Detroit Lakes, MN (KDLM) – Minnesota Lynx guard Olivia Miles is the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year, but there’s little time to celebrate: the Lynx face elimination tonight in New York.
Miles received all 74 votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters, making her the first unanimous winner since Aliyah Boston in 2023.
The No. 2 overall pick out of TCU averaged 19.8 points, six assists and 4.7 rebounds per game while leading the Lynx to the league’s best record at 33-11. Her 790 points broke Caitlin Clark’s 2024 rookie scoring record, and she was the only rookie named to this year’s All-Star Game.
Her season carried extra weight because star forward Napheesa Collier missed much of the year after offseason surgery on both ankles.
Miles is the sixth Lynx player to win the award, joining Betty Lennox (2000), Seimone Augustus (2006), Maya Moore (2011), Collier (2019) and Crystal Dangerfield (2020).
Despite that regular season success, the top-seeded Lynx trail the eighth-seeded New York Liberty in their best-of-three first-round series after losing Game One Sunday at Target Center. Game Two tips off at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, and a loss would end Minnesota’s season.
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