WNBA Trivia Challenge: Alyssa Thomas does it again, charter flights, and expansion
Breaking down this season's WNBA action through a trivia lens
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also buy Her Hoop Stats gear, such as laptop stickers, mugs, and shirts!
Haven’t subscribed to the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter yet?
Welcome to the WNBA season’s first trivia challenge! We did this during the NCAA season, and readers seemed to enjoy it, or maybe they simply didn’t have the heart to tell me to stick to my day job (which, as you’ll read below, would have been a bit tricky). Regardless, we’re going to Electric Boogaloo this and bring the Her Hoop Stats Trivia Challenge back for the WNBA season.
I love trivia. After all, my day job involves producing content for a trivia company. If you still don’t believe me, just ask my parents. They’ll tell you that throughout my childhood I made them play Jeopardy! games I created on various road trips (That part about contacting them was for effect; please don’t actually contact them.). And of course, I love basketball. So, this weekly piece I’ve been tasked with compiling is a natural fit.
Some questions throughout this series will be of a WNBA 101 difficulty; others will be challenging even for longtime diehard fans. Whether you get 100% of the questions below correct or none of them, the goals here are to have fun and to learn something by sparking an interest in a topic. Perhaps you’ll want to learn more about Alyssa Thomas after hearing about her triple-doubles in Question 6 below, and then you’ll learn that she’s done this essentially without an outside shot and with torn labrums in her shoulders (Veteran fans – I know, I know. This story is effectively the free space on a broadcaster bingo card, but it’s still amazing.).
I sincerely hope you enjoy this, and feel free to post in the comments below about how you did, thoughts on any of the questions, or topics you’d like to see in the future. And lastly, Substack doesn’t have the functionality to display the correct answer after you respond (the checkmark simply denotes which option you chose), so you’ll have to scroll to the bottom to discover the correct answers. Good luck!
Question 1. At long last, we have league expansion! In 2026, a team based in Toronto will begin WNBA play. Next season, the new Golden State franchise will take the court. It was recently announced that Golden State’s team name will be what?
Question 2. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority announced a deal on May 17 in which it will provide an annual sponsorship to each Las Vegas Aces player for this season and 2025. How much is the annual sponsorship for each player?
Question 3. Earlier this season, DeWanna Bonner passed ex-wife Candice Dupree for No. 5 on the WNBA’s career scoring list. Who is the only other active player in the top five besides Diana Taurasi?
Question 4. The league began providing full-time charter flights for every team this season, committing $50 million over two years to provide a service players have long been clamoring for. Which major U.S. airline will charter the majority of these flights?
Question 5. The shapewear and clothing brand Skims unveiled a new campaign earlier this month that featured several WNBA players. What billionaire is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Skims?
Question 6. On opening night, Connecticut’s Alyssa Thomas recorded yet another triple-double. Thomas, who has by far the most triple-doubles of all-time in the WNBA, is responsible for what fraction of the triple-doubles in league history (including triple-doubles during playoff games)?
Question 7. Who has the only 40+ point game this season? It is the second career 40+ point game for the player in question, making her just the ninth player in league history with multiple such games over a WNBA career.
Question 8. This one’s pretty tough, a bit random, but still pretty interesting. It’s also an opportunity to plug Her Hoop Stats’ new assist network feature, so check that out (after you’ve attempted the question of course)!
Which assister/shooter duo has recorded the most field goals over the period 2018 to present? (Note: If Player A assisted 500 of Player B’s field goals, and Player B assisted 25 of Player A’s field goals, we are only concerned with the 500 field goals made by Player B for the purposes of this question and wouldn’t add the two numbers together).
Check below to see how you did! Hope you enjoyed this and that you come back next Wednesday for more WNBA trivia fun!
Answers
1. B - Valkyries - The Valkyries are the league’s first expansion team since the Atlanta Dream joined the WNBA in 2008. And for those not up on their Norse mythology and wondering who the heck a Valkyrie is, they were a host of fearless and unwavering warrior women in Norse mythology. Side note: If “Ride of the Valkyries” or wrestler Daniel Bryan’s remix “Flight of the Valkyries” isn’t part of Golden State’s pregame festivities, I’ll be sorely disappointed.
2. B - $100,000 - This is a big deal for multiple reasons. First, the majority of the players on the Aces’ roster are not making more than this in base salary this season. Second, while the payments do not directly violate league rules because the deals were negotiated directly with players’ agents and not with the franchise, the WNBA is currently investigating whether these payments violate the spirit of the league’s hard salary cap.
3. A - Tina Charles - Below are the top five. No one’s catching Taurasi anytime soon – the difference between Taurasi and No. 2 on the list (Tina Thompson) is more than the difference between No. 2 and No. 31.
4. A - Delta - The rollout was gradual (e.g., some teams flew charter while others flew commercial), but the WNBA announced that all teams would be flying charter full-time effective May 21.
5. A - Kim Kardashian - As of July 2023, Skims is valued at over $4 billion.
6. C - 1/3 - Responsible for 12 of the 36 triple-doubles in league history, Thomas is in a league of her own. No. 2 on the list is Sabrina Ionescu with four such games.
7. B - Arike Ogunbowale - The Dallas guard, who currently leads the league in scoring with 28.8 points per game, accomplished the feat in her team’s 107-92 win over Phoenix on May 25. Breanna Stewart owns the record for most career 40+ point games with five (including playoff games).
8. D - Courtney Vandersloot/Allie Quigley - Why, it’s the Vanderquigs of course! Vandersloot assisted her wife on 254 field goals over this timeframe, representing over one-third (254 out of 734) of Quigley’s made field goals since 2018.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Got all of them right, but I totally guessed on Kim Kardashian.
I got 6/8. Missed the AT triple-double and shooter/assist questions.