Alissa Pili, the newest member of the Minnesota Lynx, represents the best of what the WNBA can be

Alissa Pili probably is tired of being described as “unique.”

The No. 8 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft by the Minnesota Lynx, Pili is a 6-foot-2 power point forward, possessing of suite of offensive skills that made her nearly unstoppable in her two seasons starring at the University of Utah. From Anchorage, AK, she’s Samoan and Iñupiaq. Her game and heritage, in short, are not those typical to women’s basketball or the WNBA.

Because of her ability and identity, she’s the kind of paradigm-busting player the Lynx—and the league—needs.

Unstoppable Alissa Pili can unleash the Lynx

As WNBA teams increasingly hew to modern basketball principles, certain player archetypes often are more valued than others. It is accepted that teams with title ambitions should want a ball handler who is proficient in the pick and roll and possesses a pull-jumper; 3-and-D wings who can knock down open shots, attack closeouts and guard across multiple positions; and bigs who can defend in different coverages, protect the rim and score efficiently around the basket.

Alissa Pili, however, does not easily fit into those prescribed roles. She’s an amalgamation of all of them. Her combination size and strength suggests she should be an undersized post. But, she often was the orienting offensive force at Utah, an unstoppable operator with the ball in her hands because she’s capable of scoring at all three levels. She can swish triples, drain midrangers and uncork the moves required to finish around the basket.

As South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley famously said when the Gamecocks played Pili and the Utes, “We cannot stop her.” Although South Carolina would escape with the victory, Pili dropped 37 points on the eventual champ’s No. 1-ranked defense.

Pili also gave 37 to another team that would secure a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, USC. That time, the Utes were victorious over the school where Pili began her college hoops career. In her final season at Utah, she averaged 21.4 points, 6.6 rebounds and 2.4 assists per game, shooting 55.0 percent from the field and 40.4 percent from 3.

In Minnesota, head coach Cheryl Reeve already should be excitedly scheming ways to utilize Pili. Too strong to be defended by guards but too quick for bigs, Pili’s power and finesse—whether combined with the smooth offensive stylings of Napheesa Collier, the attack-minded approach of Diamond Miller, the elite 3-point shooting of Kayla McBride, the improved playmaking of Courtney Williams or the relentlessness of Alanna Smith—should make Minnesota hard to handle for most opponents.

Pili thus presents an opportunity for the Lynx to get weird in a good way, modeling alternative methods of basketball success in the WNBA. But more importantly, she also models who can be a WNBA player.

Alissa Pili is paving the way for the WNBA

At the WNBA Draft, Pili proudly represented her Samoan heritage by wearing a dress with a tribal print skit, with the skirt’s slit also showing off her tribal leg tattoos. As she told ESPN’s Holly Rowe upon being drafted:

A lot of Indigenous and Polynesian girls don’t get to see that role model and I’m just so blessed to be in the position to be that for them. I’m representing them with pride, I had to include the tribal in my dress.

In recent years, the WNBA, urged by WNBA players, has amplified and celebrated the multiple identities of the players who compose the league. Yet, while members of under-represented communities—Black, brown, LGBTQIA+ and gender non-conforming—increasingly have been able to see themselves in WNBA players, Native and Indigenous populations have had little representation in women’s basketball, especially at the highest level. Pili has embraced that representational burden. She told The Athletic earlier this year, “The thing about Polynesian and Indigenous people, when they see somebody of their kind winning, it means the whole community’s won.”

During her star ascent at Utah, an accelerating number of people from Native and Indigenous communities became big Pili fans, traveling distances to see her her hoop. Hopefully, those fans and more will follow her to Lynx. And in turn, the WNBA hopefully will be inspired to invest in still underserved communities that are eager to see girls and women succeed in sports.