My Frustrating Start
Alright folks, today got me diving deep into WNBA history. Wanted a simple thing, honestly: find every single player who ever won Player of the Month. Sounds easy, right? Yeah, totally wasn’t.
First stop? The “official” WNBA website archives. Big mistake. Felt like walking into a maze built in the 90s and nobody updated the map. Clicked around forever, got bounced between seasons and news articles. Seriously? Couldn’t just list ’em all cleanly? Clicked a link for 2023 awards, ended up staring at 2018’s schedule. Felt like banging my head on the keyboard.
The Grind Begins
Okay, deep breath. Plan B: brute force it. Figured I’d gotta piece it together season by season, month by month. Started pulling up old news releases. Typed stuff like “WNBA June 2010 Player of Month” into search engines, hoping something useful popped up.
Man, this took ages. Found articles, but they weren’t consistent. Sometimes just mentioned the winner in a sentence buried deep. Other times, the links were dead. Hit a wall around 2005 – stuff got super fuzzy online. Dug into old forums and fan sites – felt like internet archaeology. Found whispers, needed confirmation.
Got paranoid about messing up. Started building a massive spreadsheet:
- Season (like 2015, 2008…)
- Month (May, June, July, August)
- Player Name
- Team (cause players move!)
- Source Link (for my sanity, to double-check later)
Double, triple-checked names. Spotted weird stuff – sometimes a player won for a team they barely played for that season? Had to cross-reference stats on different parts of the internet. Was super tedious. Kept finding conflicts between sources and had to dig even deeper to figure out the truth.
Finally… Victory!
After what felt like digging ditches with a spoon, I finally had it. A complete list, from the very first awards back when dinosaurs roamed… I mean, in 1999… right up to last month. Every conference winner, every month.
Here’s the big takeaways:
- Legends Rule: Names like Lisa Leslie, Lauren Jackson, Cynthia Cooper – they show up a lot. No surprise there.
- Modern Superstars Shine: A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart? Yeah, they’re collecting these like candy recently.
- Fun Finds: Found some players who absolutely crushed one random month but you don’t hear their name constantly. Cool to rediscover them.
So yeah, my simple quest turned into a full-on research project. Got lost, got frustrated, almost gave up. But pushing through felt amazing. Now I got this definitive guide, something actually useful for true WNBA fans. Sharing it feels awesome!
