Sydney Taylor wasn’t supposed to be a part of the conversation.
Amid a 2026 WNBA season where No. 2 pick and unanimous rookie of the year Olivia Miles dominated the court, No. 1 Azzi Fudd dominated the All-Star three-point contest, and No. 8 Flau’jae Johnson broke the Storm’s franchise record for most points in a rookie season, it was hard to stand out.
An undrafted rookie from Long Island, New York, entered the league with no guarantees after spending two years playing overseas. Sydney Taylor finished with the 14th-most minutes played in the 2026 rookie class, yet still led it in three-pointers. A volume no rookie in WNBA history has ever shot at.
Taylor displayed starter results on reserve minutes. In 37 games this season, she scored 504 points in 762 minutes, averaging 13.6 points per game. Extrapolated to per 36, she would be averaging 23.8 in a starter’s role.
What truly separates Taylor from the rest of her class is her three-point volume, a rate the WNBA has never seen from a first-year player, let alone an undrafted rookie. 3.35 made threes per 36 minutes is first among all first-year seasons since 1997, even ahead of Caitlin Clark’s 2024 and Kelsey Mitchell's 2018 rookie seasons. More impressively, her attempt rate from three, 10.54 per 36 minutes, led the entire league, passing players such as Marina Mabrey and Marine Johannes.
| # | Player | threes attempted per36 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sydney Taylor | 10.54 |
| 2 | Marina Mabrey | 10.42 |
| 3 | Marine Johannes | 9.86 |
| 4 | Janelle Salaun | 9.68 |
| 5 | Rhyne Howard | 9.22 |
| 6 | Caitlin Clark | 9.14 |
| 7 | Rachel Banham | 9.08 |
| 8 | Bridget Carleton | 8.80 |
| 9 | Kia Nurse | 8.75 |
| 10 | Kayla McBride | 7.83 |
Methodology
Frozen rows from a deep-dig claim verified server-side on 2026-10-05. The SQL ran read-only in the dig sandbox against the canonical corpus and is recorded for review; it is never re-executed. SELECT p.canonical_name AS player, round(sum(s.fg3a)*36.0/sum(s.minutes),2) AS threes_attempted_per36 FROM player_game_stats s JOIN players p USING(player_id) WHERE s.season=2026 AND s.season_type='regular-season' GROUP BY 1 HAVING sum(s.minutes)>=500 ORDER BY threes_attempted_per36 DESC LIMIT 10
23.8 points per 36 minutes in her first-year season sits third all-time behind the four-time MVP A'ja Wilson (2018) and Seimone Augustus (2006), and half a point ahead of Olivia Miles in her own class. Between her points and three-point attempts per 36 minutes, Taylor sets her own bar. Only Diana Taurasi's 2020 season clears both, in 30 years of league data.
Despite limited minutes, Taylor exploded in her short time on the court. She had three games with 25+ points in 25 minutes or fewer. No other first-year player has ever had more than one game with this stature. On June 11th against the Indiana Fever, Taylor scored 30 points in 21 minutes, the second-fewest minutes in any 30-point game in WNBA history. Then, on June 26th against the Portland Fire, after playing just 23 minutes, Taylor scored 29 points, including going 6-of-7 from downtown.
This success did not begin from day one. In May, Taylor was averaging 14 minutes and 9.2 points per game. By July, she was peaking with 25.8 and 17.3. The highlight of Taylor's season, however, came from two games in August. On August 1st, against the Las Vegas Aces, she cashed a game-winning three with 0.9 seconds left on the clock. Just 20 days later, playing the Golden State Valkyries, Taylor did it again, with 0.6 seconds remaining, becoming the first rookie in league history with multiple game-winners with five seconds or fewer remaining.
While high volume became the most impressive aspect of her gameplay, one area where Taylor will need to improve is her efficiency. With 31.8% from three on 223 attempts, she is sixth in the league in per-36 scoring. However, with a true shooting percentage of .542, Taylor is the least efficient shooter of that top six and slightly below the guard average of .557.
Entering year two, eyes will be on the promise of her efficiency. Since she is willing to take volume shots, the ability to do it productively should follow shortly thereafter. The confidence is already there.
There is no reason to doubt Taylor's capacity to sharpen her efficiency. After all, if her past is any indication, she’s just getting started.