{"id":851061,"date":"2026-09-17T15:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/851061\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T15:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T15:02:15","slug":"race-to-2026-kia-wnba-mvp-mitchell-enters-the-fold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/851061\/","title":{"rendered":"Race to 2026 Kia WNBA MVP: Mitchell Enters the Fold"},"content":{"rendered":"

With just a handful of regular season games to go before the WNBA postseason kicks off, we are still in the midst of a contentious MVP race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are obvious names to watch for movement ahead of this final week of WNBA action, with those players already laying the groundwork for a solid MVP case ahead of media voting. It feels a little late in the game for much to change at the top of the ladder, but one name has moved up from my last MVP list<\/a> because of her impact on the Indiana Fever\u2019s success: Kelsey Mitchell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s dive into another MVP check-in, with that one change taking the top spot from my previous top-3 candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

1. A\u2019ja Wilson
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

A\u2019ja Wilson #22 of the Las Vegas Aces<\/p>\n

It was always going to be extremely difficult to knock Wilson off her pedestal at the top of this MVP ranking. The center also decided to sit out of the FIBA Women\u2019s World Cup this year, opting instead to rest up ahead of an arduous postseason push from her and the Las Vegas Aces. What a scary thought that is for the rest of the league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s impact is huge for the Aces, and her on-off numbers prove it: Las Vegas\u2019 offensive rating with her on the floor is 116.6. Off the floor, it drops to 94.7 \u2013 a 21.9-point difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Defensively, the impact is less felt \u2013 on the court, the team has a defensive rating of 104.5, while with Wilson off the court, that number rises to 108.9. Overall, though, the Aces net rating with Wilson on the court is 12.1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without her, it\u2019s -14.2. A 26.3-point swing. That\u2019s an unbelievable impact on the Aces\u2019 success on both ends of the floor. In terms of PIE, or player impact estimate, Wilson ranks among players with at least 35 games played, with a 21.3 score.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By counting stats, Wilson is leading the league in points per game (26), blocks per game (2.0), usage percentage (32 percent), and points in the paint per game (12.3). And despite the on-off numbers suggesting Wilson has had little defensive impact, she\u2019s still one of the league\u2019s more feared rim protectors by a wide margin. Las Vegas is only allowing 38.4 points in the paint per game (6th-best in the league), and they\u2019re averaging the most blocks per game (4.9) in the league, thanks mostly to Wilson\u2019s work in the post.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also just 38 points away from cracking 1,000 points on the season total, which would put her a full 200 points ahead of her closest competition in third place, Kahleah Copper. But it would still leave her behind the player in first place in total points scored this season, Mitchell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I wrote in my first MVP piece, voting for Wilson might be seen as the \u201cboring\u201d option, since she\u2019s won the last two seasons in a row and four total. Voter fatigue is very real in sports, and with tougher league-wide competition, Wilson\u2019s impact isn\u2019t as front-facing as it has been in recent seasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That does not mean voters should be justified in ignoring her two-way impact on a contending team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

2. Olivia Miles
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Olivia Miles #5 of the Minnesota Lynx<\/p>\n

As with Wilson, it was always going to be tough to reshuffle Miles with our third-place MVP on this list. She continues to shine for Minnesota and has yet to hit any sort of rookie wall for the league\u2019s top team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She remains the Lynx\u2019s most impactful player, with a PIE of 15.1, while her on-off numbers remain stark: a 10.2-point difference in offensive rating when she\u2019s off the floor, and a 5.8-point difference in net rating when she\u2019s off the court. The only knock on Miles\u2019 potential MVP argument remains defense, where Minnesota has actually played better defensively with her off the court (4.4 points better, specifically).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, you have to go beyond the numbers with Miles, who took the Lynx\u2019s starting point guard job by the reins and has refused to relinquish them. A rookie who not only steered Minnesota in the right direction while Napheesa Collier sat out much of the season with an injury, but also had a huge impact on their top postseason seeding, is an unbelievably valuable feat in and of itself. That can\u2019t be ignored when discussing this race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diving back into numbers, for Miles to also be flirting with a 50\/40\/90 season in Year 1 is absurd. The last rookie to do this was\u2026well, no one. The only two players in WNBA history to do this are Elena Delle Donne in 2019 with the championship-winning Washington Mystics and Collier in 2025 with the Lynx.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not very likely she\u2019ll accomplish this as she sits at an 86.9 percent free-throw shooting mark with only four games left in the season, but the fact that she got this close to such a vaunted stat line is otherworldly for a rookie, and especially for a guard in this league.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She remains Minnesota\u2019s leader in points per game (19.7) and assists per game (6.0), while also averaging 1.3 steals per game. She\u2019s also still the team\u2019s leader in usage percentage at 26.5 percent, showing how much she\u2019s trusted with the ball and how impactful she is for the Lynx.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019ll be hard to dethrone a perennial MVP in Wilson this year, but she has a heck of an argument to do so en route to becoming just the second rookie in WNBA history to win MVP and (likely) ROTY in the same season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

3. Kelsey Mitchell
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Kelsey Mitchell #0 of the Indiana Fever<\/p>\n

After my last MVP piece, where I ranked Caitlin Clark ahead of Mitchell on this ladder, the long-time Fever guard made me look really, really silly. In August \u2013 the month of my original MVP article\u2019s publication, which, again, proves me completely wrong for not having mentioned her in this race \u2013 she averaged 28.9 points per game along with 3.1 assists and 1.3 steals, all contributing to a 7-4 record for the month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

More impressive than Mitchell\u2019s August explosion is how efficiently she\u2019s scoring. She shot a whopping 53.4 percent from three on 6.6 shots per game and 55.6 percent from the field overall on 18.8 attempts per game. She\u2019s also close to breaking Wilson\u2019s record for most points per game averaged in a single season (26.87 in 2024, per Basketball Reference) with 25 points per game, but Wilson still holds the record with 26 points per game this season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Digging deeper, Mitchell has been, by far, the most valuable player for the Fever this season. Her on\/off-court impact is clear: when she\u2019s on the floor for Indiana, they have a net rating of 10.1. Off the court, their net rating drops to -3.3. That\u2019s a 13.3-point difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mitchell\u2019s argument starts to lose steam defensively. With Miles and Wilson, they provide an impact on that end of the court in their own ways \u2013 Miles can be disruptive in passing lanes and against other guards looking to challenge her outside of the paint. Wilson is an absolute menace at the rim and is rarely tested in a mismatch (a lesson, by the way, Clark learned the hard way earlier this season in a thrilling OT win by the Aces).\u00a0<\/p>\n

With Mitchell, you\u2019re getting scoring, scoring, scoring. And it\u2019s electric \u2013 she leads the league in total points scored right now with 1,001, and she\u2019s on pace to be a part of history with Wilson, with it potentially being the first season ever where two players hit 1,000 or more points scored in a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That kind of offense, nearly 30 points per game, is valuable and impactful in its own right. But it\u2019s tough to argue that she should be higher than either Miles or Wilson when she\u2019s not truly impactful as a two-way guard. Still, she deserves love from voters, as she\u2019s clearly Indiana\u2019s most impactful player and one of the biggest reasons they\u2019ve been such a winning squad this season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With just a handful of regular season games to go before the WNBA postseason kicks off, we are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-851061","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\/851061","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=851061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}