Jamaican-American basketball star Olivia Miles has capped a record-breaking debut season with one of the WNBA’s top honours, being unanimously named the 2026 Kia WNBA Rookie of the Year.
The 23-year-old Minnesota Lynx guard received all 74 votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters, becoming the sixth player in Lynx history to win the award.
Miles, who was selected second overall by Minnesota in the 2026 WNBA Draft, quickly established herself as one of the league’s standout young players. She started all 40 games of her rookie season, averaging 19.8 points, 6.0 assists, 4.7 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game.
She also rewrote the WNBA record books, scoring 790 points to break Caitlin Clark’s previous record of 769 for the most points by a rookie in a single season. Her 22 games with at least 20 points also established a new rookie record, surpassing the 20 set by former Lynx star Seimone Augustus in 2006.
Miles led all WNBA rookies in points, scoring average, assists and assists per game, among several other categories. Her performances also helped Minnesota finish the regular season with a 33-11 record and secure the No. 1 seed in the WNBA Playoffs.
Praise for her Dad
Born in New Jersey in 2003, Miles is the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant father, whose influence has been a constant throughout her sporting journey. She has previously shared that she started out playing football because of him.
“My dad was an immigrant from Jamaica, and he played soccer. So I grew up playing soccer,” Miles told TCU Magazine in 2025.
Her father also played a major role when her attention shifted to basketball. In a video celebrating her Rookie of the Year win, Miles recalled the commitment it took to get her to the gym as a young player.
“My dad put a lot of miles on that car getting me to the gym, an hour each way,” she said, recalling that they travelled some 500 miles a week for five years.
Those journeys eventually took Miles from Blair Academy in New Jersey to Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and then TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, before she was selected second overall by the Minnesota Lynx in the 2026 WNBA Draft.
A Rookie Season to Remember
Miles’ impact was apparent throughout her debut season. She swept all four Kia WNBA Rookie of the Month awards during the regular season and was twice named Western Conference Player of the Week.
She also earned her first WNBA All-Star selection and was voted an All-Star starter, becoming only the 11th rookie in league history to earn a starting spot. Miles was the only rookie selected as an All-Star starter in 2026.
Those honours, along with the records she set throughout the season, made Miles one of the most decorated rookies of the year and ultimately earned her every vote for Rookie of the Year.
For Miles, however, the award appears to be another marker on a journey that is far from finished.
“Rookie of the Year? Check,” she says in the video celebrating the honour. “Still a lot of road left to cover.”
