With career-high 36 points, Mystics’ Ariel Atkins reminds WNBA how elite she is

The shirts, which Atkins had designed herself, were also for sale at the arena on Sunday, so Atkins’ presence kept multiplying during warmups.

Once the game started, the Aces saw Atkins everywhere they looked, too: The veteran guard scorched them for a career-high 36 points, just one shy of tying the franchise record. She shot 13-for-25 from the field, including 6-for-9 from 3-point range, and added four rebounds, two assists, a steal and a block with no turnovers.

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Atkins’ first basket came less than 40 seconds into the game. She used a handoff from point guard Julie Vanloo and a screen from forward Myisha Hines-Allen to get free going left, and she drained a pullup jump shot near the elbow. Midrange shots like that have been Atkins’ go-tos over the years, even as she made enough 3-pointers to break the Mystics’ career record in 2023.

Less than a minute later, Atkins drained a 3-pointer from the left wing and then hit a floater, giving her the team’s first seven points. In under two minutes of game time, the Mystics’ leading scorer was nearly halfway to her average of 15.0 points per game entering Sunday.

“[I was] just honestly trying to be aggressive and trying to stay aggressive,” Atkins told reporters postgame. “I knew I could have some gravitational pull on this game.”

Four of Atkins’ first six makes came from beyond the arc, including a 28-foot three with the shot clock winding down late in the first quarter. The ball swished through the net as the clock hit zero, putting an exclamation mark on her quarter.

“We let Atkins get going early and she just never really cooled down,” Aces head coach Becky Hammon told reporters postgame. “She’s a great player. And I think any time you give great players confidence in space and let them get to their spots, it becomes a handful.”

All told, Atkins had 16 points in the first quarter on 6-for-9 shooting, including 4-for-5 from 3-point range. The Mystics led 31-20 after the first quarter and by as many as 15 in the game, but the Aces came back to win 89-77.

Atkins scored five more points in the second quarter, 11 in the third and four in the fourth. The Mystics run a lot of offense for Atkins in general, but she’s also often the primary focus of opposing defenses, so it can be hard for her to find open looks. On Sunday, though, Hines-Allen said the Aces were “flooding the paint,” which helped Atkins get free.

For example, midway through the third quarter, center Stefanie Dolson caught the ball on the perimeter and threw it to Hines-Allen in the middle of the paint. Hines-Allen jumped to catch it, and three Aces defenders shifted toward her. But before she even landed, Hines-Allen found Atkins in the near corner for a 3-pointer.

“They were helping from everywhere, so I knew that [Atkins] was gonna be [in the] corner,” Hines-Allen told The Next postgame. “And it’s silly to leave A open for a three.”

Atkins broke her previous career high of 32 points early in the fourth quarter. It was a jump shot on a similar drive as the pullup that started her night, but she took this shot closer to the rim. Of Atkins’ 13 field goals on Sunday, four came within 5 feet of the rim, three came from 14 to 16 feet away and six were 3-pointers.

“It felt like she was scoring at ease, honestly,” Hines-Allen said. “She scored on all different levels. … And that’s just a testament to her. I mean, for her years in the league, she’s able to get better and better.”

“I was on balance tonight with my shots,” Atkins said. “I think I was being more aggressive and more decisive about my spots on the floor.”

The Aces tried to adjust and make their defense more physical, but Las Vegas star forward A’ja Wilson said that the rhythm Atkins was already in made it challenging.

“Ariel’s a great guard. She’s really good at what she does. She gets her team going, she gets others involved, but at the same time she obviously is really good at just scoring on all three levels,” Wilson told reporters postgame. “So … there’s not much you can do with someone like that when they’re on a heater like that.”

As good as Atkins was on Sunday, though, her point total could’ve been even higher. She missed one of her five free throws and three shots within 3 feet of the rim, suggesting that she had a real chance at 40 points.

Still, her 36 points tied for the second-most in franchise history. She was one short of former Mystics star Elena Delle Donne’s franchise-record 37, which came in an overtime win over the Seattle Storm in 2017. Delle Donne also scored 36 in regulation in 2018 — in a game Atkins started alongside her as a rookie.

“Was she really?” Mystics head coach Eric Thibault asked postgame after hearing how close Atkins was to the record. “Should’ve left her in the last play [and] gone for it.”

Atkins became only the third Mystic ever to score 35 or more points, joining Delle Donne and Hines-Allen, who had 35 in an overtime game in 2020. It was also the first time she’d reset her career high since June 2021.

A lot has happened in Atkins’ career in that span. In 2021, she was just 24 and was about to be named to her first Olympic and WNBA All-Star teams. Opponents were starting to assign their best defenders to slow her down. And after Atkins scored those 32 points, then-Mystics point guard Natasha Cloud literally banged her hands against a table and shouted to make the case that Atkins should be an All-Star.

Now, Atkins is 27, an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time All-Star. But she also missed out on the 2024 Olympic and All-Star teams and has dealt with several challenges over the years, including an injury-plagued season in 2023 and substantial roster turnover in recent seasons. Since the start of the 2021 season, she has been teammates with 40 different players.*

Atkins has faced some bumps this season, too, as she’s figured out how to play with new teammates. She started relatively slowly, averaging 13.2 points per game on 35.3% shooting from the field in her first 11 games. Then she heated up, averaging 21.8 points on 60.0% shooting over her next four. She dipped again, hitting just five of 22 shots (22.7%) in a weekend back-to-back against the Dallas Wings in late June. But she seemed to settle in again over the six games after that before Sunday, scoring in double figures every time on 46.9% shooting.

On Wednesday, she willed her team to a road win over the Indiana Fever. It wasn’t just her 26 points on 10-for-17 shooting; it was also the three rebounds, three assists and three steals and the crucial jump ball she won with 18 seconds left and the Mystics up by three.

“In general, I think she’s been doing a really good job of staying consistent and even when she’s not scoring, she’s still doing that little stuff,” Dolson told reporters afterward. “But today especially … she did a really good job of … finishing the plays, being the first one to the ball, like a loose ball. And the end, I mean, she saved it for us.”

From all that experience, Atkins has become the consummate veteran and a vocal leader for the Mystics. Against the Wings, Thibault called her “the clear steadying force for our team” even as her shots weren’t falling. On July 2 against the Los Angeles Sparks, she was the one telling her teammates in a huddle what changes they needed to make before Thibault even got there.

Days earlier, she was also the one who gave wing DiDi Richards some perspective when Richards was being too hard on herself after a game. Richards told The Next that Atkins reminded her how far she’s come in a year, from being out of the WNBA to starting. 

And instead of the Mystics shouting from the rooftops about Atkins’ development, there is instead a sense of business as usual now, even in her most spectacular moments.

“It was probably just a bigger version of what she’s always done in this league, which is shoot when you’re open,” Thibault said about Atkins’ performance on Sunday. “She maybe has more ways she can do that now, off the dribble and off the move and get into the paint. But she’s pretty much always been one where if she sees the rim and somebody’s not up tight on her, she’s gonna shoot it and let it fly.”

Atkins has always done much more than score in the WNBA, too. But sometimes the gaudy point totals are the most obvious reminders of how impactful she is, day in and day out.

Or you can just look at the T-shirts so many of her teammates wore on Sunday, wanting to celebrate her before she scored a single one of her 36 points.

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* This number includes only players who appeared in at least one regular-season game and not those who were only on the Mystics’ roster for preseason training camp.

The Next’s Rob Knox contributed reporting for this story.