LAS VEGAS — “Do you want to tell the people the truth?” Phoenix Mercury star Alyssa Thomas asked teammate Kahleah Copper.
The question at hand was about a game — but not the WNBA Finals matchup with the Las Vegas Aces that loomed the following day. No, this was about games of UNO, which helped the Mercury jell as a team on their long flights across the country this season.
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True to form for professional athletes, the games were competitive.
“Now, I would like to say I am the best UNO player,” Copper said. “However, I did take a couple L’s recently.”
“I’m the best on the team,” Thomas said with a laugh. “When they can’t beat her, I come out, beat her, and then I go back to doing what I have to do.”
Thomas’ competitive fire is legendary in the WNBA, and will be an asset as she tries to win the first title of her career. She said it started when she was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania.
“I’m just super competitive. I grew up in a super competitive family. Anything — board games to punch buggies were super competitive,” she said.
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Thomas is in her 12th season in the league, and she’s played in 54 postseason games. In her 11 seasons with the Connecticut Sun, she made it to the WNBA Finals twice — in 2019 and 2022 — but has never won it all. Thomas landed in Phoenix over the offseason alongside Satou Sabally to join Copper as the Mercury’s formidable new big three.
But early in the season, Phoenix’s trip to the Finals did not look inevitable. Thomas missed games in May because of a calf injury. Copper and Sabally missed time as well, so the trio only played together in 10 of 44 regular-season games. But Thomas said those challenges just helped bring the team together.
“We went through a lot of adversity this year with injuries and things of that nature. We don’t care about people’s opinions and where they have us ranked, or who they think is going to win the series,” Thomas said. “We just go out there and we worry about us. We’ve stuck together all season, and I think that’s what makes us special. We don’t care about the opinions. We’re going to go out there and play our basketball and fight each and every game.”
That fight sometimes shows up as trash talk. While Thomas is quiet off the court, she was voted the league’s biggest trash talker . Keep an eye on her during games, and you’ll see how she smiles and talks all game long. She did just that with fellow MVP candidate Napheesa Collier in Game 2 of the semifinals against the Lynx.
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Now, Thomas will go head-to-head with 2025 MVP winner A’ja Wilson, who won an Olympic gold medal alongside Thomas in 2024. The two have previously faced each other in the playoffs in 2020 and 2022.
“It’s always fun competing against AT because she is a, I don’t even want to call her post player, but she’s a player that, you know, she could facilitate the game,” Wilson said. “She could pick the game apart. And I don’t get to guard that every single day. And so she allows me — or doesn’t allow me — I try my best to make things very difficult, but the way that she sees the game, her vision, the way that she gets her teammates open, it’s something that she adds and brings to this game and to that into that position that I don’t see every single night.”
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Thomas has racked up many accolades in her career — six All-Star nods, three all-WNBA teams and six All-Defensive teams among them — but one thing is still missing. She’ll surely bring her signature competitive fire as she aims to end these Finals with a championship trophy.
