Elena Delle Donne, Chamique Holdsclaw, Emma Meesseman and Alana Beard make the list.
Thank you for your responses to this week’s SB Nation Washington Mystics Reacts survey. In this part, we will discuss the players who made “Mount Rushmore.” Tomorrow, I will share the fan confidence metrics.
During the summer, we have a lot of NBA evergreen material, but sometimes it’s a good time to have some WNBA evergreen material, even while the regular season is moving on. Earlier today, I shared our Washington Wizards Mount Rushmore, so this is the Mystics version.
I had 51 votes. While it was a smaller sample size than the Wizards Mount Rushmore, it was clear who the first three players to make Mount Rushmore are. And all three play the same position of power forward:
- Elena Delle Donne (51 votes) — Delle Donne won the 2019 WNBA MVP award while in Washington and led the Mystics to three consecutive de-facto Eastern Conference championships because they went further than any other Eastern team. Conference playoffs were abolished in 2016. And of course, the Mystics won the 2019 WNBA championship. She was a unanimous choice.
- Chamique Holdsclaw (45 votes) — She was the first franchise player for the Mystics after being the No. 1 pick in the 1999 WNBA Draft. She was a five time All-Star and was part of the first Mystics team to make the Eastern Conference Finals in 2002. Finally, Holdsclaw made two All-WNBA second team appearances during her tenure in Washington.
- Emma Meesseman (37 votes) — Meesseman is the face of the Mike Thibault Era of the franchise. She rose from a little-known second round pick in 2013, to a starting power forward the next year and an All-Star in 2015. In 2019, she was the WNBA Finals MVP when the Mystics won the championship. Without her, Washington wouldn’t have won the title.
After Meesseman there was a two-way tie for fourth place, where Alana Beard and the late Nikki McCray-Penson had 21 votes each. Mount Rushmore can only have four players so I had to unilaterally create a tiebreaker. It would be career win shares with the franchise. Given that Beard has 19.3 win shares while McCray-Penson has 7.4, Beard takes the last spot.
So, to make it official:
- Alana Beard (21 votes) — She was a four-time WNBA All-Star and four-time WNBA All Defense player during her time with the Mystics. She was sort of like Ariel Atkins before Ariel Atkins. And finally, Beard kept the Mystics competitive for most of the 2000s, especially after Holdsclaw fell out with the team in 2004. Without her, Washington would have been quite hard to watch.
Feel free to ask about which other Mystics players received votes for Mount Rushmore.