21 Shortest WNBA Players: Full List & 2026 Update

The shortest WNBA player ever is a tie. Shannon Bobbitt and Tina Nicholson were both listed at 5'2" (157 cm), and nobody in league history has been listed shorter — an answer that has held since 1997. That is a different question from who is shortest right now, which in the 2026 season is Mai Yamamoto of the Las Vegas Aces, at 5'5" (165 cm).

Most lists blur those two questions together, which is why you'll find four different names given as "the shortest WNBA player" depending on which page you land on. We split them apart. Below are the 21 players we could document at 5'5" or shorter, with every height taken from that player's own Basketball-Reference profile rather than copied from another list.

At a Glance: All 21 Shortest WNBA Players Ever

Every player below appeared on a WNBA roster listed at 5'5" (165 cm) or shorter. Ranks are shared where players are tied.

How We Ranked This List

Every height comes from the player's own Basketball-Reference profile, checked in September 2026, not from other list articles — which is why a few of our numbers differ from what you'll read elsewhere. No public database sorts WNBA players by height, so we verified every candidate name one at a time.

Two caveats. These are official listed heights — roster labels published by teams, not measurements taken in a gym, and fans argue about their accuracy in both directions. And we drew the line at 5'5" (165 cm), keeping historical and active players in separate sections, because mixing them is what produces four conflicting answers to one question.

One correction runs through the list. Almost every article puts Debbie Black at 5'2½", slotting her third all time. Her Basketball-Reference profile says 5-3, tied with four others. We went with the primary source.

The Shortest WNBA Players of All Time

The seven shortest players in league history were all guards, and five of them are tied at 5'3".

Shannon Bobbitt

Shannon Bobbitt was listed at 5'2" (157 cm), making her a co-holder of the all-time record. The Los Angeles Sparks took her 15th overall in the 2008 draft after two national titles at Tennessee. She played from 2008 to 2012 for the Sparks, Indiana Fever and Washington Mystics, sitting out 2010 after being waived before working her way back. Her best distributing year came in Washington in 2012: 2.6 assists in under 15 minutes a night.

Tina Nicholson

Tina Nicholson was also listed at 5'2" (157 cm), sharing the record with Bobbitt. The Cleveland Rockers took her 20th overall in the 1997 draft, the very first draft in league history, and she played that inaugural 1997 season and never appeared in the WNBA again. The shortest player in league history is also one of its briefest — a one-season guard whose name still anchors lists like this one nearly 30 years later.

Debbie Black

Debbie Black is listed at 5'3" (160 cm) on her Basketball-Reference profile, not the 5'2½" you'll see almost everywhere else. She is easily the most decorated player here. Black joined the WNBA at 32, started all 32 games as a rookie for the Utah Starzz in 1999, and won Defensive Player of the Year in 2001 with the Miami Sol at 34, averaging 2.6 steals a game. She played through 2004.

Temeka Johnson

Temeka Johnson was listed at 5'3" (160 cm) and went sixth overall to Washington in 2005 — the highest any player here has ever been drafted. She lasted eleven seasons, 2005 through 2015, by a wide margin the longest career of anyone at 5'3" or under. If you want a single answer to whether this height is a hard ceiling, Johnson is it.

Nicole Levesque

Nicole Levesque was listed at 5'3" (160 cm) and arrived in the league's first season. She started 21 of her 27 games for the Charlotte Sting in 1997 and played 23 minutes a night — real starter's minutes — while shooting .933 from the line. Like Nicholson, she never played a second WNBA season.

Brandi McCain

Brandi McCain was listed at 5'3" (160 cm) and was drafted 24th overall by Cleveland in 2002. Her career reads as a run of short stops: waived by the Rockers in 2003, signed by the Sparks and then the Comets in 2004, back with the Sparks in 2006 before being waived again that May. At this height, the gap between making a roster and losing the spot is measured in weeks.

Erica White

Erica White was listed at 5'3" (160 cm) and went 17th overall to the Houston Comets in 2008. When the Comets folded she was taken sixth in the 2009 dispersal draft by the Indiana Fever — two teams, two seasons.

The 5'4" and 5'5" Tier

Seven more players are listed at 5'4" (163 cm). Rui Machida came from Japan to Washington in 2022 and averaged 2.6 assists across 36 games. Australian guard Kristi Harrower had the longest run — 189 games over seven seasons with Phoenix, Minnesota and the Sparks between 1998 and 2009. Angel Goodrich, Edniesha Curry, A'Quonesia Franklin and Tricia Bader Binford fill out the tier.

Brooke McCarty-Williams belongs here with an asterisk. She is listed at 5'4" and appears on most versions of this list as a WNBA player, but her Basketball-Reference page shows only training-camp deals and no regular-season appearances.

Seven players sit at 5'5" (165 cm): Mai Yamamoto, Kim Perrot, Leilani Mitchell, Crystal Dangerfield, Stacy Clinesmith, Heather Butler and Olivia Époupa. Perrot is the one to pause on — she started 54 of her 58 WNBA games for the Houston Comets across 1997 and 1998, averaged 2.8 steals in that second season, and died in August 1999 at 32.

The Shortest Active WNBA Players in 2026

This is where other lists fall apart, because rosters move and articles don't. In a league-wide roster check dated August 2, 2026, the shortest player in the WNBA is Mai Yamamoto at 5'5" (165 cm). The Japanese guard signed a rest-of-season contract with the Las Vegas Aces on July 17, 2026; pages still calling her a Dallas training-camp invitee without a team are over a year stale. Her current profile has the details.

Six players sit behind her at 5'6" (168 cm): Costanza Verona, Dana Evans, Georgia Amoore, Jordan Harrison, Jordin Canada and Rori Harmon.

Two corrections. Crystal Dangerfield is still named as the current shortest player on at least one top-ranking page — her last WNBA season was 2024. And Jordin Canada gets listed at 5'5" in several places, including one article that writes "5 feet 5 inches" and then gives 1.68 m, which is 5'6". Basketball-Reference and the 2026 roster both say 5'6".

Height is the first line on a roster sheet and close to the last thing that decides whether a small guard sticks. That gets settled on film, which is why more programs now point a basketball tracking camera at their own games. For scale, the average WNBA player in that same snapshot was 6'0.7" (184.7 cm).

Frequently Asked Questions

Short answers to what people ask most about WNBA heights, drawn from the same verified data as the table above.

Who is the shortest player in the WNBA right now?

Mai Yamamoto, at 5'5" (165 cm), who signed with the Las Vegas Aces in July 2026. The next group down — Dana Evans, Jordin Canada, Georgia Amoore, Rori Harmon, Costanza Verona and Jordan Harrison — is listed at 5'6".

Who is the smallest WNBA player?

Shannon Bobbitt and Tina Nicholson, tied at 5'2" (157 cm). No player in WNBA history has been listed shorter. Bobbitt played from 2008 to 2012; Nicholson played only the 1997 season, the league's first.

Can you be 5'2" in the WNBA?

Yes — two players have done it, both guards. It is rare and not recent: Bobbitt, the last 5'2" player, left after 2012. Across league history we could document only 21 players listed at 5'5" or shorter.

How tall is the shortest WNBA player in cm?

The all-time record is 157 cm, shared by Bobbitt and Nicholson, and the shortest active player in 2026 is 165 cm. For comparison, the shortest NBA player ever, Muggsy Bogues, was 160 cm — three centimetres taller than the WNBA record.

The Short Version

Two things make this list hard to get right. Heights are roster labels rather than measurements, so half an inch of rounding can move a player three spots. And the answer to "who is shortest" changes every time a roster does.

The all-time mark has been stable: Bobbitt and Nicholson at 5'2" since 1997, nobody close in the 14 years since Bobbitt last played. The active answer has moved three times in three seasons. We revisit this page each autumn, once rosters settle.