Seattle Storm 2025 Season Grades: Skylar Diggins
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Earning the seventh All-Star nod of her 11-year career, Skylar Diggins was the facilitator of the Storm’s offense and a major fuel to their defense. Credit: John Mac [/caption]
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.
Earning the seventh All-Star nod of her 11-year career, Skylar Diggins was the facilitator of the Storm’s offense and a major fuel to their defense.
Road to 2025 season
Diggins joined the Storm in 2024 after three seasons with the Phoenix Mercury from 2020-22. She missed the 2023 season while on maternity leave, then joined Seattle to galvanize an already talented roster. She starred in the inaugural season of Unrivaled prior to the 2025 season.
Offense
Although she finished the season averaging 15.5 points, Diggins scored at least 20 points in 16 games. She poured in double figures in 27 of the team’s first 29 games.
The problem was that Diggins had just five 20-plus-point games over the team’s final 22 games. Diggins wasn’t nearly as consistent scoring the basketball in the latter half of the season, as Nneka Ogwumike picked up most of the burden on a nightly basis.
However, as her points average dropped in the back half, her assist totals remained. Diggins facilitated the offense well, giving opponents different looks between her, Gabby Williams and Erica Wheeler.
Diggins had fewer than five assists in just 11 games, posting a new Storm record with 258 assists in one season. She topped her previous single-season franchise record of 257 in 2024.
Additionally, Diggins scored a season-high 26 points in the Storm’s comeback win over the Las Vegas Aces in Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs. She scored 11 points in the fourth quarter alone to help fuel the season-saving win.
Grade: A-
Reasoning: The assist numbers can’t be ignored. Sue Bird only ever had a maximum of 34 games during her career to earn the records that Diggins has since broken, but the current Storm point guard has also had at least 36 more assists than Bird ever did in one season. Those figures are comparable. When Diggins was at her best, she was lethal from 3-point range and on the interior as a true point guard.
Defense
Diggins’ steals numbers dropped a bit from 2024 (1.2 steals per game from 1.7), but it was more about her tenacity on that end of the court — similar to Williams. The effort and willingness to put her body on the line anywhere on the hardwood stands out, especially in her age-34 season.
She was also a willing rebounder, pulling down 81 in 43 games played. The Storm’s perimeter defense was its strength, and Diggins was a major part in making that happen. Seattle acquired Brittney Sykes late in the season to add to that perimeter defense, not make up for the shortcomings of Diggins and Williams.
If Diggins wasn’t locking down opposing point guards, the Storm could’ve been much worse off than they ended up in 2025.
Grade: B+
Reasoning: For reasons already stated, Diggins was a major boost to the perimeter defense that ranked among the best in the league at shutting down opposing guards. That buoyed the lacking interior defense, propelling them to the 23 regular-season wins that the Storm did get.
Overall value
The Storm would’ve been a much different team without Diggins, even if she was somewhat inconsistent in the scoring margin. She and Wheeler were the fire on the roster, providing the energy that could turn games around. Diggins is an emotional basketball player who impacts the game beyond the box score.
Considering the Storm may opt for a much younger roster in 2025, Diggins may not return next season. However, her two seasons in Seattle already made her a player to remember, especially with the back-to-back single-season assist records.
Diggins played more than 30 minutes per game, and she was one of three players who reached that figure and were with the Storm all season (Ogwumike and Williams). That alone made her an extremely valuable asset.
Grade: A
Reasoning: Diggins was one of the core players for the 2024 and 2025 Storm rosters and was a major part of their success. Without a reliable point guard, this team may have even missed the playoffs this season.
