Draft Winners
A historical look at the WNBA draft
The 2025 WNBA Draft is in the books. As expected, Paige Bueckers went 1st to the Dallas Wings, followed by Dominique Malonga to the Seattle Storm, and Sonia Citron to the Washington Mystics. No Cap Space, The Athletic, and ESPN have great coverage and immediate reactions, but I want to zoom out and take a more historic look as I tend to do here.
So I ask, which team has gotten the best players from the draft, all time? Well, this analysis was first done for my forthcoming book, Skytown, so it ~may~ be a bit biased … but charts don’t lie!
It’s the Chicago Sky.
Oh, you want proof? Ok.
Hitting on Top Picks
Let’s start with the top. The Sky have had 14 top-7 picks in their history. Here they are:
This list includes a Rookie of the Year, a seven-time All-Star, and a player with the second most win shares ever. And that’s just from the first three drafts!
In each of the next three, the Sky added players who would accumulate 30+ win shares in Kristi Toliver, Epiphanny Prince, and Courtney Vandersloot. Only 53 WNBA players, less than 5% of the 1,136 players ever drafted, have at least 30 career win shares, and only 19 have come since 2006. The Sky picked three in a row.
Then they got one of the best WNBA players of all time: Elena Delle Donne, another Rookie of the Year whom I’ve already written about extensively.
They’ve dropped off a bit since EDD, but (other than Alaina Coates) all of their picks play consistent, effective WNBA minutes, and last year’s haul (Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese) are off to great starts.
Overall, the Sky’s top-7 picks have produced an average of 0.149 win shares per 48 minutes. That is the highest mark in the WNBA, topping the Seattle Storm’s 0.146. But, the Storm are helped immensely by their WNBA-leading four #1 overall picks, which they cashed in for Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, and Jewell Lyod.
Amazingly, the Sky have gotten some of the best top players despite never going first. They have had zero number one overall picks. Zip. The Fever were the only other team with the bad luck1 to never have a #1 pick, until 2023 that is. Then they got two in a row, and two all-time talents in Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark, leaving the Sky as the only team to never have first dibs.
Capitalizing on Lower Picks
While most draft value comes in the first round, it’s not just about the top picks. The Sky have found some solid players beyond the first round, including Betnijah Laney-Hamilton (17th overall pick, 9.6 career win shares), Carolyn Swords (15th, 9.6), Shey Peddy (23rd, 5.8), Ruthy Hebard (8th, 4.6), and Imani McGee-Stafford (10th, 3.7).
Overall, the Sky have made 51 total draft selections, which have yielded 6.9 win shares on average. That is best in the league again, and over 20% better than second best Connecticut Sun. It’s nearly 2.5x better than the worst drafters, the Atlanta Dream.
Hover off the dots below to see all the draft picks for a given team
How or why are the Sky so good? Well, outside of trades - and the Sky have not made many draft day trades - there are only two ways to be good at drafting:
Bribe Cathy Engelbert to get a higher pick. Based on the 0 number one picks, I think we can rule this out
Pick the best player remaining on the board when you’re on the clock
To measure #2, we can look at a metric called Draft Score (DS). DS scores each draft pick2 by comparing the selected player against all of the players drafted after them. So, each player’s score depends not just on their own performance, but on what teams could have had instead.
An average DS in the WNBA is ~0.35. The Sky’s franchise DS is 0.7.
Sylvia Fowles was the best pick-up for the Sky with a DS of 5.5. That’s good for the second best pick of all time, only behind Tamika Catchings (selected 3rd in 2001). Candice Dupree, Elena Delle Donne, and Courtney Vandersloot all place in the top 25 draft picks as well.
So yeah, the Sky are good at drafting. Keeping the draft picks is another question …
More so good play on the Fever’s part.
Hence the name.
Good analysis. I like how the charts/graphs are interactive.