This year, she’s in the same stage-setting scenario. First place, 1,101 points ahead of Rebekah Gardner. Her competition to lose.

But something feels different this time.

When discussing the potential favorable outcome to close Season 5, Sims stifles a smile. No matter what the leaderboard says, she’s trying not to take the win for granted.

“You want to be modest about it,” she explained. “I’ve had a couple AU athletes tell me, especially after Week Two, when I kind of shot up, ‘This is your year.’ And I don’t think it’s clicked yet, because I just don’t want to get too comfortable.”

After the first two games of Week Four, Sims has left little room for doubt. She posted two of her strongest performances of the season, including a career-high 44-point showing and a clutch Elam Ending win.

On Thursday, her 771 leaderboard points made her the first player to surpass 30,000 career leaderboard points and gave her a sizable lead over Gardner in second place.

Thriving Despite Inconsistency

Sims’ AU career leaderboard points record is far from the first she’s captured in five years with the league. She’s always possessed a personality and style of play that fit perfectly with AU’s untraditional format. She takes the individual points system, shuffling team rosters, weekly drafts, and team captain responsibilities in stride.

Succeeding despite inconsistency while adapting to new teammates, playbooks, locker rooms, and cities aren’t tasks that are solely reserved for the annual five-week competition.

Adapting and adjusting are skills that she’s mastered over her 12-year pro career, especially in recent WNBA seasons.

 

In the 2022 W season, she split time between Minnesota and Connecticut. After a two-season stint in Dallas, she started the 2025 season with the Los Angeles Sparks before she was waived by the team 12 games into the year. A month later, she was picked up by the Indiana Fever on a hardship contract, jumping straight into a crucial role for the injury-stricken team–fueling a late-season push that led the team to the semifinals.

It’s a path that has made her feel prepared for whatever life or her career throws at her.

“I mean, at this point, just to touch on my W career, the last few years, going to one team, getting cut, picked up, you know, that kind of thing, I think that’s helped,” she said. “It’s easy for me to adapt. Just do my job. I do my best. That’s pretty much it. Just have fun, make sure I’m having fun with it, and just enjoying the people that are around me.”

She finished last W season with 10.1 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game averages in the regular season, and upped that scoring average to 14.1 per game in the playoffs, closing the year with a valiant 27-point effort in the Fever’s Game 5 loss to Las Vegas, the eventual champs.

 

Her clutch playoff showings caught the attention of the entire league in September, but takeover-style performances like that 27-point playoff outing are nothing new for Sims. They have been one of the hallmarks of her AU career.

Mastering the AU Model

Sims understands more than most that the AU title cannot be secured by individual performance alone. As captain of the Gold Rush for Week Four, she carefully crafted her squad with players she knows she can trust.

For the second week in a row, she managed to draft Kiah Stokes, Aneesah Morrow, Te-Hina Paopao, Lexie Brown, and Bree Hall. Along with Ariel Atkins, Teana Muldrow, Asia Taylor and Coach Chaz Franklin, they make up a team that she’s thrilled to have surrounding her for the final week.

 

“My goal is to win. But for me, I just focus on controlling what I can control, which is trying to get a [game] win,” she explained. “Control my team, just making sure we have fun, play together. So I’m excited. I think I really have a well-balanced group. The vibes have been immaculate with this group and everybody’s excited. I’m excited.”

Her Week Four Gold Rush squad has lived up to her expectations so far with a 2-0 record to start the week and some big momentum-building performances entering the final contest.

On Thursday, Atkins posted a season-high 24 points, and Morrow tied the AU Pro Basketball single-game record with 19 rebounds while tallying 23 points.

Sims holds individual records in nearly every one of the league’s major stat categories, including most leaderboard points earned in a single game. That career highlight came last year versus Team Bradford in the 2025 season when Sims added 941 points to her leaderboard total. Right now, Gardner has 5,021 points in second-place, trailing Sims’ 6,122-point total. Gardner would have to far surpass that record to prevent Sims from taking the crown.

In Thursday night’s Elam Ending win, it was Sims who zeroed in on the basket when her team trailed by three, sinking the triple to tie it up. Sims who stepped confidently to the free-throw line to take the game-winning shot.

So far, she’s done everything possible in this final week to earn the title of champion, and her reaction to the win matched the magnitude of the situation. But it’s not official yet.

Having the first-place medal officially placed around her neck would be the cherry on top of what has already been a very fulfilling AU career.

 

The Final Stamp on a Legendary Legacy

Sims’ career has been defined by resilience, and AU has been the space where she’s often in her most dominant form. The game she puts on display today has been shaped by obstacles and the shifting sand she’s often had to build it on.

She’s developed traits as a player and as a person that she can be proud of, and they’re qualities that she hopes to pass on to her son Jaiden.

Now in school, five-year-old Jaiden hasn’t spent as much time in the AU environment as he has in previous seasons, but he’s been no less a part of Sims’ campaign. He and his grandmother paid a visit to Nashville during Week Three, and even when he’s not on site, his voice can often be heard in Nashville Municipal Auditorium through a phone speaker.

Sims can frequently be found on FaceTime with her son, placing bedtime calls behind the scenes postgame. Motherhood and basketball have left two of the biggest impressions on her life and made her into the person she is today.

 

“Nothing really holds me down. Nothing gets me too down on myself, because I do have somebody looking up to me–my son. So I just want to continue to grow as a player, as a mom, as a daughter, and have fun at the end of the day. That’s it.”

Sims knows that perseverance is what’s allowed her pro career to last.

“I think I had the opportunity where I could have lost my focus, or I could have been on the verge of retiring, but me being able to just stick with it no matter what’s thrown at me–I just accept it and keep it pushing.”

Now, Sims feels more confident than ever that this is her time to go for gold.

“I’ve had one hell of a career, including in the W,” she said. “But with AU, it’ll be the stamp on everything, and me winning–it’s like I’ll forever be a legend here.”

“It doesn’t have to be basketball, but any career path, you’re always gonna have your ups and downs. It’s about how you face it, how you respond to it, because you can never stop learning. Doesn’t matter how old we get; we can never stop learning. So I’m just keeping that in mind, continuing to grow, continuing to have fun, and making my team and myself proud.”

 

Siera Jones is the digital media reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Instagram and X @sieraajones.