‘She’ll do whatever it takes’: Alyssa Thomas’ competitive fire drives championship quest

Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas would appreciate it if you stopped talking about her shoulders.

In recent years, Thomas’ shoulder injuries became almost synonymous with her on-court play. She couldn’t take the court or score a bucket without fans or media eagerly awaiting the opportunity to point out Thomas’ cartilage deficit.

“At this point, I mean, it’s been about 10 years since it’s even happened,” said Thomas, who originally injured her right shoulder in 2015 while playing with the Connecticut Sun, and her left shoulder in 2017 while playing overseas in South Korea. Thomas opted to decline surgery on both due to the rehabilitation required.

The injuries have become a definitive part of Thomas’ career in a way that mildly tires her; she doesn’t want them to be a qualifier to what she has accomplished or how she plays.

“There’s a lot more to me and my game. Yeah, my shooting style is different. The ball goes in the hoop just like it goes in for any other player that shoots the ball – normal,” said Thomas, who also sustained an Achilles tear in 2021. “It is what it is. I’ve never made excuses about it. And I still go out there and compete at the highest level.”

That’s been the tale of Thomas’ career: a player who has run into a number of personal and team roadblocks over the course of her career but has never wanted to make excuses for its various outcomes. Instead, Thomas adapts, modifies and adjusts – whether that’s through retooling her shooting form and shot selection or changing teams like she did this past offseason, when she was traded from the Sun after 11 seasons to the Mercury.

The same could be said for Game 1 of the Mercury’s first-round series in the WNBA playoffs when Thomas had an opportunity to convert a game-winning layup with under a second left to play. She narrowly missed off the front rim, and the Mercury lost to the New York Liberty in overtime.

“Just an unfortunate roll,” Thomas said. “I’ve made that shot thousands of times. For me, it’s no big deal.”

This year, Thomas has constructed an MVP-caliber season for a Phoenix team looking to make a postseason run at a championship. A title would be Thomas’ first in her 12-season WNBA career, during which the pinnacle has, at times, seemed elusive to reach.

The playoffs are her favorite time of the year. It’s an opportunity for the best of the best to separate themselves and for Thomas to meet the moment. Now facing elimination down a game to the Liberty, the climb for Thomas and the Mercury will be uphill. However, that’s not stopping her from chasing her ultimate goal.

“She wants to win. She wants to win the championship bad,” said DeWanna Bonner, Thomas’ Mercury teammate and fiancée. “She’ll do whatever it takes.” 

To watch Thomas on the court is to watch her play with equal parts intensity and joy. 

For someone as competitively wired as Thomas is touted to be – every former and current teammate will say she’s among the top if not the most competitive teammate they’ve ever had – Thomas usually displays a smile on the floor. Oftentimes, those smirks are seemingly derived from competition.

She will smile if she converts in transition off a spin move through the lane. Thomas, a six-time WNBA All-Defensive Team selection, will smirk in amusement if a ball handler she views as inferior dares to take her off the dribble. The same is true for when she is backing down a weaker defender while bullying her way into the paint.

“I think you still have to have fun with it,” Thomas said. “As hard as it is and as competitive as it can get, basketball is supposed to be fun. I don’t want to lose sight of that. I feel like when I’m not having fun anymore, then it’s probably that time for me to move on.”

Statistically, this has been one of the best seasons of Thomas’ career. She finished the regular season averaging 15.4 points, 9.2 assists and 8.8 rebounds.

This season, Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts has placed an emphasis on creating more opportunities to get downhill as a ball handler.

“You know, when you’re a great player, you’d like to expand your game. You can do different stuff,” Tibbetts said. “That’s been a lot of fun for me trying to put [Alyssa] in those situations.” 

According to ESPN Stats and Information, Thomas ran 384 picks as the ball handler this season (9.8 per game) compared with 256 picks last season (6.6 per game) when she was with Connecticut.

With the front office equipping the Phoenix perimeter with a bevy of 3-point shooters, it put Thomas in the ultimate playmaking driver’s seat. 

“Phoenix is able to get her in her positions to be successful,” said Liberty center Jonquel Jones, who played with Thomas in Connecticut for six seasons. “I think in the past it was a little bit easier to kind of hone in on her and kind of stop some of the things that she liked to do but … they kind of keep you guessing a little bit while also making sure that she’s able to get downhill and facilitate.” 

Thomas set the WNBA single-season record for assists, totaling 357 on the year, while posting the second-highest assist-per-game average in WNBA history (9.15).

“She’s basically a guard when she has the ball,” Washington Mystics center Shakira Austin said.

When Thomas has the ball in her hands, she surveys the court with an almost Dr. Strange-like accuracy, weighing the handful of scenarios she can pursue until she finds the one that yields points on the board for the Mercury.

Thomas ended the regular season having scored or assisted on 38.2 points per game, the most in a single season in league history, according to ESPN Stats and Information. Thomas also scored or assisted on 45.7% of Phoenix’s field goals this season, which was the most in the WNBA this season and fourth-most in league history.

“She just sees the game at another level,” Tibbetts said on Sept. 4 during a pregame news conference. “Obviously we see the things that she can do physically, but her mind is – she’s a coach. … She sees a lot of things that some others don’t.”

Thomas’ eight triple-doubles this season are a career-high and give her 19 for her career. No other WNBA player has more than four.

“She’s an incredible playmaker, always makes the right decisions,” Mercury guard Kahleah Copper said. “She makes it easier for me to be able to play off the ball and get everyone else involved.”

When Minnesota Lynx forward Jessica Shepard broke Thomas’ record for the fastest triple-double in WNBA history on Aug. 22, it took Thomas just over two weeks to reclaim that accolade. Against the Los Angeles Sparks on Sept. 9, Thomas recorded a triple-double in just 21 minutes and 52 seconds, five seconds faster than Shepard. 

“It’s the way she can impact the game as well, rebounding, assists, scoring, her leadership,” Mercury guard Sami Whitcomb said. “I’ve seen her change a game so quickly by just literally, like, getting a stop defensively, then snatching the rebound, then pushing it the length of the court, finding the right person, scoring when we need her to score, getting the rebound [we need her] to get. It’s been really special to see.”

Thomas said she hasn’t given much thought to the records that she seemed to be either setting or breaking every other week during the regular season. She’ll save that admiration for when she’s done playing and can look back. 

“In the moment, I’m just trying to compete and get a championship,” Thomas said.

Thomas remembers the first championship she ever won. She was in the eighth grade, playing Catholic Youth Organization basketball in Pennsylvania. That year her team won the state championship.

“There, it’s a pretty big deal,” Thomas said. “All the hard work that we went through the whole season, and that early on in your career to win on the biggest stage – it’s something I definitely still remember to this day.”

Thomas has won at the international level in overseas play and as a member of USA Basketball, winning a World Cup in 2022 and an Olympic gold medal in 2024. However, she’s still chasing a WNBA championship. 

This year marks the ninth straight playoff appearance for Thomas. In her last six seasons, all with the Sun, Connecticut made it to the WNBA semifinals four times and the Finals twice, coming short of a championship in 2019 and 2022. 

“I’ve been chasing it for a while,” Thomas said. “I’ve made it to a lot of semis, two finals, and still haven’t, you know, had the opportunity.”

According to ESPN Stats and Information, Thomas’ 47 playoff games are the fourth-most games played without a championship and the second-most among active players.

“Hopefully we can get [a championship] for her this year,” Bonner said. “But if not, [Alyssa is] going to continue to be the same that she’s been and just keep going after it. But I hear the ins and outs of it on the court, off the court.” 

Thomas, though, said she can’t be frustrated by her championship shortcomings to date, firmly believing that if it’s not her time, then her time will come. 

“At the end of the day, I can’t be disappointed,” Thomas said. “I approach it as giving everything I have to this game.”

Thomas’ pursuit of a championship is akin to her having the ball in her hands as she’s driving down the lane at full speed, relentless, bolstered by an indelible hunger to win. 

“She takes complete pride in winning, and it burns her up when you lose,” Tibbetts said in July. 

Every answer Thomas gives about the game circles back to winning. She doesn’t care much for participating in team social videos or social media at all for that matter, as well as the ever-popular player tunnel fit entrances. 

“I just want to go out there and play basketball,” she said. 

On the floor, Thomas is quick to call out or correct something she sees wrong, aware that every little change can tip the scales of winning or make a mound of difference for a team with goals of a deep playoff push. 

Whitcomb, in particular, called out Thomas’ eye for tinkering with defense, from coverages and missed assignments to energy and activity.

“It’s almost always defensively,” Whitcomb said. “If we’re not winning or if we’re not playing the way we want to play, it’s probably because we’re not doing what we need to do effortwise and focuswise defensively, so that’s where she’s calling attention to.”

Thomas is widely known to be one of the biggest trash talkers in the league. Her game is physical and her demeanor is intense, at times even brash – traits of an “ultimate competitor.” That heightened competitive fire levels off once Thomas takes off the jersey. Off the court, Thomas is softer spoken and reserved.

“People see this perception of how I play on the court and they assume that’s the person I am off of it,” Thomas said. 

Jones said that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Sometimes as a competitor … she’s really tough and to other people she can seem very imposing, but to get to know her as a friend, as a person, she has a really good heart,” Jones said. 

Whether it’s her injuries or her character, Thomas knows she can only do so much to control public perception.

“At the end of the day, you know, it’s about the people in my circle, the people that, you know, I go to work with each and every day … that’s all that matters,” she said. 

Before Thomas can set her sights on the final series of the season, the Mercury will first have to find a way to steal a road win in New York against the Liberty on Wednesday night. 

Sitting on the dais after her team’s overtime loss in Game 1, Thomas said confidently: “There’s still a lot of basketball to play.”