Minnesota Lynx guard Olivia Miles, the unanimous 2026 WNBA Rookie of the Year, gave her view of the discourse surrounding the league in an interview with "The Old Man and the Three" podcast.
Miles came down in favor of the attention, though she floated a little more focus on basketball.
"It is good for our game to have discourse, to have people care and talking about it. Some of the topics get dicey, and that's maybe what I would change. Maybe we focus a little more on basketball and less on the external stuff," Miles said .
The Lynx guard put a "maybe" on both the change and the shift toward basketball, and she kept her answer general. She did not name a topic, player, or incident in those remarks, or spell out what she meant by "the external stuff," but it's not hard to guess for anyone who has followed the WNBA narratives.
"It's all growing our game one way or another," the No. 2 overall pick in the 2026 draft said as she weighed the good of that attention against the bad.
Then, she turned to why the attention is worth having anyway, even with the parts she would rather see less of.
"But even so, having people talk and pay attention is what we ask for, right? We can't ask for all the good and have no bad as well," she said.
Miles then tied the two sides together, saying, "There's a balance there, and there's meaning in those conversations."
Miles followed Caitlin Clark in 2024 and Paige Bueckers in 2025 as the winner of the Rookie of the Year award.
Miles averaged 19.8 points, 6.0 assists, 4.7 rebounds, and 1.3 steals in 31.0 minutes while shooting 49.2% from the field, 38.8% from 3-point range and 87.0% from the free-throw line. She ranked eighth in the league in scoring, seventh in assists per game, and ninth in both total points and total assists.
Her 790 points broke Clark's rookie record of 769 from 2024. Her 239 assists ranked second among rookies in league history behind Clark's 337, and she set Lynx rookie records for points, assists, 3-pointers and minutes.
Among rookies, she finished first in total points, total assists, field goals made, defensive rebounds, and efficiency, at 21.4. Bueckers in 2025 is the only other rookie in league history to average at least 15 points and 5 assists while shooting 45% or better from the field.
Minnesota finished 33-11, first in the Western Conference, and earned the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. Its season ended in the first round with an 87-71 loss at the New York Liberty on Sept. 29.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network .
