South Carolina Basketball: Aliyah Boston is having one of the WNBA’s greatest rookie years of all-time
By Kevin Miller
Aliyah Boston is a rookie. That’s easy to forget considering just how dominant she has been in her first year in the WNBA.
Fans of women’s college basketball watched Boston dominate while playing for the South Carolina basketball program under the legendary Dawn Staley, but few believed she could translate that dominance to the next level so quickly.
In a league notorious for low shooting efficiency among young players, Boston began her career by becoming the first WNBA rookie ever to post games of double-digit scoring on 60% or better shooting in her first three games (she did so four times).
Boston has won the WNBA’s Rookie of the Month for two of her three professional months (and is a frontrunner to win it for August, too), and she was the Eastern Conference’s Player of the Week, regardless of age, during one week in June.
Boston has since gone on to become one of just five WNBA rookies (Aja Wilson, Candace Parker, Breanna Stewart, and Tamika Catchings are the other four) to ever score 450 points, secure 250 rebounds, and dish out 70 assists in a single season…oh, yeah, and she still has nine more games to add to those totals.
Realistically, she likely will become just the third-ever 500-300-100 rookie, joining Parker and Stewart as the only players to accomplish the feat.
Wilson, Parker, Stewart, and Catchings represent four of the top six rookie campaigns of all-time in terms of player efficiency rating (along with Elena Delle Donne and Nneka Ogwumike). Boston is all but guaranteed to knock Stewart from the 6th spot, and her current PER (24.6) has her positioned with the fourth-best mark of all-time, tied with Wilson.
Part of what makes Boston’s season so remarkable is the fact that she is accomplishing so much while playing for a bad team. Her efficiency numbers (especially on defense) are hurt by her team’s lack of success around her. She is a very good defender, but the metrics don’t always reflect that because of factors that are outside of her control.
Plus, if anyone watches her play, it is obvious that Boston faces an inordinate amount of double-teams and triple-teams when she touches the ball on offense. Even still, she is on pace to break the all-time rookie season field goal percentage record, and her 60.1% mark is better than the 59.9% career number posted by the league’s all-time leader Sylvia Fowles.
In short, Aliyah Boston is having one of the best rookie seasons ever, and she’s not done yet.