Scoring at least twenty points a piece and putting their teams on their backs is what has happened in multiple matchups this season between these two All-Stars. When their teams are in a bind late game and with the score tight, the idea always is to put the ball in their hands and let them go to work.
This season these players rank in the top ten for total clutch points this season, meaning they score some of the most points when games are on the line and scores are within just five points.
Who am I alluding to?
I could be describing the one battle after another that exists each time A’ja Wilson plays against Breanna Stewart, Wilson opposes Napheesa Collier or each time Stewart takes on Collier, but no. I’m talking about how Olivia Miles and Paige Bueckers have routinely performed against each other in three matchups between Miles’ Minnesota Lynx and Bueckers’ Wings.
The second week in August is rivals week in the WNBA, when multiple matchups between all the players I listed above will face off. That includes Bueckers and Miles who will spar again against each other for the final time this regular season on Sunday at 3:30 PM e.t. on NBC and Peacock.
For the majority of the past decade in the WNBA, the most important position in the league has been the power forward simply because of the fact that this is the position that yielded the most MVPs. While there have been some wings and more pure centers who have won the award in the 2010s including Tamika Cathings, Tina Charles, Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles, there hasn’t been a true backcourt guard that won MVP since Diana Taurasi did so in 2009.
SCHEDULE: Check out the full WNBA on NBC, Peacock slate of games
The question remains: Is the WNBA entering a new era in which a group of young guards—including Bueckers, Miles and Fever star Caitlin Clark, all of whom entered the league within the past three seasons—are destined to break that drought? Some would also argue that Clark’s teammate Kelsey Mitchell, the No. 2 pick in 2018 WNBA draft, also belongs in the MVP conversation. But that’s a discussion for another time.
The writing is on the wall, although Miles’ coach Cheryl Reeve doesn’t think there’s a shift away from the dominant forwards like Collier, Stewart and Wilson. That trio has still a bunch of years ahead of them.
In her words this is just “the cyclical nature” of guard play in the league. She acknowledged the years she coached Team USA in years when there weren’t the clearest successors for Taurasi and Sue Bird.
“I don’t think there’s any shifting,” Reeve said earlier this week. “I think there’s just the cyclical nature of the guard play that we haven’t had in terms of the lead guard position. USA Basketball went through a void. It was when I had the team…and there wasn’t quite that next sort of in waiting, and so a little bit more, as all of us have gone through what we call stopgaps. It’s not your permanent solution, and now there’s these high-level guards that are permanent solutions, and there’s more of them.”
Seattle Storm veteran center Stefanie Dolson, who has played against both the group of elite forwards and now this young group of guards, opined that this evolution could correspond to the WNBA’s own version of the NBA’s well-documented spaced out era.
“Maybe the way that Steph Curry changed the NBA,” she told NBC Sports. “I do think it is maybe changing the way that the game is played, where it was used to be geared more towards the post, where now it’s geared more towards the guards and like playing pick-and-roll, playing off of the guard, and relying a little bit more on them to to make plays and everything.”
While it’s more subjective whether or not Clark, Bueckers and Miles are each their teams’ best player, their respective impacts on their teams have been vast.
The list that just keeps on growing 📈
— WNBA (@WNBA) August 8, 2026
Olivia Miles reached 25+ PTS and 5+ AST for the fifth time this season, which ties Arike Ogunbowale for the second-most such performances by a rookie all-time!
Additionally, with her buzzer-beater three-pointer to end the 1Q, she reached… pic.twitter.com/2eXmz2qNub
Clark, drafted No.1 overall in 2024, is the lead guard at the head of the snake of the league’s best offense, and a historic one that only in recent years has been rivaled by the 2023 championship winning Las Vegas Aces. The Fever’s offensive rating is 114.6 this season while the Aces maintained a 113 offensive rating by the time the 2023 regular season concluded.
Clark is currently second in the league in average assists (8.1), fifth in points per game (21.6) and tied for fifth in average three-pointers made (2.7).
Besides her statistical outputs, Clark has become a cultural phenomenon for better or for worse. Her logo threes in transition and tunnel vision captivated audiences when she was in college at Iowa and because of the institutional changes at the WNBA, her star has continued to stay bright. But the downside to this of course is the very fact that everything she says and does is under extreme surveillance in ways that WNBA players didn’t often previously experience.
Her head coach, former WNBA player Stephanie White, reflected upon these very different circumstances for Clark earlier this season after video clip of White and Clark having a spirited discussion during a game blew up on social media.
“This is not new,” White said about the moment when she and Clark got heated. “This is not a new thing. It’s just new because everything she does gets clicks. That’s how everybody makes money. So it’s not a new thing. When there is player confrontation/ tension/ coaching ten years ago when I was doing this…it wasn’t on social media.”
This is the result of so much more exposure that men’s sports took for granted with so much more built in television coverage. These more dramatic storylines often happen in men’s basketball and are typically accepted for what they are rather than blown up.
Shifting to 2025’s No.1 pick in Bueckers, she might be the most versatile player of the trio. She too is a lead guard, but she can score comfortably and efficiently at three levels while also defending multiple positions at a high level. She can guard point guards and shooting guards because of her athleticism but also can be moved to the wing and can use her length to hop into passing lanes as a defensive play maker.
Bueckers is statistically a star that makes all around her on the floor better, and what I mean by that is the very fact that the Dallas Wings’ net rating is 5.51 points higher with her on the floor rather than her off of it.
Bueckers is the third most efficient guard who averages over 30 minutes a game across the league with a 50.6 field goal percentage overall. She’s seventh league wide in scoring, averaging exactly 20 points per game along with 10th overall in average assists with 5.7. Earlier this season she became the fastest player in league history to get to 1,000 points and 250 assists.
But besides the numerical impact, what jumps off the page (pun intended?) about Bueckers is her innate leadership. In an interview with ESPN’s Christine Williamson, Bueckers said that she fully “considers” herself “a vet now already.”
Her head coach Jose Fernandez has also made it a point to express to media members the high level of professionalism that Bueckers plays with only in her second year as a pro.
“[Bueckers] cares about team success,” he said following the Wings’ overtime loss to the Liberty on June 20. “[Bueckers] cares about winning and leading. With her being out she took it [the loss] as bad as a coach would or one of her teammates would.”
Like Clark, Bueckers has brought a whole new fan base and fanfare to Dallas that hasn’t really existed since the franchise moved from Tulsa 2015. But the difference here is the instant leadership that previous Wings teams didn’t really have prior to her arrival. Indiana had probably the greatest two-way player ever in Tamika Catchings during the early 2000s through the mid 2010s.
Speaking of legacy, the Minnesota Lynx have legacy in spades. The Lynx had the second dynasty in league history that produced hall of farmers including Maya Moore, Sylvia Fowles, Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus and future hall of famer presumably in Rebekkah Brunson.
So what exactly does Minnesota’s Miles bring besides her 20 points, 4.8 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game? The presumptive rookie of the year and 2026 No.2 overall pick brings a razzle-dazzle, jaw dropping style of play and pace that the Lynx haven’t either had in a while during the dynasty days or possibly even ever in franchise history.
Sure the Lynx had Whalen who shares many of what Miles does well in their ability to read the floor and penetrate as a lead guard. But Miles is much more creative and is a respectable shooter. (She’s shooting 38.8 percent from three on 3.9 attempts per game.) Miles consistently places between-the-legs passes, no-look passes and high-velocity bullet passes that move quicker than the opposing defense can possibly read.
Reeve didn’t disagree when it came to explaining how Miles plays the game. She described how there was a curiosity at first about what Miles could be and a “buzz” around the city and in the Target Center compound.
“Then quickly the buzz became this spectacle,” she said pregame on August 6. “Minnesota Miles right away, that sort of thing, and I just think that people enjoy watching her play. I get messages all the time from people I haven’t heard from in a long time, telling me how much they just love watching her play.”
The backcourt of dreams ☁️
— WNBA (@WNBA) August 8, 2026
Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark handled their business in the @IndianaFever's win over Chicago. They both scored 25+ PTS for the 8th time which tied for the 2nd-most by a duo in WNBA history!
Mitchell: 27 PTS | 5 REB | 3 3PM | 2 AST | 2 STL
⭐️… pic.twitter.com/ceLocQwzUt
That similar reception also exists for players like Clark and Bueckers as this trio represents an era where more of the general public is locked into their play than ever. This shift comes from the rise in accessibility to their games when they were in college in addition to Name Image and Likeness (NIL) legislation elevating women athletes to audiences that just weren’t previously able to find them.
But while the sentiment around the league is that these guards and their impact is here to stay, that doesn’t mean that they’ve simply taken the mantle of the league away from players like Wilson, Stewart and Collier.
“We’ve seen dominant guards, we’ve seen dominant bigs in the same eras, in different eras,” Seattle Storm head coach Raman said. “I think if you have the best player on the floor in any given night, you’re giving yourself a good chance to be successful. And if that happens to be your center, great. And if that’s the person with the ball in their hands, point guard, I think just the talent is just tremendous in this league. I think it’s hard to really say which one it is right now. I wouldn’t really call it a trend. I think that there’s such a great balance between the front court and the backcourt.”
That might be the beauty of the WNBA’s golden age in the 2020s, which is that the scales now have been balanced. This is an era that will be defined not only by these NIL era Gen Z guards whose impact on and off the court has been profound but also by the front court zillenials in Collier, Stewart and Wilson whose prolonged dominance and versatility ought not be taken for granted.
