Despite the season-long absence of Napheesa Collier — who’s made three consecutive All-WNBA First Team appearances and finished second in MVP voting back-to-back years — the Minnesota Lynx boast the league’s top record (15-4), best net rating (plus-13.4, second place is plus-5.9) best defense (4.7 points better per 100 possessions than second place) and third-ranked offense.
Plenty of factors are igniting Minnesota’s prolific first half.
Veteran Natasha Howard has proven a tremendous free-agency pickup, scoring at career-best levels and offering the Lynx a formidable interior presence. Nia Coffey, a southpaw sniper, is drilling 43.4 percent of her triples as another shrewd offseason signing. Courtney Williams is following up last season’s All-Star nod with a career-best scoring campaign.
But none of those necessary components rival rookie Olivia Miles’ impact, who’s instantly entered the W and established herself among its brightest stars.
Selected No. 2 overall in April’s Draft — a pick Minnesota received from the Chicago Sky last year in exchange for the No. 11 pick in 2025 — Miles is averaging 18.7 points (62.9 percent true shooting), 5.7 assists (3.5 turnovers), 4.8 rebounds and 1.4 steals per game. She leads the league in LEBRON (BBall Index’s all-in-one impact metric) at plus-6.21.
She is a stone-cold lock for next month’s All-Star Game, tracking toward an All-WNBA First Team berth and should earn a top-five (at worst) MVP finish, joining Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark as a third straight rookie guard who dazzles from the outset of their career to broaden the league’s club of superstardom.
Miles’ greatness is driven by a distinguished pairing of feel and physical gifts. She is one of the zippiest players in the W while touting velcro-like dribbling skills, a blend which unlocks almost any angle she desires. She seamlessly varies tempos and changes directions to dust point-of-attack defenders and vaporize bigs awaiting her around the lane.
Many quick-footed guards can be encumbered by a loose handle, liable to operate faster than their dexterity allows. Miles is not. However fast and whichever direction she moves, the ball is fastened to her hip and helps her open driving lanes with deceptive hesitations, disappearing-act crossovers and jarring in-and-outs. Everyone on the court knows she wants to explore downhill and it hardly matters. She still gets there.
Yet a blazing pace and slippery handle alone would not be enough for Miles to be as exceptional a driver as she is. She marries those traits with wily craft to set up ball-screens — never afraid to utilize a re-screen, if required — is adept slowing the cadence to assess the surrounding landscape without sacrificing her scoring/passing threats and relishes physicality, locking defenders on her back/hip and nudging shoulders into retreating bigs.
The entirety of her profile ensures she is not just a voluminous interior scorer but an effective one, too. She converts inside with either hand, loves transitioning from dribble to one-hand scoops (left or right) and unearths an assortment of creative angles off the glass.
According to Her Hoop Stats, Miles’ 101 shots in the restricted area this season rank in the 97th percentile while her 70.3 percent finishing clip is in the 76th percentile. And if reaching the rim is unattainable, her penchant for contact enables her to sprinkle in the occasional short pull-up.
She’s shooting 27-of-50 (54 percent, 90th percentile) on field goals outside the restricted area but still in the paint — a downright dominant interior scorer netting 58.8 percent of her 2-pointers (82nd percentile, per BBall Index).
Nobody in the league is approximating her caliber of self-creation inside the arc. She leads the W with 176 points on unassisted 2s, per PBP Stats, 50 more than the second-place Williams with 126. Only 15.4 percent of her 2-pointers come via assists. She is a sorcerer off the bounce.
The likes of Howard, Coffey and Williams are all reveling in career-best seasons partly because of Miles’ virtuoso playmaking, which constantly sets them up for quality looks (especially the first two). The rookie is a spectacle of a passer whose 5.7 assists per game (“only” 10th league-wide) don’t properly capture her brilliance.
Between her slashing exploits and playmaking patterns, Miles is the embodiment of interior pressure. According to PBPStats, she is fourth in at-rim assists (51) and whirls ambidextrous feeds to rollers and cutters. Usually, the recipient is Howard, with whom she’s formed a harmonic partnership.
With Miles on the floor, Minnesota is shooting 68.1 percent at the rim; without her, that mark craters to 55.3 percent (frequency is 2.6 points higher with her as well), per databallr.
When Miles and Howard play together (459 minutes), the Lynx are scoring 117.8 points per 100 possessions, per databallr. Howard’s 150 at-rim attempts sit in the 100th percentile this year. Miles is also 10th in 3-point helpers (37), equipped to rocket deliveries to Coffey, Williams or Kayla McBride around the perimeter if Howard’s dives are stifled.
There’s a degree of brazen ingenuity in Miles’ approach that defines almost every all-time great facilitator. Occasionally, it provokes trouble. She’s fourth in total turnovers at 66 (18.9 percent turnover rate, 28th percentile) and will pursue reads she anticipates are open without fully gauging where defenders are positioned and ready to react. Sometimes, though, her teammates simply aren’t prepared for her pizazz, rolling half-heartedly or doing so with hands at their sides.
By and large, however, Miles is the total playmaking package. She’s unbothered by busy windows, ambitiously sends live dribble passes with either hand, and shifts defenders around using her eyes and bluffed body angles. Narrowing this compilation down into a handful of clips was arduous. The first half of her inaugural WNBA season is littered with eye-popping assists.
As both a scorer and distributor, her capacity for maintaining a live dribble is among her most valuable traits. It invites her to dissect seemingly any coverage, whether it’s drop (high, deep, traditional), switching, hedging or trapping. The last tactic has probably been best in shrinking her imprint but it’s incredibly risky and hard to fully rely upon, given her playmaking ability and the offensive personnel flanking her.
By always keeping a live dribble, she preserves any option on the floor and rarely finds herself caught in precarious situations. She’ll string out a hedge into a re-screen downhill. She’ll snake through the lane into space against drop for a drive to the rim or kick-out for a long ball. She’ll peel out and rev up to attack a switch. Dribbling a ton without doing so aimlessly, especially as a pressurized focal point, is challenging. Miles excels at it, which amplifies her offensive signature.
While Miles is undoubtedly the conductor of Minnesota’s orchestra, she benefits from a talented, cohesive supporting cast. The Lynx’s bigs consistently set screens in early offense to let her flow into an immediate advantage and whip the defense into rotation. Minnesota leads the league in 3-point percentage (37.2 percent), as McBride, Coffey and Williams discourage opponents from sending gap help on Miles’ drives and pick-and-rolls ventures.
On the other end, though, the Lynx flock to the gaps like pigeons to a piece of bread. They barricade driving lanes at all costs and own the league’s third-best opposing turnover rate. That suits Miles’ chaos-inducing style. She darts around the court from the help- or strong-side, executing rotations to plug holes and pilfer takeaways with her dexterity, physicality and anticipation. Her 2.2 percent steal rate is 18th league-wide.
Rarely does a guard this complete grace the basketball world. Miles is fleet-footed, physical, poised and a wunderkind dribbler; usually, guards thrive in a couple of those areas at the expense of the others. She’s a (fairly) high-volume, efficient scorer and transcendent passer; that intersection doesn’t often manifest.
She’s a feisty off-ball defender with the screen navigation chops to bother assignments on the ball, despite some lateral mobility limitations; Minnesota’s defense is 4.9 points better per 100 with her on the court. She’s an ethereal finisher and viable, willing shooter (33 percent from deep) when defenders tuck under picks against her, content to increase her volume if the situation demands.
The amalgamation of all that is a prodigious superstar anchoring the W’s best team as a rookie while Collier — a bona fide top-three player who seems to be nearing a return — has missed the entire year recovering from offseason ankle surgeries. I cannot wait to see what her career holds and how her skill-set synthesizes with Collier’s. If the latter storyline behooves the Lynx, they might be destined for their first WNBA crown since 2017.