Naz Hillmon makes Dream history with Sixth Player of the Year honor

Naz Hillmon entered the 2025 WNBA season with a simple goal. She wanted to grow. To keep improving. To find more of her voice as a leader.

The Dream forward already had seen steady progress through her first three years in the league. Year 4, she hoped, would be no different.

“I don’t want my fourth year to be anything different,” Hillmon told the AJC during the Dream’s media day in May. “There’s a lot more voices, and I think I just have to continue to be consistent with my voice no matter who is around.”

But as the season unfolded, Hillmon found herself doing far more than steady growth. With first-year coach Karl Smesko reshaping his team’s identity around floor spacing, ball movement and efficiency, and with Brionna Jones and Brittney Griner anchoring the paint, Hillmon discovered new dimensions to her game.

Her impact stretched beyond leadership and hustle. She pushed herself to add a 3-point shot, giving the Dream a new wrinkle off the bench. That evolution, paired with her steady presence on both ends of the floor, culminated in a milestone. Hillmon became the first player in franchise history to win the WNBA’s Sixth Player of the Year award, the league announced Saturday.

The honor, reserved for the league’s top reserve, recognizes a player who comes off the bench more often than they start. Hillmon secured 44 of 72 votes from a media panel, finishing ahead of Minnesota’s Natisha Hiedeman, who received 22. The Lynx’s Jessica Shepard tallied four, while Seattle’s Dominique Malonga and Phoenix’s Sami Whitcomb picked up one each.

Hillmon’s case was built on steady, tangible strides. She suited up for all 44 regular-season games, delivering career highs across the board with 8.6 points, 25.5 minutes, 6.2 rebounds and 2.4 assists. Her efficiency stood out, too. She made 63.7% of her 2-point shots, the second-best mark in the league, while becoming a reliable anchor on the glass with 4.6 defensive boards per game.

A year ago, Hillmon was a steady role player, carving out her impact in quieter ways. She averaged 5.7 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, while adding 1.3 assists. Her efficiency was her calling card, making more than half her shots from the floor, hitting 55.2% overall and 55.6% on 2-pointers.

“She’s been fantastic this year,” Smesko previously said. “She gives us a burst off the bench. … She’s reliable. She’s very smart. … With the development of her shot, that’s opened up a lot of things. She can drive by people and make decisions.”

But what truly separated this season from her first three was the leap forward in her offensive arsenal. Hillmon reinvented herself as a perimeter threat, drilling 53 3-pointers, a staggering jump considering she had gone only 1-of-6 from deep in her career before 2025. By season’s end, she was making 1.2 3’s per game on nearly four attempts, a shot that gave the Dream another layer of spacing and versatility.

“I used to get sad when they would cheer for me, like it was a charity (when making 3’s),” Hillmon previously said. “ … Every single chance I get, I try to get up some extra shots because … I’m not just a natural shooter.”

But as the season unfolded, everything shifted.

Hillmon delivered the kind of performance that stamped her growth on full display. On July 30, with the game hanging in the balance against the Dallas Wings, she poured in a career-high 21 points, drilling five 3-pointers and silencing the Wings’ crowd with a tiebreaking 3-point shot that splashed through with 2.6 seconds left on the clock.

“Naz took it (the shooting reps with Dream assistant Chelsea Lyles) very seriously,” Smesko previously said. “She wanted to become a shooter. … She’s at a point now where she can shoot it really well. When she’s open, she’s going to take it. She can handle missing a couple and just be ready to knock down the next one.”

Her role evolved as the Dream’s season did. For much of the year, Hillmon thrived as a spark off the bench, logging 27 games as a reserve before sliding into the starting lineup Aug. 1 against the Phoenix Mercury. The opportunity came when Dream center Brittney Griner suffered a neck injury. Even after the Griner returned, coach Karl Smesko stuck with Hillmon as a starter, valuing the balance she brought to the rotation.

She also logged eight games with at least 10 points and five rebounds as a reserve, the second most in the league behind Malonga. And when she truly caught fire, the Dream always seemed to follow. In the five games where Hillmon scored 15 or more, the Dream never lost.

“Naz (Hillmon) does it for us every night,” Griner previously said. “She’s going to do all of the little things we need her to do. What y’all don’t get to see is her talking to us on the bench in timeouts, always saying the right thing and just being positive and making sure we see what we need to see.”

Dream assistant Chelsea Lyles agrees: “If we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing in practice, she’ll get everybody together,” she told the AJC. “She’s just a great leader, a great person, and her teammates respect her. So when she says something, they listen. They know that she’s going to lead by example as well. She’s a leader by her actions and her voice and really helped us this year.”

Hillmon helped power the Dream (30-14) to a franchise-best 30 wins, doubling last season’s total and cementing themselves as the No. 3 seed in the 2025 WNBA playoffs.

She has played in a franchise-record 151 consecutive regular-season games, including all 124 of the team’s games in the past three seasons.

Hillmon will receive $5,150, along with a trophy, to commemorate the accolade. The award comes more than a week after she won The Associated Press Sixth Player of the Year Award on Sept. 12.

For Hillmon, the recognition validated not just her growth, but her willingness to reinvent herself in pursuit of something greater.