Key Points
Bullet point summary by AI
- The WNBA MVP race has narrowed significantly with only two of the five early frontrunners still in contention.
- Breanna Stewart's shooting struggles have dropped her into the bottom half of performers this season, threatening her chances.
- The debate now centers on whether one player can overcome a dominant frontrunner and claim her first MVP trophy this year.
The race for the WNBA MVP race has changed a bit since we last took a look at it. Just two of the five early frontrunners remain in the race, as Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas and Veronica Burton have fallen off for various reasons.
Who takes their place in the rankings? And where do the two remaining players — A'ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart — rank a little less than a month later?
5. Breanna Stewart, New York Liberty
Is Breanna Stewart completely out of the MVP race? Of course not. There's still a ton of regular-season basketball left to be played and she's tied with another player for fourth-best odds at most sportsbooks.
But Stewart does need to find a bit more consistency with her shot if she wants to hoist the MVP trophy for the first time since 2023. Her 43.1 percent shooting mark is the lowest of her career and at the moment, it places her in the bottom half of all playes for the first time.
Key to this has been Stewart just completely losing her 3-point shot. Last year's 24.1 percent mark from deep was rough; this year's 18.8 percent shooting from beyond the arc kind of solidifies that Stewart just isn't the knockdown shooter she was earlier in her career. She's doing a lot of good stuff on both ends, but the shooting has to improve.
4. Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever
Caitlin Clark is second in the betting odds for MVP, but I maintain that a lot of that has to do with the volume of bets coming in on Clark. Not that she isn't a viable contender for the award, but she faces one major issue: her team's not that good.
Well, not that good right now. If Indiana can start to string some wins together, Clark will move up in these rankings because, on an individual level, she's playing some of the best basketball in the league.
After injuries limited her to just 13 games last season and her stats too a nosedive, Clark is currently averaging 20.1 points, 8.1 assists and 1.3 steals per contest. Among the five players averaging 20 or more points per game, Clark ranks first in assists and steals per game, as well as second in blocks per game. If the Fever stop lingering around .500 and actually win some basketball games, Clark has a real shot.
3. Allisha Gray, Atlanta Dream
There's an interesting conversation to be had about which Atlanta Dream wing deserves the most credit for the team's strong play. Allisha Gray leads the team in scoring and has the edge over Howard in rebounds, but Howard is only 1.8 points per game behind while having the advantage on Gray in assists and steals.
But the betting odds point to Gray at the moment as the player best-positioned to win MVP. DraftKings, for example, has Gray at +1400 to win MVP, while Howard is at +4000, a fairly significant drop.
Gray's chances of finishing in the top five of the MVP voting require her to essentially keep doing what she's doing while the Dream keep winning games. Her chance of taking home the award? Well, that probably requires her to up her assist and steal numbers over the remainder of the season while the Dream finish with the No. 1 seed. Definitely not impossible.
2. Paige Bueckers, Dallas Wings
No. 1 overall pick Azzi Fudd took weeks to crack the starting lineup. Last year's co-DPOY, Alanna Smith, is almost unplayable at the moment. Arike Ogunbowale is having her least efficient season. And yet, the Dallas Wings are 6-3 on the season and look like they'll cruise to a playoff spot. That's why Paige Bueckers is the closest thing there is right now to a spoiler in the MVP race.
After a strong rookie season, Bueckers is playing even better in 2026. Her scoring is down a bit because of a slight drop in volume, but she's more than made up for that with her efficiency — 42.5 percent from deep, up from 33.1 percent last season — and just the general way that she's impacting the game this season.
One potential knock against Bueckers? If Jessica Shepard keeps playing like she has, it's possible that she starts to get a little too much credit for this Wings season in the eyes of voters. Shepard leads the team in PER and win shares, and you can argue she's been the key to this team making a leap.
1. A'ja Wilson, Las Vegas Aces
No surprise here, as A'ja WIlson remains the favorite for MVP. Could it be any other way? At this point, it'd be more interesting to talk about Wilson's GOAT case than her MVP case, but that's not the focus here, so we'll stick to why she's the frontrunner for MVP.
Wilson sits second in the league in points per game, behind only her former teammate, Kelsey Plum. She's seventh in rebounds per game. First in blocks per game. She's shooting 55.6 percent from 3-point range on 2.0 attempts per contest. There are no holes in Wilson's game.
And there's also not really much else to say here. Wilson's going to be the MVP frontrunner as long as she's in her prime, and the only thing that can knock her out of the top spot this year or over the next five or so seasons would be an injury or voter fatigue. Maybe Bueckers makes it a close enough case that voters go with her rather than Wilson, but this really is Wilson's award to lose.
More WNBA news and analysis:
Add us as a preferred source on Google