It was many WNBA news cycles ago—but not that many human years ago!—that the league’s central power struggle was shaping up to be one between A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart. Since Wilson was drafted in 2018, the two stars have lived atop MVP ballots and together won six of eight WNBA championships. On this very website, in 2022, I anointed them as much:
Stewart and Wilson, anchors of the Olympic team and the new faces of their sport, should run this league for a while. "Should" is an important qualifier. It wasn't too long ago that WNBA fans imagined epic future playoff battles between Stewart and Elena Delle Donne, battles that have had to stay in the imagination thanks to an Achilles injury, a back injury, and a pandemic. But everyone's health permitting, this is The Rivalry We Care About Now, and it's so extremely awesome to watch.”
On Sunday, the two would-be rivals were miles away from each other and their games tipped off a few hours apart. Stewart’s 34 points and 12 rebounds carried the Liberty to an upset 91-75 win over the top seeded Lynx in Minnesota. Just as in the regular season and in playoffs past, the Lynx had troublingly few answers for opposing size; the Liberty might be the most aggravating team to watch in the WNBA, but maybe more importantly, they’re also the tallest. Stewart, so hard-nosed and rangy and lanky, almost personally magnifies Minnesota’s flaws. She attacks mismatches and swats shots—on Saturday, she even supplied some throwback threes for extra style points. Solid games from Leonie Fiebich and Han Xu were sufficient help; Stewart doesn’t need much of it. (No matter at all that her team’s lead guard continues to shoot springtime tour dates.)
In Vegas later, Wilson toyed with the Indiana Fever to the tune of 38 points and 16 rebounds in a 102-85 win. Opponents are seldom happy at the end of a game against A’ja Wilson, but in this one, she showed off her full demoralization package: She missed just four of her 19 shots and made sure the Fever could get nothing at the rim. The idea of an Indiana upset in this series, made plausible by some of the teams’ recent meetings, was just one more thing she swatted away.
Styles made fights in Sunday’s games, and the wide-open feel of these playoffs meant they began with a lot of unanswered questions. At the end of a four-game slate, though, I wasn’t sure I’d learned anything new. The WNBA is a better, healthier league for all its young stars, and its tilt toward guard play only makes the product more exciting. This throat clearing now complete: 2022 holds true. Stewie and A’ja still run this shit! On Sunday they each provided an emphatic reminder that for all the fun Olivia Miles and Caitlin Clark can bring, it's the bigs who swim most comfortably in the deep waters of the WNBA playoffs. You won't find two with more skill than Stewart and Wilson, and they also just so happen to possess two-way motors unlike anyone’s I’ve ever seen. This game is theirs as long as they want it.
The “rivalry” as imagined never really came to pass. Stewart’s GOAT case gave way to Wilson’s quicker than expected, and the last two Stewart vs. Wilson postseason series turned out to be duds. The two of them also seem, frankly, a little too well-adjusted and too focused to anchor a rivalry. As Wilson put it to Holly Rowe in the postgame interview Sunday: “It’s my job, Holly. It’s what I do!”
