In FanSided's recent WNBA35 rankings, Las Vegas Aces guard Jewell Loyd ranked as the 13th-best player in the league, while Dallas Wings shooting guard Arike Ogunbowale ranked as the 16th-best. They were the seventh and eighth guards in the rankings, respectively.
Clearly, both are among the WNBA's best players, but why does Loyd rank slightly ahead of Ogunbowale?
Let's break down why these two players rank where they do.
READ MORE: FanSided's WNBA35, ranking the best players in the WNBA this season
Why is Jewell Loyd ranked 13th?
Jewell Loyd, who joined the Aces this offseason after spending the rest of her career with the Seattle Storm, tends to be a divisive figure in WNBA circles.
Why? Because her production — and her efficiency — has been all over the place.
Loyd enters this season having finished in the top 11 in points per game in four consecutive seasons, including leading the league in scoring in 2023 when the Storm were going through a rough patch, after losing Breanna Stewart to New York but before the team rebuilt with Skylar Diggins and Nneka Ogwumike.
That season, Loyd shot just 37.0 percent from the floor. It was the worst mark of her WNBA career, but it also made sense — she was a No. 2 scorer who was suddenly thrust into the role of a lead scorer. Loyd was at her best when playing off Stewart, and the changing role led to a lot of made buckets, but also a lot of missed buckets as well.
You could excuse that, but then the Storm added Diggins and Ogwumike last year and Loyd actually shot worse, making just 36.0 percent of her looks despite a lower volume and less pressure.
That's what keeps Loyd from ranking in the top 10, but let's not act like she's not a very good basketball player. Being able to score at the high clip Loyd scored at in Seattle isn't easy and while the lack of efficiency takes some of the shine away, not everyone can score like that.
Loyd is now in Vegas, where she gets to settle into a smaller role. Theoretically, a smaller role should fit Loyd's game well at this point, allowing her to rediscover some scoring efficiency. Through two games, she's...kind of doing that, shooting 46.7 percent from deep but also struggling immensely inside. Still, it's a small sample, so let's not read too much into it yet.
Why is Arike Ogunbowale ranked 16th?
Arike Ogunbowale is a baller. That's the best way to describe her — she goes out there and she hoops.
Sometimes, that's good. This is a player who hit multiple game-winning shots in college to lead Notre Dame to national titles.
But it's also part of why Ogunbowale has never finished better than 80th in the WNBA in field goal percentage. She's never met a shot she's not willing to take.
Like Loyd, Ogunbowale scores at a high volume. A higher volume, actually — she's never finished outside the top five in the league in points per game.
One thing that keeps Loyd ahead at the moment is that Ogunbowale hasn't proven she can take a step back and be effective when she's not the go-to option. Loyd spent the early part of her career learning how to play team ball. Ogunbowale never had that luxury, as she was thrown right into the fire in Dallas.
Now, Ogunbowale has to figure out how to play beside Paige Bueckers, something that's definitely a work in progress at the moment. She's shooting just 30.4 percent from the floor so far this season and doesn't look nearly as comfortable playing slightly more off-ball than she did in the past.
If it sounds like I'm being too negative about Arike, I apologize. Yes, there are limitations to her game, but her flair for the big moment is a huge plus for her. If the game was on the line in the final moment and I had to pick one of these two players to take the final shot, I'm taking Ogunbowale. She understands how to rise to the moment, even if she's more wont to take a bad shot during the course of the game.
Could Ogunbowale surpass Loyd in 2025?
How likely is it that these two swap spots in the rankings by the end of the year?
Fairly likely, actually.
Playing with Bueckers has a chance to transform Ogunbowale's game. If she can prove that she can function in an off-ball role and her efficiency increases, she'll surpass Loyd.
Part of that is an age thing. The 31-year-old Loyd is who she is at this point, and we saw last season that scaling down her role a bit didn't lead to some massive increase in efficiency. She got worse, actually!
But Ogunbowale is still just 28 years old and she has a chance to really learn some new things about playing basketball this year. We don't know if she'll be able to actually rise to the occasion or not, but the potential is there. There are more depths to Ogunbowale's game that could be revealed. Will that actually happen? It's unclear, but the possibility exists, which is why it wouldn't be a shock to see these two swap by the end of the 2025 season, if not sooner.