Here on WNBA Tuesday. we have decided to have some fun like we do with MLB Monday entries. So, we’re going to look at the basketball career today of Sheryl Swoopes: 1993 College Player of the Year, 1993 NCAA Champion, three-time Olympic Gold medalist, four-time WNBA champion, and three-time WNBA MVP. We could go on, but we will refrain; her career puts a lot into perspective for modern fans who just don’t understand that the WNBA has a rich and sensational history going back decades now.

Swoopes played two years at Texas Tech and did a lot of winning, and then she joined the WNBA as an age-26 “rookie” who had been on the 1996 Olympic championship team in Atlanta. She played 12 seasons in the women’s professional league from 1997-2011, missing a year with an knee injury (2001) and two years (2009-2010) for other reasons. She spent 10 campaigns with the Houston Comets (1997-2000, 2002-2007), one with the Seattle Storm (2008), and one with the Tulsa Shock (2011), all together.

Her MVP vote wins came in 2000, 2002, and 2005, demonstrating she could overcome adversity, and even though she averaged “only” 16.8 points per game in her prime years with the Comets, Swoopes did a lot of things on the court that helped her teams win: three-time Defensive Player of the Year vote winner and two-time steals champion. Defense mattered to her, and her .522 True Shooting Percentage while with Houston showed she was no liability on the offensive end of the court. She was amazing.

Some highlights, sabermetrically? In her eight peak seasons (1998-2000, 2002-2006), she compiled 52 Win Shares—an average of 6.5 WS per season when the league was only scheduling 32 games or so each year. Her .282 WS per Minute Played mark for her time in Houston is pretty epic, actually, when we look at today’s stars: among the top six players in total WS this season, only two of them have career marks that high. A’ja Wilson (.318) and Breanna Stewart (.292) are the company Swoopes keeps, basically.

Awhile ago, we highlighted five WNBA players in the history of the league who stand out in terms of winning awards, and while Wilson and Stewart were on that short list, Swoopes was a honorable mention then only because she was a “founding member” of the league and never had the chance to win the Rookie of the Year award. All things considered, Swoopes is on a very short list of the greatest WNBA players ever. This is reflected in her selection to the league’s 15th-, 20th-, and 25th-anniversary all-time teams.

Swoopes is 15th all time in Player Efficiency Rating (23.31); eighth all time in Defensive Rating (91.84); and 16th all time in Total Win Shares (56.06). Only six players in the league this past season topped her career PER mark with their single-season effort; no one from 2026 came close to her career DRtg mark. While she did play on a lot of good teams in Houston with great teammates, she was the consummate team player in so many ways that we respect—and that the sabermetric analytics respect as well as valid.

Twice she won the MVP award vote while also winning the DPOY vote (2000, 2002). In between, she missed a season due to a knee injury. In 2000, for example, she posted per-game averages of 20.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 2.8 steals, and 1.1 blocks. Coming back in 2002, she still managed 18.5 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 3.3 apg, and 2.8 spg at age 31. She got a late start on her WNBA career due to timing and circumstance, and fate dealt her some unfair situations, but Swoopes was a winner, either way.