The No. 7 overall pick finished 12th overall and she wasn’t the only first-year standout listed. Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark was fourth in voting and even collected six votes for third place.
The Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson was the unanimous winner with 67 first-place votes.
By any objective measure, the Sky forward exceeded expectations. She averaged 13.6 points and a league-leading 13.1 rebounds in 34 appearances, and she would’ve held on to the single-season rebounding record if it weren’t for a wrist injury that sidelined her for Chicago’s last six games.
Reese also averaged double-double in 15 consecutive games to set a new benchmark there.
There simply wasn’t a compelling case to put the 22-year-old in the MVP conversation, though, let alone listing her as high as fourth.
The Sky faded badly in the second half of the campaign and wound up with the third-worst record in the league (13-27). Building an MVP candidacy for any player on a lottery team is difficult.
With Reese, it’s even tricker to quantify her value to the Sky.
Her gaudy rebounding totals and WNBA-best 26 double-doubles certainly jump out, and Chicago was 21.8 points per 100 possessions better with her on the court, per WNBA.com.
But she shot just 39.1 percent from the field and averaged more turnovers (2.2) than assists (1.9). In addition, her 119 fouls committed were tied for the third-highest of any player, which offset some of her positive influence on defense.
At the end of the day, Reese getting a solitary fourth-place vote for MVP is basically meaningless. It didn’t influence the final outcome and most people only remember who won the award rather than the vote shares from a given year.
All this achieves is obscuring what the 22-year-old achieved and instead nitpicking what she didn’t do.
