Flau’jae Johnson delivered the kind of performance that turns heads across the league, and the WNBA wasted no time recognizing it. The Seattle Storm rookie posted a career-high 28 points against the New York Liberty on Thursday, adding 9 rebounds, 3 steals, and 4 made three-pointers to power Seattle to a win. The league’s official account put the numbers out immediately.

Johnson’s 28 points were the highest single-game total by a Storm rookie since 2016. The performance carried added significance beyond the stat line. Seattle entered the game amidst an 11-game losing streak, and the win against New York snapped it.

The Storm led by as many as 16 points during the game, with Johnson converting 47.8% of her field goal attempts and making 4 of her three-point attempts for a 40% clip. The two assists she logged to complete her night reflected the all-around nature of what she brought. And Johnson’s response when asked about it afterward was measured in exactly the right way.

“I was like, ‘Damn,'” Johnson said, as per The Seattle Times. “Yeah, Shakespeare!”

Johnson is currently averaging 11.4 points, 4.9 rebounds, 2.7 assists, and 0.8 steals per game, as per ESPN. She ranks third on the team in scoring, only behind Natisha Hiedeman and Dominique Malonga and leads the squads in blocks. Her effective FG percentage of 40.9% and true shooting percentage of 46.9% give the Storm a reliable scoring option from the perimeter.

Johnson shares 19.6% of all field goals scored by the Storm and has a 24.1% usage rate. All of this shows how central she has become to Seattle’s offensive structure. Taken together, these numbers describe a rookie carrying the weight of a rotation-piece far ahead of schedule.

When defensive numbers are added, Seattle’s reliance on Johnson becomes even more clear. Perhaps, Seattle’s dependence on Johnson defensively runs deeper than her scoring averages suggest.

Seattle Is Defensively Dependent On Johnson

On the defensive side, the numbers make the dependency specific. Johnson provides 18% of the team’s steals, 28.8% of its blocks, 24.6% of its defensive rebounds, and 19.4% of its offensive rebounds.

She also accounts for 15.6% of the team’s assists. The On-Court and Off-Court metrics put the sharpest point on it, wherein Johnson ranks third in the On-Court rebounding category at 22.1. That figures falls to 9.4 when she comes off the floor. That’s the kind of defensive impact that Seattle has concentrated on in a single first-year player.

For a Storm team currently at 18-5 and sitting last in the Western Conference, the picture that emerges is one of a promising rebuild undercut by the scale of what is being asked of Johnson right now. Injuries and roster instability have shaped where Seattle finds itself. And a playoff run from this position is very much unlikely. However, this career night against Liberty showed a glimpse of how Johnson can become once the team around her is built to match her prowess.