The numbers behind Jessica Shepard’s Most Improved award

The award followed a new role in Dallas

Jessica Shepard won the 2026 Kia WNBA Most Improved Player award in her first season with Dallas. She received 29 of 74 votes from a national panel of sportswriters and broadcasters. Shakira Austin finished second with 25 votes and Carla Leite was third with 11. The vote was close enough to show that the panel had more than one plausible candidate.

Shepard had played five seasons with Minnesota before signing with the Wings. In 2025 she averaged 8.0 points, 7.3 rebounds and 2.6 assists in 20.9 minutes. In 2026 she started all 42 Dallas games and averaged 14.5 points, 11.1 rebounds and 5.3 assists in 31.7 minutes. The move, role and workload are all part of the comparison.

The award also marked a career milestone beyond the Dallas move. The WNBA says Shepard was selected 16th in the 2019 draft, spent five seasons with Minnesota and earned her first All-Star selection in 2026, when she was voted a starter for the All-Star Game. That sequence places her new role beside a longer path: after years as a Lynx reserve, her first Dallas season brought a starting job and a league-wide individual honor.

Production rose along with her playing time

Shepard’s average minutes increased by 10.8 per game, from 20.9 to 31.7. Her points per game rose by 6.5, rebounds by 3.8 and assists by 2.7. The WNBA’s end-of-season lookahead noted that the increases in those per-game categories outpaced the increase in her playing time.

That distinction matters for a Most Improved discussion. More minutes create more chances to accumulate points, rebounds and assists. Per-game averages adjust for games and give a different view, but they still do not control for a player’s starting role, teammates, offensive system or opponents. Shepard improved across several categories while also moving from a reserve role in Minnesota to a full-time starter in Dallas.

The year-over-year changes were larger than the minutes increase in three key rates. Using the official averages, minutes rose about 52 percent, points about 81 percent, rebounds about 52 percent and assists about 104 percent. These are calculated comparisons, rounded to whole percentages. They clarify the league preview’s observation that her production grew faster than her playing time in scoring, rebounding and assists, while leaving the role change visible in the same comparison.

The assist increase changed how she contributed

Shepard’s assists rose from 2.6 per game to 5.3. That is a larger change than the points increase alone suggests. She became one of two players to average at least 14 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in a WNBA season; the other was Candace Parker in 2015, according to the league’s pre-award review.

The Dallas offense ranked first in the league in assists per game; that rate describes all five players and the team system. Shepard played every game, so her personal assist rate can be compared with the team average to estimate her share of credited assists. The ratio remains limited: a box score does not show which pass created an open shot or how often the offense depended on her.

That calculation puts about one of every four team assists in Shepard’s column. It distinguishes what she produced individually from how often the full Dallas lineup moved the ball. The same rates do not show who caught each pass, how much a pass improved the shot or what happened when she rested; lineup tracking would be needed for those questions.

Triple-doubles marked a major step

Shepard recorded six triple-doubles in 2026 after entering the season with one across her first five WNBA seasons and 125 games. The six tied for the second-most in one season in league history. She also had 25 double-doubles, up from 10 the year before.

A triple-double requires a player to reach double digits in three statistical categories in one game. Shepard’s figures combined scoring, rebounding and assists, a useful way to see that her role extended across the floor. The count says how often she crossed that threshold; it does not compare the difficulty of each game or every action that led to it.

One game showed the full stat line

On May 28 against Las Vegas, Shepard finished with 22 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists. The WNBA says she became the second player in league history with a 20-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist game. The line put her scoring, work on the glass and playmaking in one box score.

The performance is one example from a season of changes. It should not stand in for the full award case by itself. The award release also lists her season totals, shooting and role, while the ballot gives the voters’ decision. Each source answers a different question: what she produced in that game, how her season compared with 2025 and how the panel ranked her.

The improvement was not limited to volume

Shepard ranked second in the WNBA with 11.1 rebounds per game, fifth in field-goal percentage at 57.5 percent and 11th in assists per game. She finished with 467 rebounds, the second-highest single-season total in league history behind Angel Reese’s 521 in 2026.

A full-time starting role increased her opportunity, while the rate statistics show she used those minutes efficiently. Field-goal percentage still depends on what kinds of shots she took and how often teammates created them. The public sources do not provide a detailed shot-quality comparison between her Minnesota and Dallas seasons, so the cleanest claim rests on the figures the league published.

The official profile also splits her rebounds into 349 defensive and 118 offensive boards. Roughly three-quarters were defensive, clarifying where the higher total came from. This adds detail to the rebounding increase without turning it into a claim about every missed-shot sequence or box-out. The profile does not publish contested-rebound counts. Defensive boards end opponents’ possessions; offensive boards give Dallas another chance.

The ballot records a judgment, not a formula

Shepard received 29 votes from 74 voters. The WNBA announcement lists the count and the leading runners-up but does not publish a formula that weights improvement in points against rebounds, assists, efficiency or minutes. A 29-vote total therefore shows the panel’s decision, not a calculation that can be reconstructed from public stats alone.

The award followed a season with a new team, more minutes and higher per-game production in multiple areas. Those facts give the vote a clear basketball context. They do not establish how much of the improvement came from experience, role, health, teammates or scheme. The next season may answer some of those questions, but the 2026 ballot is about the season she completed.