Dominique Malonga’s second season has turned her into the clearest bright spot in a difficult Seattle Storm campaign, and the 20-year-old center made that leap impossible to ignore when she finished the All-Star Game in Chicago with 12 points and 13 rebounds.
That performance came after Seattle selected Malonga with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2025 WNBA draft, and it followed a run of games that showed why the Storm have started treating her as part of the franchise’s core. She is averaging 17.2 points, nine rebounds and 1.7 assists per game, numbers that would stand out on a contender and matter even more on a team working through growing pains.
The reason people are searching her name now is simple: Malonga has gone from a promising draft pick to an All-Star at 20, and she has done it while Seattle keeps giving young players real minutes to see who can grow with her. On Aug. 5, she scored 31 points and grabbed 10 rebounds against the New York Liberty. Five days later, she had 26 points and 10 rebounds against the Chicago Sky. Then, on Aug. 16, she posted 19 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks against Chicago.
Those numbers help explain why Malonga was chosen as a reserve for the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game and why her first-half dunk in Chicago drew attention beyond Seattle. She became the fifth player to dunk in a WNBA All-Star Game and the first to do it since Sylvia Fowles in 2022, a reminder that her game already stretches past what many rookies and second-year players can offer. For a franchise looking for answers, that kind of rise is not abstract. It is the most concrete piece of its future.
Still, the Storm’s season has not suddenly turned. Their loss total keeps climbing, and the games have often been close enough to make the frustration sharper rather than easier to take. Seattle fell 84-82 to the Portland Fire on Aug. 14, then lost 82-80 to Chicago two days later, results that show a team good enough to stay in fights but not yet steady enough to finish them. That is the part of the season that complicates the optimism around Malonga: the Storm are learning who they have, but they are also learning how much work remains.
Seattle has used this stretch to evaluate which players could develop alongside Malonga in the years ahead, and that is where the story now lives. The Storm and the have young players with a real runway, and fans have kept showing up through the losses because they can see the outline of something better. Malonga is already at the center of it. The unanswered question is no longer whether she belongs in the future. It is how many of the players around her can grow fast enough to make that future a winning one.
Natisha Hiedeman and Awa Fam mark different paths into the Storm's future, but Malonga has become the one player around whom every other decision now seems to orbit.
