Jonquel Jones put up 22 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists to win All-Star MVP this past weekend, and the box score is the least interesting part of it. That trophy made her the first player in WNBA history to hold every major individual MVP award the league gives out (regular-season, Finals, Commissioner’s Cup, All-Star), and almost nobody outside the arena seemed to notice.
Jones went for 22-13-8 with four threes for Team Spoon in a 129-122 win over Team Coop at the United Center, a stat line that would’ve been the headline in most weeks. Instead, it was a footnote to the larger fact, laid out plainly by CBS Sports: Jones is the only player who has ever done this.
It took five years to get here, not one. Regular-season MVP came in 2021, with the Connecticut Sun. Commissioner’s Cup MVP followed in 2023, after she’d landed with the New York Liberty. Finals MVP arrived in 2024, the year the Liberty finally broke through. All-Star MVP closed the set this weekend in Chicago.
Nobody else in WNBA history has all four.
That’s the part worth sitting with, because Jones isn’t some late-career sentimental pick. She’s in her fourth season with the Liberty, averaging 14.8 points, 9.2 rebounds and 2.5 assists a game heading into the break, and per Bleacher Report, she’s now the first player to post double-doubles in four different All-Star Games. Toss in Most Improved Player, Sixth Player of the Year, five All-WNBA nods, four All-Defensive selections and a championship ring, and you’ve got a résumé that reads like a Hall of Fame folder somebody left open by accident.
None of that is a knock on the players getting more attention. It’s a measure of the gap between decorated and discussed, and Jones sits at the widest point of it in the entire league.
I watch a lot of WNBA without rooting for anyone in particular. I keep half an eye on the Mercury out of Phoenix habit, and that’s about the extent of my bias. Even from that distance, the imbalance is obvious: Jones has been quietly excellent for half a decade while other players got the marquee and the merch.
Part of the gap is real, and it’s league-wide. The most complete team in the sport this year plays in the Bay and can’t buy a national storyline either — the best team nobody’s talking about is a whole separate conversation, but it’s the same conversation.
The award came with weight attached. Jones dedicated the trophy to her late aunt, telling the Las Vegas Sun, “My aunt meant a lot to me, she was one of the matriarchs in our family.” Her family had given her their blessing to be in Chicago and on the floor rather than home for the funeral arrangements.
WNBA’s own account ran the full number on her afterward:
https://x.com/WNBA/status/2081223901044981849
That leaves the rest of the WNBA season to explain how it missed this coming.
Four trophies, five years, one player. Everyone else is still working on three.
