NaLyssa Smith was the second pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft, taken by an Indiana Fever team that had just finished 6-26 and was beginning, without quite knowing it yet, the rebuild that would eventually carry Aliyah Boston and Caitlin Clark to Indianapolis. Smith was the bridge pick — the one before the picks the league still talks about — and she went second overall because she had been the best player in college basketball for two straight years.
She came from Baylor, where she spent four seasons under Kim Mulkey and Nicki Collen and walked off as a two-time Big 12 Player of the Year. She won the Wade Trophy as a junior. She was a consensus first-team All-American as a senior. The Fever, who had spent the previous five seasons looking for a frontcourt anchor, took her without much debate.
Her rookie season looked like what the scouting reports said it would look like. She started all thirty-two games she played, averaged 13.5 points and 7.9 rebounds, shot 41.9 percent from the field, and made the AP All-Rookie team. She was an athletic forward in a league that prized athletic forwards. The Fever still finished 5-31. None of that was on her.
One year later Boston arrived. The year after that Clark arrived. Smith was still there for both, quietly putting up double-doubles while the lights kept getting brighter and the building kept selling out. She averaged 11.3 points and 7.3 rebounds across her three Fever seasons, started one hundred and two games, and watched a 13-27 team grow into a sold-out playoff team around her.
On February 2, 2025, the Fever traded her to the Dallas Wings as part of the four-team deal that brought Sophie Cunningham to Indianapolis. By that summer she was a Las Vegas Ace, dealt to the defending champions for a 2027 first-round pick. The trade out caught her off guard — “sick to my stomach,” she said publicly — but the basketball logic was what it was. The Fever had become a team built around a guard.
The Vault keeps her in the Long Goodbye, where her three seasons sit. She is the pick before the picks. Without her the rebuild has a different shape, or no shape at all.