The Greatest Women’s Basketball Performances Of All Time

This station is portion of a larger database looking astatine immoderate of nan apical individual performances successful each of sports history. Check retired nan afloat database here.

When two-way awesome Shohei Ohtani turned his slugging slump into nan top crippled successful shot history successful Game 4 of nan National League Championship Series, it started a chat successful nan Sports Illustrated newsroom: What are immoderate of nan different apical individual performances successful sports? And really do they comparison to Ohtani’s 10 strikeouts and 3 location runs?

Here are our picks for nan WNBA and women’s assemblage hoops.

There are (just a few) different players who person dropped 40 points successful nan WNBA playoffs. But location are nary who person done it to lead their squad to triumph successful specified a adjacent game, while besides making an effect connected truthful galore different areas of nan floor, and while many times coming up truthful large down nan stretch. The Lynx’s 72–71 triumph complete nan Mercury hinged wholly connected Moore, who besides had 8 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals to nonstop Minnesota to nan Finals. In a 4th fourth that had 5 ties and six lead changes, Moore personally tied it doubly and provided each 3 leads for nan Lynx, notably engineering nan captious last 1 pinch a bargain successful nan closing seconds.

Greater than Ohtani? Not quite. Moore surely had nan separator successful position of clutchness. But Ohtani had a greater wide impact.

NCAA: Sheryl Swoopes’s 47-point nationalist championship

Sheryl Swoopes’s 47 points stay arsenic nan top-scoring individual crippled successful women’s Final Four history. / Elise Amendola/AP

While location are immoderate compelling possibilities here—Caitlin Clark’s 41-point triple-double successful nan 2023 Elite Eight surely stands retired among caller performances, and Candace Parker dragging Tennessee to nan 2008 Final Four pinch a dislocated enarthrosis has ever been a favorite, too—it’s champion not to overcomplicate this. There’s a logic that Sheryl Swoopes’s 47 points successful nan 1993 nationalist title traditionally gets this nod. No 1 has ever travel up bigger successful a title game. Swoopes was a virtually unstoppable scoring threat successful nan lane, down nan arc and astatine nan line, which is to say, everywhere. It meant that she brought Texas Tech its first and only title pinch an 84–82 triumph complete Ohio State. 

Greater than Ohtani? No. Swoopes’s capacity gets a bump for coming successful a title game. But a scoring grounds cannot rather lucifer nan all-around quality of two-way greatness.

Is location an all-time awesome NFL feat that tops Ohtani, aliases does a definite Olympian’s capacity separator nan Dodgers star? For much sermon connected nan “greater than Ohtani” debate, click here.

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