Welcome back to another installment of (W)NBA Tuesday! We have a new champion to crown during this season, although it’s also a season where the rookie crop was quite mediocre. Oh well, we cannot have it all on every edition of this miniseries, right? Some familiar names below, too, although again, with each passing year, we have more and more fresh faces as the league began evolving in both bad and good ways.

2007 WNBA MVP: Lauren Jackson, F/C, Seattle (original, confirmed)

Seattle Storm superstar Lauren Jackson won her second MVP vote, even though we gave her second MVP trophy here in this space last year. This year, she won the vote, and we’re confirming it readily. This is why: her team went just 17-17 to barely make the postseason, and she topped the league in PER (35.0) by more than five points, and she posted the top WS mark (9.5) in the league, too, by more than 3.0 WS. That’s value.

2007 WNBA ROTY: Armintie Herrington, G, Chicago (original, confirmed)

The Chicago Sky finished in last place, but their rookie guard, Armintie Herrington, won the ROTY vote somehow. She posted 1.9 WS along the way, but there was no true meaning there for a last-place team. Yet, the only two other vote getters in this race? Played for teams that were worse than Herrington’s squad. So we’re just going to confirm this and not worry about it much. We have bigger fish to fry below, as always.

2007 WNBA DPOY: Jackson (original); Rebekkah Brunson, F, Sacramento (revised)

Jackson won this vote with just 1.6 Defensive Win Shares, and while that mark certainly did help the Storm make the postseason, four other players posted at least 2.0 DWS. In fact, Jackson wasn’t even in the Top 10. The top two defenders were both playing for the same team, so our top candidates are Sacramento Monarchs forward Rebekkah Brunson (2.1) and Detroit Shock G/F Deanna Nolan (2.0). How does this go?

Well, Detroit posted the best record in the WNBA and had an eight-game cushion for the postseason, while the Monarchs had just a six-game margin for error while winning five fewer games than the Shock. So, we will go with Brunson here as logic would dictate. We have to have some standards in terms of a threshold for this award, just as we did for the NBA equivalent. There? It was usually 5.0 DWS; here, it is 2.0 DWS.

2007 WNBA FINALS MVP: Cappie Pondexter, G, Phoenix (original, confirmed)

The Phoenix Mercury won the league championship in a five-game Finals over the Shock. Overall, the champs went 7-2 in the postseason, and last year’s ROTY winner in this space, G Cappie Pondexter, is our pick for the playoffs MVP. She topped the Mercury in postseason WS and WS/48, so there’s no doubt here for us. Three different players exceeded 1.0 WS for the playoffs, but Pondexter was the best of the bunch.