phoenix Mercury Center Tina Charles 6th place with 6,749. Tamika Catchings in 3rd place finished the top 5 with 7,380 points and Cappie Pondexter with 6,811 points. )
Fowles: The dominant force around the rim
Fowles said this was her last season, but her rebounds are still dominant. She is the only player in the double-double (16.5 PPG, 10.3 RPG) league on average this season.
Fowles’ rebound prowess wasn’t just about her size and strength, but both are staggering. She has textbook positioning and is playing like an old-style center that refuses to give up low block space. You’ll never see two WNBA champions and 2017 regular season MVP Fowles move away from contact. She always accepts it and almost always wins the fight.
Defense is a very big part of the Fowles game. Of her total of 3,836 rebounds, 2,743 were defensive ends. But when considering her 1,092 offensive board, it’s important to remember that she shot a 59.8% WNBA record from the field for her career. Whether it’s her own accuracy or her advantage in her glass, she simply eliminates many opportunities for her opponent’s second chance points.
The four-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award-winning Fowles is a consistent rebounder, equally effective if you need to anchor yourself or pair with another powerful post player. It is a target. Fowles and former Lynx forward Rebekkah Brunson are the most fierce rebound duo WNBA has ever seen, helping Lynx win the title in 2015 and 2017 (Fowles). Both were final MVPs). On July 28, 2020, in the second game of the bubble season in Bradenton, Florida, Fowles’ third career rebound pushed Branson to WNBA’s career record.
Another major factor in Fowles’ sustained success: Despite playing such a physical style, she has largely avoided injuries. A calf injury limited the Fowls to seven games in 2020, which also holds records for the WNBA single season of rebounds (404), defensive rebounds (282) and rebounds per game (11.9). It was the first important time she had missed since joining Lynx in 2015.
However, on Thursday, Lynx announced that Fowles had been out indefinitely due to a cartilage injury in his right knee. Throughout 12 games, she leads the league with rebounds per game and field goal rate (64.1), averaging 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks.
Currently, Fowles has averaged at least 15 points and 10 rebounds at a pace of the fifth season, shooting at least 60% of the shots off the field. According to ESPN Stats & Information, no other player in the history of the WNBA has had a single such season. Fowles was ranked second overall in the 2008 WNBA Draft.
Bird: Ultimate Distributor and Leader
Like all good point guards, Bird has an extraordinary court vision and a high level of determination, which is essential if you are a floor general. But a few other things really make the four-time WNBA champion really stand out as one of the greatest point guards of all levels for men or women.
Bird, who said all the signs indicate that 2022 is her final season, not only knows the game, but feels it. That is, she knows inside and outside the playbook, but she also understands the wrinkles and adjustments that occur in the flow of the game.
Like Taurashi, Bird has established the best assist mark ever, which can be difficult to reach the top. Bird currently has 3,100 assists and is the next active player Chicago skyof Courtney VandersrootIs ranked 4th with 2,254 assists, behind retired Ticha Penicheiro (2,600) and Lindsay Whalen (2,345). Taurashi will check in at number 5 (2,079).
Bird has averaged 6.5 assists per game this season, and if it keeps pace in 2022, the WNBA’s record for the 15th season will average at least 5.0 APG. The next closest is, according to ESPN Stats & Information, nine such seasons in Penicello.
According to ESPN Stats & Information, the 15 seasons of five or more APGs are also associated with NBA Steve Nash and Mark Jackson as the fifth-most season in NBA or WNBA history.that’s all Lebron James John Stockton (19), Jason Kidd (18), Chris Paul (17) There are more.
Bird said it took years to tweak the nuances of managing his teammate’s games and personality, and in the process she made some mistakes. But the basic skill of instructing others to be their best ability has always been bird strength.
In fact, leadership is probably her most valuable qualification. Bird has always taken the time to understand his teammates as players and people, but she does it very modestly and no one appears on her court. She can even understand her claims and train her teammates in a respected way. People want to follow Bird’s leadership. That applies to all the teams she has participated in, from UConn to Storm to the US women’s national team.
Bird, the three-time assist leader of the regular season, overtook the Penicello to set a record for the WNBA in his 2,600th assist on August 1, 2017. She also holds the WNBA mark at the start of her career regular season (557). Bird, who was ranked number one overall in the 2002 WNBA Draft, has never been off the bench in her career.
