Seattle Storm 2025 Season Grades: Zia Cooke
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.
After making the opening day roster, Zia Cooke was traded midseason as part of the Brittney Sykes trade. She later returned to the Storm, finishing the season with them, but wasn’t a big factor.
Road to 2025 Season
Cooke was the 10th overall pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft, spending her first two seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks. She never solidified a steady role and was waived by the Sparks in February. Cooke signed with the Storm 11 days later and made the initial roster after training camp.
Offense
Playing in 26 games across her two stints with the Storm in 2025, Cooke averaged 3.5 points and 0.5 assists in 10 minutes per game. Cooked converted just 35.7 percent but did make nearly 40 percent of her 3-point attempts.
Lack of efficiency has been Cooke’s biggest issue through three WNBA seasons. She averaged under 29 percent from the field as a rookie and has only seen moderate increases each season in her shooting percentage. Cooke is clearly a talented player, but she hasn’t yet put together all the tools.
Cooke scored a season-high 10 points against the Golden State Valkyries on June 29, but it took her 13 shots to accumulate those points. Her most efficient performance was an 8-point game against the Connecticut Sun on July 28, converting 3 of 4 shots (with a pair of threes).
Grade: C-
Reasoning: Scoring and distributing are supposed to be Cooke’s strong suits, but she hasn’t turned the corner yet at the professional level. There’s still a lot of development needed in her game to allow her to create her own shot consistently and be a meaningful rotational player.
Defense
Cooke wasn’t a difference maker on the boards or defensively. It’s a consistent theme, but the Storm originally dealt her in the Sykes trade for a reason. Seattle was trying to get better at defending the perimeter, as that was a weakness of the team. Aside from Skylar Diggins and Erica Wheeler, the Storm had little premium perimeter depth.
Upon returning to the Storm, Cooke rarely played. That was a product of Sykes being on the court and Cooke not impressing in that area. She averaged 0.5 rebounds and 0.4 steals on the season.
Grade: D-
Reasoning: In addition to her lacking offensive efficiency, Cooke simply hasn’t shown that she can be a reliable perimeter defender, especially against the best guards in the league. She will need to improve her consistency to stick even as a rotational bench player. The Storm were better with Sykes on the floor than with Cooke, and that reflected in her initial trade and subsequent lack of playing time.
Overall value
Though she showed some promise and had some flashy moments, Cooke wasn’t a big factor in the rotation — much like the team’s other bench guards, Tiffany Mitchell and Lexie Brown.
Former Storm head coach Noelle Quinn ran a tight rotation, and Cooke didn’t do enough to make herself invaluable. She did play a few more minutes than in 2024 with the Sparks, but Seattle wasn’t the stop that was going to revive her career with the ample guard talent on the roster.
Grade: D
Reasoning: If Cooke becomes more consistent offensively and improves her defensive skills on the perimeter, she could find a consistent role in the WNBA. However, three seasons in, that just hasn’t happened yet.
As a reserved free agent, the Storm will have a chance to get her back for 2026. With a youth movement, it’s possible that it’s an attractive option for Seattle. She will have to grow and continue to play with confidence to begin making a difference on a game-to-game basis.
