For dedicated WNBA fans, every morning begins with the same question: what did Olivia Miles do this time? A no-look pass through three defenders? A crossover that sends another grown woman staggering out of frame? Statue of Liberty layups launched from angles that flout Euclidean geometry? You just never know with this wonder woman. The rush she gives fans makes a double espresso feel like a nightcap.

No player in the WNBA has brought more joy to the season’s opening month than Miles, who has quickly emerged as one of the league’s most compelling talents. Fifteen games into her professional career, the 23-year-old North Jersey native has already established herself as the engine of the Minnesota Lynx offense, pacing the team in average scoring (19.0) and assists (5.7) while sinking more than half her shot attempts. In a 99-83 road win against a short-handed Los Angeles Sparks team on Wednesday night, Miles poured in a season-best 31 points on a blistering 80% percent shooting in just 26 minutes.

Miles’s splashy breakout hasn’t merely put her in the same must-see conversation as Caitlin Clark. It’s made her indispensable to a Lynx team who have been missing their best player, Napheesa Collier, since last September – and sit atop the league standings anyway. It’s made Cheryl Reeve look like a genius for selecting Miles with the second pick in this year’s draft. “I’m not gonna sit here and say that we knew from day one that she’d be a top-three player in the league,” the Minnesota coach said after another Miles masterclass against Portland. “But it’s like when we got Maya Moore – the perfect superstar, a humble superstar.”

There are worse compliments a rookie can receive than being compared to the greatest player in franchise history and, arguably, the best woman to ever lace ’em up. But whereas Moore entered the league with undeniable swagger and championship pedigree from near-perfect high school and college careers, Miles is less Wonder Woman than Diana Prince – the tweedy alter ego Lynda Carter made famous. At 5ft 10in, Miles is a mite small compared to the current crop of WNBA point guards. And yet she’s impossible to miss with her chunky goggles and luxuriant afro, looking for all the world like a time-traveling racquetball hustler. Lynx fans have taken to calling Miles “The Spectacle” – as much for style as substance.

Beneath that understated profile is a showwoman. Miles points to Moore and Luka Dončić as inspirations, and you can see it in her creativity, her rhythm, her sangfroid. You can tell she’s a student of the game by the influences she brings on to the court. She threads the needle in transition like Magic Johnson, slows the game down and finds cutters in the half court like Steve Nash. Her knack for using her body to protect her dribble and finish through contact against bigger defenders is downright Brunson-esque.

When Minnesota faced Dallas on the road last month and Miles thoroughly outplayed this year’s top pick, Azzi Fudd, in a narrow Lynx win to take a commanding lead in the rookie of the year race, the immediate discourse turned to Dallas’s obvious draft-day blunder. (Miles, for her part, called Fudd “a great player” who “fully deserved to go No 1.”)

“She just has the wiggle of a guy,” Indiana Fever standout Sophie Cunningham said in praise of Miles on her podcast. “Like, she is good, good-good. I know people think it’s weird when you compliment other people in our league because you have to play against them. But I’m also like: ‘Give this girl her flowers’. She is putting the whole league on notice right now.”

No one can say they didn’t see Diana Prince coming. A five-star high school prospect who also excelled on the soccer pitch, Miles chose Notre Dame over Stanford and Connecticut and led the Fighting Irish to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen three out of four years. In fact, Miles could have entered the WNBA draft in 2025 when she was already projected as a top-three pick. But the disappointment of falling well short in the Irish’s championship ambitions and the long grind back from a 2023 ACL injury left her second-guessing the move. Reflecting on her post-injury bounceback, she told Sue Bird, another of her idols: “I just didn’t feel like myself.”

It was only because of the current freewheeling, pay-for-play era of college sports that Miles was able to put off the pros. The new rules enabled a seamless transfer to TCU, the same program that had ended Notre Dame’s season in the 2025 Sweet Sixteen. She played immediately, posted career numbers, and led the Horned Frogs back to the 2026 Elite Eight – all while profiting from her name, image and likeness, and rekindling her passion for the game in a pro-style system that would prepare her for the next jump.

Completing a Notre Dame masters degree in nonprofit administration was another proud reward for staying in school. “Having that experience of being injured allowed me to regain my joy because now I know what it’s like to not have it,” she told Bird. “So I have no choice but to go out there and not take any moment for granted.”

To say it all worked out would be underselling her success. Had Miles entered the 2025 WNBA draft, she might have been lost in the shuffle behind top picks Paige Bueckers, French phenom Dominique Malonga and longtime Fighting Irish teammate Sonia Citron. What’s more, Miles would have also started out earning roughly $80,000 in the first year of her rookie contract.

But with the players’ union and league having agreed to a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement three weeks ahead of the 2026 draft, which left room for a 2027 schedule expansion to 50 games schedule that was officially announced on Wednesday, her timing proved perfect: Miles entered the league just as starting salaries for top picks surged to $500,000 a year, with the potential to triple on her next contract.

It’s a pay rise made possible by Collier, the Minnesota Lynx lynchpin and players’ union leader who helped launch the offseason league Unrivaled as leverage in collective bargaining talks. Collier was last seen on the court last September, when she injured both ankles in Game 3 of the WNBA semi-finals. Without their franchise cornerstone to open the 2026 season, the Lynx could have been vulnerable. But Miles has more than just held down the fort. She’s added another layer of firepower to go alongside All-Stars Kayla McBride and Courtney Williams and eased the urgency around Collier’s return.

Still, for all of Miles’s patent gifts, there remains plenty of room for growth. Her defensive focus can wander, and her emotions boil over at times. But with Reeve on the sideline and one of the league’s most veteran rosters surrounding the rookie, those feel more like maturity flaws than incorrigible limitations. Even with a limited sample size to judge from, the verdict on Miles is clear: the Lynx appear primed for another title march – and just two years after a controversial whistle cost them a fifth championship. If Miles had turned pro a year earlier, with the Lynx kicking off their draft with the 15th overall pick, this year’s dream start in Minnesota becomes ripe fodder for a fantasy basketball debate.

Collier has said she expects to be back “very soon” (read: after the late-July All-Star break in all likelihood), a timetable that has hoops fiends bursting with anticipation. The idea of the league’s most selfless star returning alongside its most creative rookie isn’t just tantalizing, after all. It’s another reason to get up in the morning.