The 40-point game has disappeared from the WNBA in the last few years. This season, it’s back.
Ten times this year a player has scored at least 40 points in a game, the most in a season in the league’s 27-year history. Before this year, there had been no such regular-season performances since 2018, when star center Liz Cambage had two. And with at least nine games remaining for each team, while the WNBA holds its longest regular season ever, there’s still time for more scoring outbursts.
“You’ve seen a lot of 40-point games this year, and I think we’re just continuing to see women’s basketball,” Liberty star forward Breanna Stewart said Sunday in an interview with television after noticing the latest league. 40-point game in a 100-89 win over the Indiana Fever.
Stewart scored 30 of her 42 points in the first half en route to her third 40-point game in 2023, becoming the first player in WNBA history with three in the regular season. (In 2015, Elena Delle Donne recorded two 40-point games in the regular season and one in the postseason for the Chicago Sky.)
True to his versatile style of play, Stewart scored Sunday in multiple ways: backing up the smaller Kristy Wallace and finishing with a left-handed layup; make a turnaround fadeaway over Lexie Hull from the baseline; knocked down a long 3-pointer after the game was left.
Although he had never scored 40 points in a regular season game until this year, Stewart has shown that he can. He had 42 points, tying a postseason record, in his final game with the Seattle Storm, and that kind of output continued into his first season in New York.
In May, in his first home game with the Liberty, he scored a career-high 45 points against the Fever, who were likely grateful that New York was off their regular season schedule. He also dropped 43 points in a win against the Phoenix Mercury last July.
Stewart’s outing on Sunday came just two days after Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson had his first career 40-point game, shooting 17 of 25 in a blowout win over Washington. Wilson and Stewart, former Most Valuable Player Award winners, are both in the top five in points and rebounds per game this year and are among the top contenders for another MVP.
“I don’t know, there’s something in the water,” said Stewart when asked if there was a “40-point rivalry” developing.
Their teams also topped the league standings. The reigning champion Aces (27-3) are within striking distance of the 1998 Houston Comets’ record for best single-season winning percentage, and the Liberty (24-6) are off to their best start in franchise history as they look to win their first title. The teams split their two games, including a romp at Liberty earlier this month, but they play three more times in August, including Tuesday and Thursday.
The Liberty made a splash by signing top players this off-season, but the Aces have elite talent, too, and one of those players, two-time All-Star Kelsey Plum, also recorded 40-points. game this season. While the sharpshooting Plum made six 3-pointers as part of his performance against the Minnesota Lynx in July, the 6-foot-4 Wilson got his points by beating defenders, maneuvering the post and swiping midrange jumpers.
Like Wilson, Plum hasn’t scored 40 points in a regular-season game until 2023. Neither has Atlanta’s Rhyne Howard, Seattle’s Jewell Loyd, Dallas’ Arike Ogunbowale or Connecticut’s DeWanna Bonner.
But there was one player who did it this year.
On August 3 against the Atlanta Dream, Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi needed 18 points to become the first player in WNBA history to score 10,000 points in a career. He reached the milestone with a deep 3-pointer against Howard in the third quarter, and he finished with 42 points – his first 40-point game since 2010 and the fourth of his career.
“Tomorrow I will feel like I’m 50,” the 41-year-old Taurasi said in a postgame news conference.
He added later: “I came here a little nervous. I don’t want to disappoint anyone. I just want to finish it for a sense of relief, but at the same time I’m just focused on trying to win a game.
Even though the 40-point game has had a renaissance in the WNBA, like last season’s triple-double, the 50-point game remains very rare. There are only two: Cambage’s 53 in 2018 and Riquna Williams’s 51 in 2013. Only three other players – Taurasi, Lauren Jackson and Maya Moore – have come within 3 points.
But if this season shows anything, there are plenty of candidates to get there.