Seattle Storm 2025 Season Grades: Ezi Magbegor
The 2025 WNBA season is over. With a pending agreement on what will be a transformative collective bargaining agreement between the players and league, this offseason will bring sweeping change prior to the 2026 campaign.
But before all that, there’s still plenty to recap on last season.
The Seattle Storm finished the regular season with a 23-21 record and lost to the would-be WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces in the first round of the playoffs. Seattle has just four players under contract for next season, including rookie phenom Dominique Malonga.
With all that in mind, The Emerald City Spectrum will be dishing out grades for each player who stepped on the court for the Storm in 2025 on offense, defense and overall value.
Posting arguably the worst statistical season of her career offensively after an impressive two-season stretch from 2023-24, center Ezi Magbegor was underwhelming in 2025 — even with her dominant defensive presence.
Road to 2025 Season
Magbegor was the 12th pick in the 2019 draft by the Storm, but didn’t join the team until 2020. She became a full-time starter in 2023 before making the All-Defensive First Team in 2024 and finishing third in Defensive Player of the Year voting, emerging as one of the league’s best defenders.
Offense
Known primarily for her defense, Magbegor averaged double-digit points in 2023 and 2024 — posting a career-high 13.8 points in the former season. She was seemingly developing her offensive game and moving towards becoming a complete center.
However, in 2025, she posted career lows in field goal percentage (49.3) and free throw percentage (68.7) and averaged just 8.0 points per game, her lowest figure since 2021.
On a per-36-minute basis, Magbegor’s projected 10.6 points per game would be another career low. With the emergence of rookie Dominique Malonga, Magbegor played just 27.3 minutes per game — her least since 2022.
Former Storm head coach knew that Magbegor wasn’t playing well on offense, and her minutes were throttled as Malonga emerged. She did add 2.1 assists per game, which was a solid figure. Magbegor did distribute when she wasn’t consistently getting her shot off.
The system wasn’t a good fit for Magbegor. She frequently ended up on the perimeter as a result of the offense, when she should be camped near the rim. That hindered her production.
Grade: C-
Reasoning: While the scheme didn’t do her any favors, Magbegor simply didn’t assert herself inside to the point where she became a legitimate threat. There would be games where she’d score six points in the first few minutes of a game, then disappear for the remainder of the contest.
Magbegor didn’t log a single game with 20 or more points after having five the previous two seasons. She had 59 games with 10 or more points in those seasons, but had just 13 in 2025. The offensive talent around her and the scheme did Magbegor no favors, but she also didn’t help herself.
Defense
Statistically, Magbegor was still excellent as a rim protector, at least when she was near the rim.
Magbegor tied her career high of 2.2 blocks per game and earned her third All-Defensive Second Team nod. Her steals numbers did drop to just 0.7 per game, however, after posting 1.1 in 2023 and 2024.
Seattle’s interior defense was overall poor. That, again, was largely due to a scheme that relied on aggressive switching that often put Magbegor on the perimeter, instead of inside, where she could contest shots at the rim.
The Storm gave up 38.2 points per game in the paint, second most in the WNBA. That’s more on coaching than it is on Magbegor, but she could have been more physical on the interior. She is great at blocking shots, but she’s not great at being an immovable force on the inside.
Magbegor has to be better as a rebounder. Her 6.2 total rebounds per game were 18th in the league, and she was outperformed in that area by Malonga and Nneka Ogwumike. As the big body inside, that’s where you want your star center to excel. Seattle was the worst rebounding team in the league at just 30.9 per game.
Grade: B+
Reasoning: Overall, Magbegor was the Storm’s second-best defender behind Gabby Williams, who led the league in steals. She remains an excellent interior protector but needs to get more physical. That translates to her lack of rebounds as well, as she doesn’t compete for loose balls consistently and effectively.
The lack of rebounding hampers her grade here. That’s the difference between an A and a high B. There is a ton of value in being a lockdown rim protector and rebounder. But when one of those lacks, the player’s value drops significantly. That’s what happened with Magbegor this season.
Overall value
Combining all of these factors, Magbegor was outshone by Malonga later in the season. That’s why Malonga continued to play more and more critical minutes down the stretch, especially as she showed she could defend the league’s best players like A’ja Wilson.
If Magbegor took her impressive interior defense and combined it with 10 rebounds per game, we’d be discussing her as one of the WNBA’s top centers even without the offensive presence. Instead, she’s essentially a one-trick pony as a shot blocker.
That’s still valuable when combined with other players, but she isn’t a player you would build a team around. She hasn’t quite reached that level of consistency, and she still has room to grow into a complete player.
Grade: C+
Reasoning: Magbegor played big minutes for the Storm this season and has been a vital piece of a mid-tier team over the last few seasons. She’s a good player, but is replaceable. With Malonga emerging and Magbegor being a free agent, it wouldn’t be surprising to see her on a different team for the first time in her career next season.
