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The basketball is in her hand, and she’s about to make something happen. It’s how she sees the court, reads the defense and understands her teammates. It’s in everything she can recognize in a micro-second. It’s in the preparation, instinct, confidence and a little (or a lot) of flair.
As the league celebrates its 30th anniversary this season, ESPN will be reflecting on the past three decades. We begin by ranking the 10 most dynamic playmakers we’ve seen in the WNBA. This isn’t just a list of all-time assist leaders. It’s a subjective ranking of players fans didn’t (or still don’t) want to take their eyes off because of the magic they might make next.
Our top 10 includes a player who thrilled fans in the WNBA’s inaugural season in 1997 and a player who wasn’t born then.
Nicknamed the “Point Gawd,” Gray is both a clutch shooter and clutch passer, which makes defending her so treacherous. She can execute set plays perfectly or create something out of nothing. There’s no pass Gray can’t deliver with pinpoint precision. The four-time WNBA champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist was drafted No. 11 in 2014 by the Connecticut Sun. She didn’t play that season because of a knee injury that prematurely ended her senior season at Duke. She hasn’t missed a WNBA season since and is now in her 12th in the league and sixth with the Las Vegas Aces, after five with the Los Angeles Sparks.
For her career, she has averaged 5.1 assists, with a high of 7.3 in 2023, when the Aces won their second title. At age 33, she’s currently averaging 12.0 points and 6.7 assists. Aces coach Becky Hammon — who averaged 3.8 assists in her 16-year WNBA career — describes Gray as, “A master chess player. You’re playing one move; she’s playing four or five moves ahead of you.”
Guess who was one of Gray’s favorite players while she was growing up in the Bay Area in California? Penicheiro, the WNBA’s most magician-like passer, spent 12 of her 15 WNBA seasons with the now defunct Sacramento Monarchs. She led the league in assists seven seasons and finished with a 5.7 average. The Monarchs franchise folded after the 2009 season but will be remembered for its 2005 WNBA championship and stars such as Penicheiro. A native of Portugal, she was the No. 2 pick in the 1998 WNBA draft out of Old Dominion.
Penicheiro was known for no-look passes so deceptive fans sometimes couldn’t believe they really happened. Her teammates learned to expect the unexpected, especially Yolanda Griffith. Their connection for nine seasons in Sacramento was one of the league’s great guard-post combinations. Not known for her scoring, Penicheiro never averaged in double figures and finished her career at 6.1 PPG. It speaks to how great a playmaker she was that defenses couldn’t take away her passing even when they knew she usually wasn’t going to shoot. Fans didn’t watch the Monarchs to see Penicheiro put the ball in the basket. They watched to see all the creative, clever, crafty ways she would put the ball in the hands of the scorers.
Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images3. Sue BirdThe league’s all-time assists leader at 3,234, Bird — the No. 1 pick in 2002 — was the heartbeat and consummate leader for the Seattle Storm for her 19 WNBA seasons and two decades with USA Basketball. Bird averaged 5.6 assists for her career — leading the league three times — with a high of 7.1 in 2018 when the Storm won their third title. In her final season, at age 41, she averaged 6.0 assists. She averaged just 2.4 turnovers in her career, and less than 2.0 in each of her last four seasons going against much younger guards who couldn’t rattle her.
Admittedly, part of Bird’s success was her admirable practicality and accuracy: She was more likely to go for the high-percentage play than the fancy one. It paid off in how much she won, with four WNBA titles and five Olympic gold medals. But that doesn’t mean Bird wasn’t capable of the highlight-reel pass and “wow” moments. Her propensity to hit clutch shots — she averaged 11.7 points for her career — also made her playmaking that much more effective.
M. Anthony Nesmith/Icon Sportswire4. Caitlin Clark
The youngest player on this list, Clark, 24, already has more 20-point, 10-assist games than any player in WNBA history (12). The fact she has played only 58 career games was no impediment to her being in the top five here; in fact, it’s probably the only thing that kept her from being even higher. By the time Clark’s career concludes, it’s hard to see her not being No. 1, especially since she is the definition of dynamic. The Indiana Fever’s No. 1 pick in 2024, Clark stretches defenses to the breaking point with her multidimensional scoring and passing.
Some might ding Clark for her career 5.4 turnover average, but much of that comes because she pushes the pace so hard and takes chances that often pay off. She has a quarterback’s accuracy with full-court passes in transition, plays the pick-and-roll to perfection and wears out defenses trying to keep up with her. She averaged 8.4 assists in her 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year season, 8.8 last year when injuries limited her to 13 games, and is at 9.0 this season. Pair that with her 19.0 career scoring average (23.8 this season), and that’s premier playmaking.
The only player in league history to average double-digit assists for a WNBA season — 10.0 in 2020 — Vandersloot has led the league in assists seven times. She is second to Bird on the all-time assist list (2,886) and has 11 games with at least 14 assists. In 2020, she set the WNBA single-game record with 18 assists, a record subsequently broken by Clark (19) in 2024.
Vandersloot is known for finding angles and openings that most players don’t see until she makes the play happen. The No. 3 draft pick in 2011 by the Chicago Sky, she has spent most of her 16-season career in Chicago, save the 2023 and ’24 seasons in New York. She won her second WNBA title with the Liberty in 2024.
Her first title came in Chicago in 2021, when Vandersloot had an amazing postseason. She averaged 13.0 points, 10.2 assists and shot 51% from the field in the Sky’s 10 playoff games. Vandersloot is coming back from a knee injury that limited her to seven games last year; she has yet to play this season. But she’s still going at age 37, having averaged 10.0 points and 6.6 assists for her career.
Cooper Neill/NBAE via Getty Images6. Lindsay WhalenThere was no more perfect pairing of player and franchise in the WNBA than Whalen’s nine seasons in her home state of Minnesota. She led the Lynx to six WNBA Finals and four championships. Her six seasons before that with Connecticut, which drafted her No. 4 in 2004, also were outstanding. She went to the WNBA Finals twice with the Sun.
Whalen grew up as a center in hockey and translated that playmaking and physicality to basketball. She also brought a desert-dry humor and an old-school toughness that made her not just a fan favorite but a beloved leader. As Lynx teammate Rebekkah Brunson once stated, “You could always rely on Whay getting us into our sets and being that floor general. But the best thing about her is when s— was hitting the fan and the clock was running out, she could just put her head down and get to the rack.”
Whalen finished her career in 2018 having averaged 11.5 points and 4.9 assists in 15 seasons. She led the league in assists three times and ranks fifth on the all-time list at 2,345.
Getty Images7. Diana TaurasiA case could be made for Taurasi to be higher on this list as the league’s greatest scorer (10,646 points) and fourth in assists (2,394) in 20 seasons, all with the Phoenix Mercury. But scoring was the most dynamic part of her game. She also made a WNBA-record 1,447 3-pointers.
That stated, Taurasi — the No. 1 pick in 2004 who retired after the 2024 season — had her share of great passing and playmaking in a combo-guard role in the WNBA, where she won three titles, and was part of a record six gold-medal-winning Olympic teams. She never led the WNBA in assists in a season and her 4.24 assists average is 19th in league history. But especially when it came to crunch time, Taurasi typically had the ball in her hands and was never afraid to be the one who had to make the right decision — scoring or passing — when all the chips were on the table.
Julio Aguilar/Getty Images8. Alyssa Thomas
Guards aren’t the only dynamic playmakers; Thomas has proved that. What really stands out is just how dramatically she has transformed herself into a great passer during her time in the WNBA. She is in a league by herself in that regard, looking at where she started to where she is now.
The No. 4 pick in 2014, Thomas averaged 1.5, 1.4 and 2.3 assists in her first three seasons — nothing to suggest then she was on her way to elite playmaking. But her assist average bumped to 4.5 in 2017 and 4.8 in 2020. Then Thomas entered elite territory in 2022 at 6.1, followed by 7.9 in consecutive seasons and a league-best 9.2 last season.
Thomas played her first 11 seasons in Connecticut and is now in her second season in Phoenix, where she is averaging 18.0 points, 7.9 rebounds and 8.0 assists. She ranks seventh on the all-time assists list (1,875) and at age 34 seems to have multiple seasons still in front of her. Thomas was always one of the league’s top players, but turning herself into the best “point forward” in WNBA history has pushed her to an even higher level.
The WNBA didn’t begin until 1997, when T-Spoon was 31. We didn’t get to see her playing in the United States during a lot of her peak professional years. But the league started in time for her to play eight WNBA seasons and become a folk hero during her seven years in New York, helping lay the foundation for the league.
Even though she hit one of the league’s most famous shots — the winning half-court heave at the buzzer in Game 2 of the 1999 WNBA Finals — Weatherspoon, like Penicheiro, was a playmaker known more for her passing (5.3 APG for her career) than scoring (5.0 PPG). She was at the switchboard for everything the Liberty did.
And she played with such passion and flair, the former Louisiana Tech star from tiny Pineland, Texas, became an honorary New Yorker in the eyes of Liberty fans. Weatherspoon led the league in assists in the inaugural season and averaged 6.2 APG over her first six years, when the Liberty played four times for the WNBA title.
David Liam Kyle/NBAE via Getty Images10. Candace ParkerParker was a transformational talent: a 6-foot-4 center/forward who averaged 16.0 points and 8.5 rebounds in 16 WNBA seasons. She would have been a lock as a Hall of Famer even without her playmaking skills. Add in her career average of 4.0 assists — including a league-best 6.3 in 2015 — and she was a player who changed the game, setting the bar high for those who followed.The No. 1 pick in the 2008 draft, Parker was able to pull down rebounds with the ferocity of a powerful post and then run the fast break with the precision of a point guard. She finished in the top five of MVP voting 10 times, winning the award twice. She’s the only player to win MVP as a rookie.Juan Ocampo/NBAE/Getty ImagesParker, who won three WNBA titles and retired after the 2023 season, was such a feared scoring threat that her ability to also distribute to teammates made her one of the toughest matchups in the league.Also considered: Skylar Diggins, Sabrina Ionescu, Becky Hammon, Natasha Cloud, Dawn Staley
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