Time has come today for WNBA Tuesday to reach the present, as we look at the 2024 WNBA season’s awards. One of the league’s original franchises, the New York Liberty, finally won its first league championship, so that was newsworthy, for sure. The team had lost in the Finals four times across the first six seasons of the WNBA’s existence, before reaching the Finals again in 2023. Patience pays off, perhaps.

2024 WNBA MVP: A’ja Wilson, F/C, Las Vegas (original, confirmed)

In one of the more dominant regular seasons ever, Las Vegas Aces forward/center A’ja Wilson topped the league in PER (34.9) and WS (10.9). This was her third MVP vote win, although we transferred the hardware both the prior two times (2020, 2022). Will we do it again? No idea. But her 8.5-point margin of dominance in PER over the next-best player is unreal. It’s really hard to overlook that kind of effort, no matter what.

But Wilson had no teammates in the Top 10 for PER, and she also had no teammates in the WS Top 10, either, where she posted a 2.2 WS margin of clearance over the next-best player there. The Aces won 27 games to earn the fourth-best record in the league as the two-time defending champions, and clearly Wilson was carrying the burden on her own in many ways, compared to other top players in the league.

Therefore, we are confirming her vote win, giving Wilson the quartet of achievement in our analyses: she has joined an elusive club here of players to have won all four major awards in her professional career.

2024 WNBA ROTY: Caitlin Clark, G, Indiana (original, confirmed)

The Indiana Fever had their second straight winner in this vote, guard Caitlin Clark (3.0 WS, 18.8 PER). The only other viable candidate here was Chicago Sky F Angel Reese (2.7, 17.6). Clark certainly benefitted from playing with last year’s ROTY winner, Aliyah Boston, who had posted 6.0 WS in her rookie campaign, for comparison’s sake. But the Sky were so bad, nothing Reese did really mattered in the grand scheme, truly.

Note, however, the huge gap between Wilson’s PER/WS marks and Clark’s PER/WS marks. Clark did not make the Top 10 for either category; in fact, she had a teammate (Boston) who finished 10th in PER (20.4), while the No. 10 WS mark (4.9) still left Clark in the dust. Yet somehow? She was named to the WNBA First Team. Why? You know the answer, and it’s not pretty. She wasn’t even in the same ballpark as Wilson, et al.

The Fever ended up winning 20 games to grab a postseason spot, which they would have grabbed even without Clark on the roster, since the “best team” to miss the postseason won just 14 times. Clark didn’t help the Fever improve that much, in comparison to other prior ROTY winners in league history. We will take a peak at that factual reality next week, but generally, we confirm this vote because of circumstance—that’s it.

2024 WNBA DPOY: Napheesa Collier, F, Minnesota (original); Wilson (revised)

The ROTY winner in 2019, Minnesota Lynx F Napheesa Collier (5.2 WS, 18.5 PER as a rookie), won the DPOY vote after posting 3.7 WS—the second-highest mark in the league. Wilson topped everyone with 3.8 DWS. Three other players topped 3.0 DWS, as well: Connecticut Sun F Alyssa Thomas (3.4); Liberty F Breanna Stewart (3.1); and Sun DeWanna Bonner guard/forward (3.1). We can narrow this down, readily.

The two Connecticut teammates cancel each other, so it comes down to Collier, Wilson, and Stewart. The latter had a teammate at 2.9 DWS (see below), so she’s out. Collier also had a teammate at 2.9 DWS, while Wilson—again—had no teammates in the DWS Top 10. We’re going to give her our trophy, there … for the second time. She previously won the vote in 2022, which we confirmed. Wilson is piling up the hardware.

Ponder this, too: these top defensive players? Had more value on defense alone than Clark did as a whole.

2024 WNBA FINALS MVP: Jonquel Jones, F/C, New York (original); Leonie Fiebich, F, New York (revised)

It took the Liberty 11 games, featuring eight victories, to earn their championship rings. F/C Jonquel Jones (1.8 WS) was voted the playoff MVP, she of the 2021 regular-season MVP vote win. Overall, though, three different players on the roster posted at least 1.5 WS in the postseason: F Leonie Fiebich (1.9), Jones, and Stewart (1.5). Since the Finals themselves went the full five games, it’s interesting to analyze this situation.

Interestingly enough, the usage rates here are in reverse order of value accrued: Fiebich did the most with the least amount of touches/usage, while Stewart did “the least with the most” if we want to phrase that. She’s been the star of this team’s recent success, but without Fiebich’s huge contributions as a first-year WNBA player at age 24 (a “rookie” with 3.3 WS, in fact, which is better than the ROTY “winner” above) …

The Liberty would not have won. While Fiebich was not a “legit” ROTY candidate simply because she played on a loaded team in addition to playing in Europe beforehand, she clearly was a key contributor in the regular season and the postseason to New York’s success. Why did she not get a single ROTY vote from the experts/mediots? You do the math. We’re rewarding here, though, for her postseason contributions.