36 Best WNBA Players of All Time, Ranked (2026)

A'ja Wilson is the best WNBA player of all time. She owns the highest career player efficiency rating in league history at 29.27, the highest career scoring average at 21.98 points per game, and four MVP awards — more than anyone has ever won. No other player has all three.

That answer would have been wrong two years ago, and most of the lists you'll find still reflect an older league. This ranking covers 36 players and uses one stated formula, applied the same way to everyone. It counts WNBA play only. Every accolade below is current through the 2025 season and verified in September 2026.

At a Glance: All 36 Players

Here is the full ranking with the three accolades that carry the most weight in our formula.

How We Ranked This List

Most all-time lists never tell you what they measured. We will, because "best" is an argument and the argument is the interesting part.

Five inputs, in descending order of weight: peak dominance (MVPs, Finals MVPs, Defensive Player of the Year), championship impact as a team's best or second-best player, career value measured by career Win Shares, per-minute quality measured by career PER, and era context.

Those last two are the ones other lists skip, and they change the picture. Here are the current leaders in each.

Three era adjustments matter, and we applied all three. The league did not create an All-Defensive Team until 2005, so counting awards alone quietly punishes Lisa Leslie, Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Yolanda Griffith for defense the league simply wasn't recognizing yet. Season length has grown, which inflates career totals for modern players. And career length varies wildly: Cooper played 124 games, Taurasi played 565.

We count WNBA play only. College titles, Olympic gold and overseas championships are real, but they belong to a different list — and mixing them in is how these rankings turn into mush.

One thing worth knowing: there is no official "W30." The WNBA's 30th-season program is a Top 30 Plays series, not a players team. The league's most recent official canon remains The W25 from 2021, chosen before Wilson had won a single MVP beyond her first.

The Top 10 WNBA Players of All Time

These ten separate themselves on peak, hardware and staying power. The order below is where the formula lands.

A'ja Wilson

A'ja Wilson has the highest career PER in WNBA history at 29.27, and the highest career scoring average at 21.98 points per game — both through September 2026. She has four MVPs, more than any player has won, plus three championships with the Las Vegas Aces and two Finals MVPs.

Her 2025 season is the single best individual season anyone has produced: MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, scoring title, Finals MVP and a championship, all at once. Her 26.87 points per game in 2024 remains the single-season scoring record. She is currently second on that same list too — for her 2026 season.

Diana Taurasi

Taurasi retired in February 2025 holding the career scoring record at 10,646 points, the first player past 10,000 and still the only one. Twenty seasons, 565 games, three championships with Phoenix, two Finals MVPs and five scoring titles.

Her single MVP is the reason she isn't first. Peak dominance carries the most weight in our formula, and one MVP across twenty years is a strange thing to find on a résumé this large. What she has instead is a longer stretch of being genuinely great than anyone else managed, and the scoring record may outlive most of us.

Tamika Catchings

Catchings leads all players in career Win Shares with 93.66 — and the 14.5 gap to second place is wider than the gap between second place and sixth. By pure accumulated value, she is the most productive player the league has had.

She won one title, in 2012, and took Finals MVP for it. She was the defensive standard of her era at a time when the league had only just started handing out an award for it. Her career PER of 26.06 ranks fifth all-time, which tells you the volume was not empty volume.

Cynthia Cooper

Cooper won the first four championships in WNBA history and was Finals MVP in all four. She added two league MVPs and three scoring titles. Her career PER of 28.72 is second only to Wilson's.

The catch is the sample: 124 career games. She arrived in 1997 at age 34, after a full career overseas that the WNBA simply did not exist to record. That is not a knock on her, but it is the reason she isn't higher — four seasons is four seasons, and we are ranking WNBA careers.

Lauren Jackson

Jackson won three MVPs, tied for the most before Wilson, plus two championships with Seattle and a Finals MVP in 2010. Her career PER of 27.93 sits third all-time and her 73.03 Win Shares rank fifth.

She is the strongest case for the "peak plus production" middle ground: dominant enough to win three MVPs, durable enough to bank real career value, and gone by 32 with her knees spent. Australians will tell you the WNBA saw maybe two-thirds of what she actually was.

Lisa Leslie

Leslie also won three MVPs, along with two titles and two Finals MVPs with the Sparks. She was the league's defining center for a decade and the first player to dunk in a WNBA game.

Her placement is the one most affected by our era adjustment. The All-Defensive Team did not exist until 2005 — nine seasons into her career — so the standard award-counting method gives her almost no credit for the half of the floor she controlled best.

Breanna Stewart

Stewart has two MVPs, three championships across two franchises, and two Finals MVPs. Her career scoring average of 20.49 is third-highest all-time and her PER of 25.77 ranks sixth.

The three titles came in Seattle in 2018 and 2020 and in New York in 2024, which makes her one of the few players here to be the best player on a champion in two different cities. An Achilles tear cost her the 2019 season outright, and the version of this list without that injury probably has her a spot or two higher.

Maya Moore

Four championships with Minnesota, an MVP in 2014, a Finals MVP in 2013, and a career PER of 24.59. She was the best perimeter player in the league for most of a decade.

Then she walked away at 29, at her peak, to work on criminal justice reform — an effort that ended with the overturned conviction of Jonathan Irons, whom she later married. She never played again. Her career value totals are lower than the players around her here for the simplest possible reason: she chose to stop.

Sheryl Swoopes

Swoopes won three MVPs and four championships, all with Houston, and was the first player in WNBA history to record a triple-double. She was also the first woman to have a signature basketball shoe.

She never won a Finals MVP, which is partly a Cynthia Cooper problem — Cooper took all four of Houston's. The 56.06 career Win Shares reflect a career interrupted repeatedly, but at her best she was the most complete two-way player the early league produced.

Candace Parker

Parker won two MVPs, including one as a rookie in 2008, a feat nobody else has matched. She added three championships with three different franchises and a Finals MVP in 2016.

Her 64.30 career Win Shares rank eighth. What she gave up was availability — injuries and overseas seasons cost her chunks of prime years, and the MVP-caliber peak she showed in flashes never held for a long consecutive stretch. Winning titles in Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas is its own kind of argument.

Nos. 11–20

This group splits into two types: players with rings but no individual hardware, and players with hardware who never got the right team around them.

Sue Bird

Bird holds the career records for assists with 3,234 and games played with 580, and won four championships in Seattle across an 18-year run. She never won an MVP, which is the whole story of her placement — enormous value, almost none of it in the form of peak individual dominance.

Sylvia Fowles

Fowles won the 2017 MVP, two championships with Minnesota and two Finals MVPs. Her 73.49 career Win Shares rank fourth all-time and her 25.33 PER ranks ninth — she is the most underrated player on this list by the objective measures.

Nneka Ogwumike

Here is the number nobody uses: Ogwumike ranks second all-time in career Win Shares at 79.18, ahead of Taurasi, ahead of Fowles, ahead of Jackson. She has one MVP and one championship, both in 2016. No mainstream ranking places her anywhere near her production.

Elena Delle Donne

Two MVPs, in 2015 and 2019, and a championship with Washington in 2019. Her career PER of 27.87 is fourth-highest ever. Back injuries limited her to a fraction of the games her peers played, and she sat out 2024 before retiring in April 2025.

Tina Thompson

The first overall pick in WNBA history and a four-time champion with Houston. Her 60.70 career Win Shares rank eleventh, built over 17 seasons and 496 games. No MVPs, but she was a starter on the league's first dynasty and lasted long enough to see three eras.

Yolanda Griffith

Griffith won MVP in 1999, then a championship and Finals MVP with Sacramento in 2005. Her career PER of 25.39 ranks eighth. She is another player the pre-2005 All-Defensive gap hurts badly — rebounding and interior defense were the entire basis of her game.

Seimone Augustus

Four championships with Minnesota and the 2011 Finals MVP. Augustus was the Lynx's leading scorer through the first title run and a genuinely elite mid-range shooter in an era that still valued one. No MVPs, but four rings is four rings.

Lindsay Whalen

Whalen won four titles with Minnesota and ranks fifth all-time in assists with 2,345. She never won a major individual award. On a Lynx team that had Moore, Augustus and Brunson, she was the one making it all connect.

Katie Smith

Two championships with Detroit and the 2008 Finals MVP, over a 15-year career. Her 59.77 career Win Shares rank fourteenth. She was one of the league's best pure shooters before the three-point shot became the organizing principle of offense.

Tina Charles

Charles won MVP in 2012 and is the highest-ranked player here who never won a championship. She scored heavily for 16 seasons across six franchises and retired after 2025 with 47.39 career Win Shares.

Nos. 21–36

These are the players whose cases rest on one dominant trait, one short peak, or a stack of rings won in a supporting role.

Brittney Griner

One championship in 2014, a 24.21 career PER, and the most dominant shot-blocking presence the league has had.

Jonquel Jones

The 2021 MVP, plus a championship and Finals MVP with New York in 2024. In 2026 she became the first player to win all four of the league's MVP awards.

DeWanna Bonner

Sixth all-time in career Win Shares at 67.01 and second in games played at 573, with a title in 2014. Longevity as a genuine skill.

Alyssa Thomas

Sixth all-time in assists with 2,139 — as a forward. No title and no MVP, which is the only thing keeping her this low.

Napheesa Collier

Minnesota's cornerstone and a perennial MVP finalist, still without a championship through the 2025 season. The résumé is unfinished, not thin.

Angel McCoughtry

Eighth all-time in career scoring average at 18.64 points per game. Two Finals appearances with Atlanta, no titles.

Cappie Pondexter

Two championships with Phoenix and the 2007 Finals MVP, over 13 seasons and three franchises.

Chelsea Gray

Two titles with Las Vegas and the 2022 Finals MVP. Her 2022 postseason is one of the best playoff runs any guard has had.

Courtney Vandersloot

Second all-time in assists with 3,006 and still active, which puts Bird's record within reach. One championship, with Chicago in 2021.

Swin Cash

Four championships across Detroit and Seattle, in three different decades of the league's history. A winner more than a star.

Deanna Nolan

Three titles with Detroit and the 2006 Finals MVP. She left for Russia at 31 and never came back, which is why most people have forgotten her.

Chamique Holdsclaw

The most hyped player of the league's early years, and briefly one of its best. Her career was interrupted by a mental-health leave she later spoke about openly.

Rebekkah Brunson

Brunson won five championships, more than any player in WNBA history — one with Sacramento in 2005 and four with Minnesota. She won zero individual awards, which is exactly why she ranks here and not in the top ten. Rings alone do not carry a ranking.

Ticha Penicheiro

Third all-time in assists with 2,599 and a champion in 2005. The best pure passer of the league's first decade.

Becky Hammon

No titles and no awards, but a 16-year career as one of the league's steadiest guards, and the reason a generation of fans knows San Antonio had a team.

Penny Taylor

Two championships with Phoenix and 48.98 career Win Shares, across a career repeatedly broken up by injuries and overseas commitments.

The Nine Players on Every Official WNBA Honor Team

The league has named four all-time teams: All-Decade in 2006, the Top 15 in 2011, Top 20@20 in 2016 and The W25 in 2021. Only nine players made all four.

Sue Bird, Tamika Catchings, Cynthia Cooper, Yolanda Griffith, Lauren Jackson, Lisa Leslie, Katie Smith, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson. That is the closest thing to an official consensus the WNBA has produced, and it is worth noting that A'ja Wilson is on none of them — the most recent was chosen in 2021, when she had one MVP.

Best Active WNBA Players Right Now

Ten of the 36 above are still playing as of September 2026. A'ja Wilson leads the league in scoring at 26.0 points per game, which would be the second-highest single-season mark ever behind her own 2024 record.

Breanna Stewart, Napheesa Collier, Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones, Nneka Ogwumike, Brittney Griner, Chelsea Gray, Courtney Vandersloot and DeWanna Bonner round out the active group. The 2026 MVP has not been awarded at the time of writing, and Wilson winning a fifth would extend a record she already holds alone.

Caitlin Clark is not on this list. That is not a verdict on how good she is — it is that all-time rankings measure a body of work, and hers is still being built. Ask again in 2030.

The Short Version

The WNBA's all-time argument changed in the last two seasons, and most rankings have not caught up. A'ja Wilson holds the top spot on the objective measures — career PER, career scoring average, MVP count — while Diana Taurasi holds the scoring record and the longest run of sustained greatness. Tamika Catchings quietly produced more total value than either.

Ranking players across thirty years is never going to be settled, and it shouldn't be. What we can do is say what we measured. If you weight rings above all, Rebekkah Brunson's five change the order. If you weight peak, Cynthia Cooper's four Finals MVPs in four tries do. We weighted peak dominance first and career value second, and this is where that lands.

If you are filming your own team's games this season, an auto-tracking camera handles the sideline work so nobody has to miss the game holding a phone. And for more on the sport's history, our basketball facts rundown covers the origins most fans never learn.