“I think her defense is something that I’m still in awe of every single game,” center and four-year teammate of Williams’, Ezi Magbegor said after defeating the Chicago Sky in Seattle. “Whether it’s a key match-up or getting blocks, deflections, rebounds, she’s there. It’s just how she is, and we know that she’s such a huge anchor for us defensively in the guard department, but just for the team as well. So definitely a front runner for the Defensive Player of the Year for me and for us.”
The most eye-catching aspect of Williams’ defense, and a main reason she is in the race for DPOY, is her steals. Williams leads the league with 96 total steals this season — a franchise record and third most in a single season in WNBA history. To Williams’ teammates, the steals total is one representation of what makes her an excellent defender.
“I don’t know who the candidates are, but looking at the way in which she impacts the game defensively, especially with the steals, being top in the league with that, she’s defending other teams’ most potent guard defenders,” head coach Noelle Quinn told The Next. “The versatility defensively, guarding on ball, off ball, size, skill set. Just her knack for the deflections, her knack for just utilizing her athleticism to make plays, I think, is very unique.”
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Former WNBA MVP Nneka Ogwumike and guard Erica Wheeler pointed to Williams’ unique “knack for the ball” as what makes her special and allows her to record so many steals.
“I think that she has an instinct that a lot of people don’t have. She has a knack for the ball on the defensive end,” Ogwumike said. “There’s a lot of people that have a knack for the ball on the offensive end, but she can kind of find the ball and know where it’s going.”
“She’s always in the right place to get steals,” Wheeler told The Next. “Typically, when you have a bigger frame you just use muscles but she’s fast and has a bigger frame. So, for me, it’s her being in the right place at the right time to be able to get those steals.”
Brittney Sykes, who joined the Storm via trade one month ago, was all too familiar with Williams’ defensive prowess and “knack for the ball”, having played against her for a decade, but says she has been even more impressed since playing alongside Williams.
“I played against Gabby more than I played with her, so that was one of the guards, when I see them in front of me, I’m like, ‘I can’t fuck around,’” Sykes told The Next. “Even as her teammate, she gets some steals and I’m like, ‘how do you even premeditate that type of movement?’ But it’s just one of those things where it’s a given talent. It’s a God given talent that she has and I’m happy to watch her. …”
“Even as an opponent, I was like, ‘damn, how’d she see that?” Or, the way she runs through passes, like, you really got to have some good timing and good, like, premeditated assumption that you’re going to go get this ball. She cleans it every time. Like I warn every guard, do not not do your work early if you have Gabby in your lane. So many pick sixes I’ve seen throughout her career so I’m just like, ‘bro, can we not be on the highlight.’”
Calling her “Grabby” for all the steals she racks up, point guard Skylar Diggins highlighted Williams’ defensive versatility as a separating factor.
“I think her ability to defend multiple positions,” Diggins said. “I mean, she played the five in college. She got recruited as a point guard. I think just her versatility, her athleticism, gives her the ability to guard a lot of people that’s solid and that affords us some opportunities that we could switch. She always gets the toughest offensive player, and we really rely on her on that side of the basketball. So, all year, just her ability to create deflections, her ability to block shots, to get steals and help us convert on the offensive end, we rely on her heavily for that.”
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Single-season steals record in her sights
It is not just the fact that Williams leads the league in steals that is impressive, it’s how she is getting those steals and how much she has separated herself from the rest of the league.
As her teammates pointed out, Williams showcases many different aspects of her defensive prowess in how she gets her steals. She utilizes her athleticism and quick hands in combination with intelligent anticipation and awareness. Even the steals that may seem like just quick reactions rely on a kind of ‘sixth sense’ for the ball on defense.
With 96 steals, the former UConn Husky has a 33-steal advantage over the next closest player, the largest gap between first and second place in total steals for a season in WNBA history. Only twice has a player had an advantage of even 20 steals over second place and that was Tamika Catchings in 2005 and 2006 (23-steal gap). Catchings was named DPOY in both of those seasons.
Williams also leads the league with a WNBA single-season record of 38 games with at least one steal. She has 28 multi-steal games, tied for second most in WNBA single-season history. Williams also has 16 games with at least three steals and eight games with four or more steals.
With two games left to play, Williams has a very good chance of breaking Teresa Weatherspoon’s record of 100 total steals set in 1998. Catchings holds the second-place record for 99 steals in 2009.
Williams and her teammates are aware of the record, but her teammates may be more invested in her breaking it (Sykes told Williams between our conversations that she needs her to break the record so she can “talk shit” to Weatherspoon.)
Meanwhile, Williams says she doesn’t know the exact numbers and isn’t focused on it. “Steals are something that, sometimes you can have five, sometimes you can have zero,” Williams said. “So most important is just getting the wins right now.”
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Underrated defensive contributions
Beyond the flashy statistics, Storm players and coaches also identified several underrated aspects of Williams’ defense.
“The deflections, the anticipation, the rotations, the contesting, flying around sometimes,” Quinn said. “If we’re kind of disrupting with traps and all that she’s able to cover so much ground and kind of keep us in possessions. The back tap sometimes, those deflections matter for us as well. So, I think just the hand activity and her athleticism to move around.”
Ogwumike praised Williams’ help-side defense specifically as an unsung part of her defensive contribution.
“There’s a lot of different intangibles that come with, I guess, the tangible things that you see on the stat sheet, but she has a way of kind of closing out messy defensive possessions with some great help side anticipation,” Ogwumike said.
Though Diggins pointed it out as a key feature of her defensive ability, Sykes thinks Williams’ ability to guard positions one through four is underrated.
“Just having her size on the perimeter but also being able to going into the post and have her switch and veer … you can’t do that with most guards,” Sykes said. “You can’t sit there and go, ‘hey, we’re going to switch with the guard, and we’re going to let you guard the post.’ [She]’s the only one.”
Wheeler says she believes the most underrated aspect of Williams’ defense is her blocks. Williams has a career-high 21 blocks in 42 games played.
“She’s meeting 6’5 players at the rim and blocking they ball,” Wheeler said, likely referencing Williams’ block of Alanna Smith in Minnesota days earlier. “People don’t even know, Gabby can’t even bend her damn knee and she’s still getting up there blocking shots.”
Are guard defenders underrepresented?
The last six winners of the DPOY award have been front court players — Napheesa Collier (2024), A’ja Wilson (2023 and 2022), Sylvia Fowles (2021), Candace Parker (2020), and Natasha Howard (2019). The last guard to win was Alana Beard with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2018 and 2017. The WNBA has had a lot of talented interior defenders, but the award distribution also represents how difficult it is to be recognized as a good guard defender.
“I think it is [harder to be recognized as a guard] because a lot of the other things that come into play defensively is rebounding and a lot of time guards aren’t going to lead in that area,” Quinn told The Next. “And then blocks, what was the last guard to lead the league in blocks? … A lot of it is also where our defense sits. I don’t know where we are as of late, but we’ve been top three within the last few weeks, so it’s difficult to sometimes quantify or qualify how guards impact through numbers if you’re only looking at steals.”
Naturally, post players are going to pull in more rebounds. Not a single guard is among the top 20 players in rebounds per game in 2025. No guard is in the top 15 in defensive rebounds per game in 2025. That being said, Williams does average 4.4 rebounds per game (37th in the WNBA), 3.8 of those being defensive (27th in the W, 5th among guards).
Connecticut Sun center Tina Charles grabs a rebound in front of Seattle Storm guard/forward Gabby Williams during the WNBA game between the Seattle Storm and the Connecticut Sun at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. on July 9, 2025. (Photo Credit: Chris Poss | The Next)
As a guard who has been top 15 in block in the league multiple years but never been named to an All-Defensive team, Diggins knows too well how difficult it is to be recognized for your defense as a guard in the WNBA.
“They look at big girls for doing big girl things. You big, you’re supposed to get rebounds, you big, you supposed to block shots,” Diggins said. “I don’t know if they just expect that out of guards, but I think yes, the demands of a two-way player are very [high] in this league. If you look at the guards around the league, for her to get the toughest match-up every night, it says a lot about her, her tenacity, just her athleticism and defense.”
Sykes, a brilliant defender in her own right who has been named to the WNBA All-Defensive First Team (2021) and Second Team (2020 and 2022), thinks that voters need to look at different criteria to properly determine the best defender in the league.
“I’m always going to say it — if you are above 6’2, you should get rebounds. That doesn’t make you a DPOY player,” Sykes told IX. “And I do think that DPOY, we should look at analytics rather than stats. We should look at if a person is stopping a person from their average, how the team does, how the team net, all that science shit. I think we should put that into DPOY talk, because it can’t just be because I’m tall and I get rebounds and I protect the paint and I block a couple shots, and I get a couple post steals. No shade, but all shade, come and see me.”
Looking at some of those more advanced analytics, Williams stands out. Williams is first in the league with 6.9 defensive win shares this season, per WNBA.com, and ranks first in ESPN’s defensive wins above replacement metric with 2.5 dWAR. She also leads the WNBA with 122 deflected passes this season according to Genius Sports — the next highest is Dearica Hamby with 96.
Williams has also held the league’s top five guard scorers (by points per game) — Kelsey Mitchell, Kelsey Plum, Paige Bueckers, Sabrina Ionescu and Allisha Gray — to a combined 25.9% (14-for-54) FG% in half-court match-ups. That is the lowest FG% allowed by any defender in the WNBA this season (minimum 200 match-ups) per Genius Sports tracking data provided by the Seattle Storm.
Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers dribbles the ball against Seattle Storm guard/forward Gabby Williams at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on July 22, 2025. (Photo Credit: Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images)
Limiting those averages is one of the aspects of Williams’ defense that reminds Ogwumike of the way Beard played in the two years she won DPOY while the two were teammates in Los Angeles. In 2017, Beard led the league with 2.1 steals per game (71 total), but in 2018 she was fourth with 1.5 per game, actually behind Ogwumike’s 1.6 steals per game that season.
“I was there for the two years that Alana Beard was DPOY and I’ve never seen anyone defend like that before,” Ogwumike said. “She was not only leading in steals [in 2017] but I think they took into account how she was able to limit the average of the people that she was defending. And I see remnants of that in Gabby. She’s playing some defense on mostly the biggest star that is in their back court.”
Standing out in a talented defensive team
Another factor that could make it difficult for Williams to earn recognition is that there are three other All-Defensive team candidates (not including her) on the team in Sykes, Diggins and Magbegor. Wheeler and Ogwumike are no slouches defensively either.
“You think about Ezi’s impact behind the defense, the blocks. You think about Nneka’s ability to defend and rebound. Then you think about Slim and what she can do on and off the ball, as well as you throw Sky[lar] in the mix,” Quinn said, praising her team’s defenders. “End of the day, before our roster kind of shifted to add Slim [Sykes] and to have Dom [Malonga] play more minutes, Gabby was still kind of the anchor in that area and still doing the things that she’s statistically doing now. But you get enamored by, you know, what Ezi can do behind that, and don’t realize what’s happening in front of that.”
Seattle’s defensive rating is top four in the WNBA this season, but the presence of so many talented defenders can make Williams’ individual contribution difficult to quantify and easy to miss when it isn’t flashy.
However, Williams’ teammates disagree. Sykes specifically pointed to the differences in each of their top three guard defenders — Williams, Diggins and herself.
“I think we’re all different type of defenders,” Sykes explained. “Sky[lar] is more on the ball, in your face. I’m long lanky so I give a little length, but I give the deception of you have nowhere to go. Gabby, she’s bigger, stronger, taller. So that right there you’re dealing with athleticism, then you’re dealing with a hybrid. Like, that’s so annoying. So, I’m glad we’re on the same team. And I do think that she deserves it. DPOY needs to go back to the guards.”
Connecticut Sun guard Leila Lacan shoots over Seattle Storm guard/forward Gabby Williams during the WNBA game between the Seattle Storm and the Connecticut Sun at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. on July 28, 2025. (Photo Credit: Chris Poss | The Next)
Diggins similarly disagreed that the talented defenders around William should affect how her defense is viewed.
“I don’t know about all that,” Diggins said. “I think she’s been elite at this level since she came in the league. And that’s one thing that you can rely on her, is her defensive prowess. And so, I mean, we all try to step up to her level, and I think she definitely sets the bar for us there.”
Whatever the drawbacks to standing out defensively may be, Williams’ defense itself benefits from playing with so many talented defenders.
“I think it also pushes me because I’m supposed to be the like leader of it, so I can’t ever slack you know,” Williams said. “I can’t ever watch my teammates work harder than me, like, I have to be the leader for them, and when they’re not feeling it I have to be more than myself too. It definitely has pushed me because I’m also learning from them as well. I mean, we have a team full of vets, so everyone has a lot of experience, and they’re all teaching me something new that I haven’t learned before.”
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How watching film has made Williams even better
Williams has always been recognized as a talented, top defender in the WNBA, but this season has been her best by far because of her increased film work.
“As I’m getting older and less athletic, but smarter, I’ve been really becoming obsessive with watching film, reading shooting charts, … being able to predict and manipulate the game on defense,” Williams told Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe during the live recording of their podcast A Touch More, regarding what has been clicking defensively for her this season. “Like, I know in this play, this player is going to go here and that can, I don’t know that could be a steal, that could be a switch or whatever. So, I think I’m really proud of myself for kind of being more in tune with the off the court preparation for my defensive performances.”
Williams told The Next that her obsession began when she was playing in Lyon, France for ASVEL Feminín (2022-2024). That team didn’t watch any games back or study film, which was frustrating for Williams. So, she decided to do it on her own and hired someone to break it down with her outside of the team. That experience made her realize what a difference watching film makes.
Atlanta Dream guard Allisha Gray dribbles defended by Seattle Storm guard/forward Gabby Williams during the second half at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Aug. 15, 2025. (Photo Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin-Imagn Images)
“It just makes the game easier,” Williams said. “Playing with that Lyon team and having to do a lot of it on my own actually taught me a lot of useful skills that I have now.”
With the Storm, Williams doesn’t have to rely on hiring outside experts. Williams gave credit to Nick Saenz and Peter Feeney, Seattle’s manager and assistant manager of video and analytics, for always being available and willing to get her any data she needs.
“I can text them 20 minutes before the game … like ‘hey let me actually get film of this player, let me get this shot chart but break it up this way, break it up by wins and losses, break it up by last five games,’ and they give it to me instantly. So that’s helped a lot,” Williams said.
While Williams is very self-aware of how film has helped her improve, Quinn has also noticed her growth this season.
“She’s been able to be so athletic throughout her entire career that she can kind of gamble and not be solid in certain actions,” Quinn told The Next. “And I think this year, she’s more locked into not just utilizing her athleticism to defend, but utilizing her smarts to understand tendencies, personnel and how she can still be athletic but be, not conservative, but solid. And that comes with a lot of film work and understanding of who she is within our defense. So, I do see growth in that area.”
What winning DPOY would mean
Awards are never guaranteed, and Williams isn’t getting ahead of herself or focusing on it. At the same time, Williams admitted that winning the award would be incredibly meaningful to her.
“I looked up a lot to Alana Beard, especially when I was in college. And watching her win DPOY I was like, I’m going to be that player one day. I’m going to be that three guard that gets it,” Williams said. “It’d be a very full circle moment, just the way that I looked up to Alana Beard.”
“It would mean everything. Everyone knows, kind of, my journey in this league, and having to fight for a lot of respect and everything. I mean, I’ve talked about it before that, like, my offense had to get good for people to start talking about my defense. And I think that just goes to talk about, like, how hard it is to kind of get recognized and respected in this league. So, if I can just get that, it would, it would feel really amazing.”
Even if Williams doesn’t eventually win 2025 WNBA DPOY, she should be considered a lock for the All-Defensive first team and the most concrete league-wide recognition of her defense to this point in her career.