{"id":159040,"date":"2025-09-15T18:37:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/159040\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T18:37:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T18:37:06","slug":"wnba-end-of-season-awards-mvp-dpoy-and-all-of-our-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/159040\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA End-of-Season Awards: MVP, DPOY, and all of our picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

After years in the public eye, Paige Bueckers<\/a> entered the WNBA with sky-high expectations, as a consensus No. 1 pick fresh off a national title.<\/p>\n

And, five months removed from draft night, it\u2019s safe to say that Bueckers has exceeded all of those expectations, save for team success.<\/p>\n

This season, Bueckers has averaged 19.1 points, 5.3 assists, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.6 steals per game. Her scoring average is the 7th-highest in WNBA history among rookies, and the 5th-highest in the WNBA this season.<\/p>\n

Her 56% true shooting (which accounts for two-point and three-point shots as well as free throws) is higher than veteran WNBA guards like Sabrina Ionescu<\/a>, Skylar Diggins<\/a>, and Courtney Williams<\/a>, among dozens of others.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s incredibly unusual to come in as a highly-touted rookie guard, carry the offensive load, and be efficient while doing so; Kelsey Plum<\/a>, who was the NCAA\u2019s all-time leading scorer when she was drafted, averaged 8.5 points on 34.6% shooting as a rookie. Sabrina Ionescu<\/a> missed most of her rookie season with an ankle sprain, but averaged 11.7 points on 37.9% shooting in her subsequent first full season.<\/p>\n

Bueckers\u2019 19.1 points on 47.4% shooting blows those seasons out of the water.<\/p>\n

Last month, Bueckers tied the WNBA record for most points in a single game by a rookie, exploding for 44 points on 17-21 shooting. Before Bueckers, no WNBA player has ever taken more than 20 shots in a game and missed four or fewer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years in the public eye, Paige Bueckers entered the WNBA with sky-high expectations, as a consensus No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-159040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}