Nine years as president of the WNBA players’ union has made Nneka Ogwumike a savvy politician, and like any savvy politician, she knows how to read the room. After a brutal late-game loss to the Sparks on Monday night, she and her Seattle Storm teammate Skylar Diggins sat beside each other at the postgame press conference. Ogwumike was her usual self—mellow, introspective—and she knew this was a night for her to do all the talking. Diggins was pissed. “For Skylar, do you feel like you guys…” one reporter began, before quickly changing course. “Or Nneka,” he offered, as his initial target’s frown deepened. When the press conference ended, Diggins left having not said a word for all four minutes, her arms still crossed as she got up from the table and exited the room.
“Skylar is such a cry baby 😂 😂 😂 😂 …I guess that’s what you get for mocking the linx dance 😂 😂 😂 😂,” one uncharitable (and spelling-challenged) commenter wrote on the press conference recording uploaded to YouTube. The „linx dance“ would be the Electric Slide, which the Minnesota Lynx do together after every home win. Last week, after a similarly brutal late-game loss to the Storm, the Lynx were on the receiving end of the dance. Diggins scored 19 points in the second half to get Seattle the win. Victorious, she grapevined and clapped with Storm guard Erica Wheeler on her way off the floor. Before she walked through the tunnel, Diggins did the dance again.
These are the highs and lows of Skylar Diggins, a thrilling player in either state. She’s spent the last two seasons on a Storm team that seems to take after its 5-foot-9 point guard: They’re enigmatic, unpredictable, fun and sometimes very funny. Since the start of July, Seattle has developed a reputation for wild swings. They’ll beat the best team in the league on their home court and then immediately drop a game to a non-playoff team. They’ll play the finest quarter of basketball ever right before playing the worst. They relish being the villain, subverting expectations; their record is actually better on the road. “I think if you ask some of my peers,” Diggins told Vanity Fair in an interview this season, “they might categorize me as a bit of a gremlin.”
The Storm have just two games left in the regular season, games that will determine whether and where they’re headed for the first round of the WNBA playoffs. But I didn’t want the season to end before saluting the league’s most entertaining gremlin, its No. 1 crashout queen.
In the second half of the summer, Diggins hasn’t been quite the dynamo she was in the first half, when she seemed like a lock to nab one of the All-WNBA guard spots. But she’s still enjoyed an excellent 2025, averaging assist numbers among the highest of her career and logging her first WNBA triple-double in a July game against the Sun. If she was totally silent during that Sparks press conference, it wasn’t because of poor performance: She finished with a team-high 21 points on 8-of-16 shooting and six assists.
As Diggins matured as a pro, she became a more-than-serviceable defender, stabbing her hands at other guards‘ handles to get the ball moving the other way. The same intensity shows up on offense. Her signature trait as a scorer is still her gift for getting downhill. Diggins drives to the basket with a sort of lunatic self-confidence, operating under the assumption that whatever she’s going to do will probably work out. It makes for great basketball; the chance to witness someone so full of belief in herself is also something like the whole reason people watch sports in the first place.
And sure, the more confidence a star has, the more wounded she’ll be when she has to show up for a presser after a loss. But I wouldn’t want Skylar Diggins acting any other way. Let her be confident enough to block 6-foot-7 Kamilla Cardoso …
… declare that her Unrivaled team has been “carrying this league since Day 1.”
… tell a crowd in Chicago to sit their asses down.
… and jaw at the Lynx bench.
In that Vanity Fair interview, Diggins spoke about the trials of her career. Before signing with Seattle, she played for the Phoenix Mercury, where she butted heads with her head coach and famously got into a fight with Diana Taurasi on the bench. Brittney Griner’s detainment, she added, also hit her hard. Her relationship with the team ended acrimoniously while she was out after giving birth to her second child; she struggled with postpartum depression after the birth of her first child and had other complications during this pregnancy. “There were new coaches, no one contacted me, they wouldn’t let me park in the parking lot anymore,” Diggins said.
For as long as Diggins has played in the WNBA, conflict and disorder have swirled around her. She was drafted to a team that relocated from Tulsa to Dallas soon after she got there. The Diggins-era Wings, whose GM and coach once got in a fistfight after a game, were not much more competent than their current iteration. There are a few ways to act in the face of such chaos. One is to be the calm in the storm. Another is to just try to outstorm the storm yourself. No matter how crazy life gets for Skylar Diggins, she can get crazier.
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