Here we go again on a very special Election Day edition of (W)NBA Tuesday. And we’d like to add a personal note that we have been watching old seasons of The Amazing Race on Paramount+ for a long time now, and last night, we finished Season 17—the first one to have an all-female team win. Is that a sign today as we take on another year of women’s basketball history?! Only time will tell, but it’s really about fucking time.

2008 WNBA MVP: Candace Parker, F/C, Los Angeles (original, confirmed)

Well, the WNBA had a rookie superstar named Candace Parker in 2008, and she played front-court positions for the Los Angeles Sparks. She won the MVP vote with 7.7 Win Shares (1st) and a 27.7 Player Efficiency Rating (2nd). Compare that to the 3.0 WS and 18.8 PER marks of Caitlin Clark this year and try to tell us that Clark is “amazing”! You can’t, of course, just as you couldn’t with Tamika Catchings in 2002.

But we digress: Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi (29.7 PER; 7.4 WS) is the only other candidate here. So, to the standings we go—the Mercury missed the postseason with a 16-18 record, while the Sparks went 20-14 to finish three games ahead of the non- playoff slot(s). Nothing happens in a vacuum, of course; it’s just the way it goes with these analyses from the start a long, long time ago. Parker is confirmed, readily.

2008 WNBA ROTY: Parker (original, confirmed)

There is no need to discuss much here, obviously: there were no other rookies in her stratosphere.

2008 WNBA DPOY: Lisa Leslie, C, Los Angeles (original, confirmed)

We have a problem here as the only two players to reach the 3.0 DWS mark played for the same team: vote winner Lisa Leslie, the center for the Sparks; and Parker. No other player in the league topped 2.5 DWS … so what do we do? Well, the Sparks still finished a distant third in points allowed per game, and that tells us that the other three Sparks on the floor were invisible on defense. Yet the issue is the playoff buffer, for sure.

L.A. finished three games clear of the offseason, so if either Leslie or Parker was not on the court, the team still may have made the postseason. The third contender on our list is San Antonio Silver Stars center Ann Waulters; her team won 24 games to post the best record in the league. They’d definitely still would have reached the playoffs without her, so the value takes a hit there. We will confirm Leslie’s win based on DWS.

This is her fourth nod from us here, even though this was just the second vote win for her.

2008 WNBA FINALS MVP: Katie Smith, G, Detroit (original); Taj McWilliams-Franklin, F/C, Detroit (revised)

The Detroit Shock won its third title in six seasons (2003, 2006) by posting a 7-2 record across three rounds. In the Finals, the Shock swept the Silver Stars in three straight. Without an official MVP trophy for this category yet, we are here to do the honors (again): F/C Taj McWilliams-Franklin topped her teammates in those nine games with 1.6 WS. Three other teammates added value in the 1.0-1.3 WS range, but Taj stood tall.

Guard Katie Smith (1.3) won the actual vote, but we’re overruling that decision, of course. It’s what we do.