With the WNBA regular season set to resume after the FIBA World Cup break, the race for the championship and MVP resumes as well. But the Most Improved Player race will see two strong cases pitted against each other down the final stretch, as the Indiana Fever and Connecticut Sun battle it out for who deserves the honor.
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Sitting fifth in the WNBA standings at 26-14, the Fever are publicly throwing their weight behind Makayla Timpson for the honor. Indiana Fever recently took to X with a campaign video highlighting the 23-year-old forward’s progress.
“Makayla Timpson for Most Improved Player 🤩,” Indiana Fever wrote. “She is averaging career-highs of 5.5 PPG, 63.6 FG% & 4.9 RPG in her second season.”
Selected 19th overall by Indiana in the 2025 WNBA Draft, Timpson averaged only 7.1 minutes per game during her rookie regular season and saw that number dip to 6.4 minutes in the playoffs. But this season the 6-foot-2 forward has turned herself into a reliable part of Stephanie White’s rotation.
Timpson was moved into the Indiana Fever starting lineup in August, and the starting five featuring her has posted a +22.1 net rating across 129 minutes. In her last six games, she has scored in double figures in five of them.
Her athleticism and versatility have also given Indiana another dimension in the frontcourt. She has played at least 19 minutes in each of the Fever’s last 10 games, averaging the sixth-most minutes on the team. Fever head coach Stephanie White was all praise for Timpson in postgame media availability on August 2 after the Indiana Fever fell to the Minnesota Lynx 108-100.
“[Makayla Timpson’s] been huge for us. She brings something that we don’t have in terms of her defensive versatility at that post position, her ability to leap out of the gym. And she’s just grown every single game, and I’m really proud of her…She’s finding her spots. She doesn’t play outside of herself. She is a star in her role, and she’s just going to continue to get better.”
Timpson is averaging 5.5 points and 4.9 rebounds per game while shooting 63.6% from the field this season, a significant improvement from her rookie campaign, when she averaged 2.6 points, 1.8 rebounds, and shot 56.1% from the field. This development is precisely why the Indiana Fever now appear ready to make a case for their young forward in the Most Improved Player conversation.
But they are not the only ones making a push. The Connecticut Sun are also throwing their hat into the ring for Olivia Nelson-Ododa, a 26-year-old veteran, who has taken on a bigger role and produced career-best numbers in her fourth season with the Sun.
The former UConn standout is averaging 10.0 points, 5.9 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 0.8 steals per game while shooting 56.9% from the field. All four marks are her career best, as is her field-goal percentage. She has also become a more consistent offensive option for the Sun, averaging 21.4 minutes across 32 appearances this season.
Nelson-Ododa has shown just how impactful her growth can be in recent weeks. She posted back-to-back double-doubles against the New York Liberty and Los Angeles Sparks on August 15 and 18. Her status is currently OUT due to a right knee injury, but fans expect her to be back in action once the season kicks off again on September 17.
The Sun highlighted her development with a “BEHIND THE EXHIBIT” video on X, which offered a closer look at Nelson-Ododa’s growth behind the scenes.
So with both the Indiana Fever and Connecticut making their preferred candidates known, the Most Improved Player race is shaping up to be far from straightforward.
Still, the award is hardly a two-player race. Several other players have put together strong cases of their own, meaning the final stretch of the regular season could have a major say in who ultimately separates themselves from the pack. All that can be said for sure is that the race for Most Improved Player is only beginning to heat up.