{"id":175531,"date":"2025-08-25T23:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T23:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/175531\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T23:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T23:18:09","slug":"storm-newcomer-has-a-case-for-wnba-award-and-its-not-rookie-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/175531\/","title":{"rendered":"Storm newcomer has a case for WNBA award \u2014 and it’s not Rookie of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominique Malonga has quickly become a fan favorite<\/a> for the Seattle Storm \u2014 and on Monday, August 25, the team made it clear how much they believe in her, too. The Storm shared a series of posts via social media indicating what end-of-season awards they believe various members of the team should win, and selected two for Malonga: All-Rookie Team and Sixth Player of the Year.<\/p>\n

All-Rookie Team is practically a given for the French newcomer, who got off to a slow start with limited minutes but has since thrived. She’s averaging 7.5 points and 4.6 rebounds per game. Those aren’t necessarily the splashiest stats, but that’s in part because Malonga’s role on the Storm is to come in when she’s needed and maximize her impact \u2014 exactly the role of the Sixth Player. <\/p>\n

(Malonga is also currently tied for third-most double-doubles off the bench by a player in a single season \u2014 the two players ahead of her are former Sixth Player of the Year winners DeWanna Bonner and Dearica Hamby.)<\/p>\n

Dominique Malonga’s stats are deceptive<\/p>\n

It’s worth returning to the question of Malonga’s overall stat line, which is impacted by her limited minutes before the All-Star break. Since then, she’s averaged closer to 12.1 points and 7.4 rebounds per game while still only playing approximately 20 minutes each match; more importantly, Malonga has begun to live up to the potential the Storm (and other teams) saw in her when they selected her as the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s WNBA Draft. <\/p>\n

Malonga will be going up against a few WNBA heavyweights if she hopes to snag Sixth Player, including the Dream’s Naz Hillmon, who has had a powerful season with Atlanta<\/a> as the team chases its first playoffs run since 2018 (and, potentially, a Finals rematch with the Lynx 12 years in the making). She’ll also have to contend with the fact that late season pushes aren’t always rewarded, and if she misses out on Sixth Player of the Year this season it’ll likely only be because her pre-All Star break numbers are factored into the equation (whether or not those numbers should be taken as seriously for a newcomer to the league \u2014 and to the United States in general \u2014 is a separate discussion, but one worth having).<\/p>\n

Whether or not Malonga gets the nod is up to the powers that be, but either way she’ll almost certainly round out the 2025 season having made an unprecedented impact for an international player new to the league. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominique Malonga has quickly become a fan favorite for the Seattle Storm \u2014 and on Monday, August 25,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":175532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,67,132,68,232],"class_list":{"0":"post-175531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wnba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115091964160052166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}