In this 20th anniversary season for the WNBA, one thing is clear: There's a lot of talent of all ages in the league.
There are those at or near the end of their careers who still play at a high level, superstars in their primes and youngsters who've adjusted quickly to being pros. All of which makes picking season award winners very tough.
For all but one honor this year -- which was a slam dunk -- you can make good cases for multiple candidates. We'll wait to see how the official voting goes. But as the 2016 regular season nears its conclusion, here are our choices:
MVP: Nneka Ogwumike, Los Angeles
Ogwumike has led the 25-8 Sparks to the No. 2 seed in the playoffs and is on pace to have the most efficient scoring season in the history of the league.
The nature of MVP is always debated. Is it who is most valuable to her team? Or who is most valuable regardless of what team she was on? How well can you determine either? Especially the latter, since you can't know for sure how someone would perform in a different setting.
A way to best simplify this is to replace the word "valuable" with "outstanding," which is what the award is called for the NCAA tournament. And then examine the stats.
Admittedly, if someone is outstanding on a team that's not making the playoffs, she's going to have a hard time winning MVP. But that isn't the case with any in a group of six viable candidates this year.
Four of them have won the MVP award before: New York's Tina Charles (2012), Minnesota's Maya Moore (2014), Los Angeles' Candace Parker (2008, 2013) and Chicago's Elena Delle Donne (2015).
Seattle's Breanna Stewart is another candidate, and in another season less jam-packed with standout performances she might have joined Parker as the only player to win both MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season.
Ultimately, most voters likely will pare this down to a decision between Ogwumike and Charles, power forwards who are past No. 1 draft picks.
Ogwumike is averaging 19.8 points, 9.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists and shoots 66.7 percent from the field. Charles is at 21.5 PPG, 9.9 RPG, 3.8 APG and 43.9 percent for the Liberty, who are 21-12 and have the No. 3 seed in the playoffs.
Some might point out that Ogwumike has another MVP-caliber player on her team, Parker, and Charles doesn't. Yet the clearest indicator of Ogwumike's MVP status is when you consider her league-leading efficiency.
Ogwumike's true shooting percentage -- which takes into account 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws -- is 73.8. That ranks as the best in league history, according to ESPN.com's Kevin Pelton, a metrics expert of both the NBA and WNBA. He points out that the only player who has finished at 70.0 or better in a season in which she played at least 500 minutes is Phoenix's Candice Dupree (70.0) in 2010.
Charles' true shooting percentage is 49.9. Her standard field goal percentage has never been above 50 percent in her seven seasons; the best was 49.9 in her MVP year of 2012. Charles has expanded her range; she has made 17 of 49 3-pointers this season, compared to a combined 2-of-17 her first six years. She has put in the work to become more versatile. But so has Ogwumike, who is 16-for-25 from behind the arc this year after being 7-for-34 combined in her first four WNBA seasons.
Then there is this stat: Charles has missed almost as many shots this season, 349, as Ogwumike has taken, 357.
You could say that Charles was carrying more of the offensive load for her team, so she had to take more shots. But considering their production is fairly similar in regard to total points -- 688 for Charles and 633 for Ogwumike, both in 32 games -- again, Ogwumike's efficiency looms large.
Pelton also uses a value stat called "WARP," which stands for wins above replacement player. His top five in WARP this season has Ogwumike in the lead at 10.4, followed by Stewart at 8.4, Moore 8.2, Delle Donne 6.7 and Charles and Parker tied at 6.5.
Other advanced stats in which Ogwumike leads the league include player efficiency rating (PER) at 31.9 (best in league history is Lauren Jackson's 35.04 in 2007); win shares at 9.3; and offensive rating at 136.2. Ogwumike is the only of my six MVP candidates, in fact, who is in the top five in both offensive rating and defensive rating.
At some point, yes, this can become a numbers soup. And we are not disparaging anything about Charles' great season. But when you have performances of this caliber, by players who are this spectacular, you have to get more granular to try to separate them for awards purposes.
Both players are having outstanding years and are key factors in their teams' success. But the evidence statistically points to Ogwumike as MVP.
Rookie of the Year: Breanna Stewart, Seattle
Whew! Now for the easy one. No debate here; this was the slam dunk. As mentioned, Stewart was legitimately in the MVP discussion, and she has been everything that she was expected to be for her first year as a professional. Which says a lot, because the expectations were so high.
Stewart came into the WNBA at an elite level, both offensively and defensively, and the Storm have benefited a lot from both. She's averaging 18.4 points, 9.3 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.9 blocked shots. She also leads the league in minutes played (1,120, an average of 35) and has worked well with last year's top rookie, Jewell Loyd, in Seattle.
Stewart went from winning her fourth consecutive NCAA title at UConn to being the No. 1 draft pick, to being a WNBA starter, to being an Olympic gold medalist, to being an MVP candidate.
And of the Rookie of the Year award, you could almost say she had that at "hello" when she entered the league. Just as great as advertised.
Defensive Player of the Year: Sylvia Fowles, Minnesota
Maybe this wasn't quite as easy to pick as Stewie for ROY. Stewart actually was a candidate for this honor, too, and she'll win at least a few of these in her career. But the veteran Fowles prevailed.
The 6-foot-6 center is averaging 8.7 rebounds and 1.8 blocked shots. She leads the WNBA in defensive rating (92.3) and defensive win shares (2.9).
Minnesota prides itself on having the most consistently great defense in the league, and Fowles has become the centerpiece of that. Minnesota was very good defensively before she came over in the trade with Chicago last year -- the Lynx won two championships without Fowles -- but she gave them that big, athletic, intimidating presence inside. And helped them win another title last year.
Sixth Woman: Jantel Lavender, Los Angeles
This actually was another tough award to decide, because there were multiple good candidates -- including Dallas rookie Aerial Powers, New York's Shavonte Zellous and Kiah Stokes, and Minnesota's Renee Montgomery and Jia Perkins.
They all are reserves who had specific jobs for their teams and did them well. In the case of Stokes, Montgomery and Perkins, for instance, what they do defensively is huge in regard to what they bring as soon as they come into games.
But it came down to Lavender and Chicago's Allie Quigley, who has won the award the last two years. These are two completely different players.
Lavender is a 6-4 center; Quigley, a 5-10 guard. Lavender was a reserve her first three seasons, then a starter in most of 2014 and all of 2015. She's coming off the bench again this year, averaging 19.1 minutes as opposed to 2015's career-high 33.8 minutes.
Of course, the fact that Candace Parker sat out last year until late July impacted Lavender's playing time then. Not everyone can have her role change so much and deal with it OK emotionally. But Lavender seems like she has; she's averaging 9.5 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.2 assists.
Quigley, meanwhile, is the very definition of "sixth player." She has started just eight of 166 games in her career. Quigley came into the WNBA in 2008 and then battled for five years just to stick with a team, not playing a whole season until she found a home with the Sky in 2013. She's a wonderful story of determination and perseverance.
This season, she's averaging 9.2 points and 1.4 assists in 17.1 minutes average playing time for the Chicago, which is currently the No. 4 seed in the playoffs.
They're both deserving. In the end, Lavender's ability to have a slightly greater impact with her rebounding gave her a little edge.
Most Improved Player: Elizabeth Williams, Atlanta
A 6-3 forward/center, Williams was the No. 4 pick for Connecticut in 2015, appearing in 21 games and averaging 3.3 points and 3.2 rebounds. Atlanta traded its 2016 No. 4 pick (which turned out to be Rachel Banham) to the Sun for Williams. And so far that deal has worked out very well for the Dream.
Williams has averaged 11.7 points, 7.9 rebounds and a WNBA second-best 2.4 blocks for the Dream, who are going back to the postseason after missing it in 2015. She was also a candidate for Defensive Player of the Year.
While there are other solid candidates for most improved, including Seattle's Loyd and Washington's Tayler Hill, Williams' success on both ends of the court was the kind of dramatic jump in performance that you like to see rewarded with this honor.
Williams' 43.5 shooting percentage is something she'll need to work on for the future, but her game has taken a major step forward.
Coach of the Year: Cheryl Reeve, Minnesota
Los Angeles' Brian Agler is in the conversation for this award, too. As is Seattle's Jenny Boucek, who has a young Storm team back in the postseason and playing well since the Olympic break. But the top choice is Reeve, who has put together quite a track record at Minnesota.
The Lynx have been so good -- three titles in the last five seasons -- thanks in large part to her leadership. Players respect Reeve, they listen to her and they work hard for her. This season, the 26-6 Lynx are again the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, and Reeve was able to achieve that while also giving her bench quality minutes.
She was an assistant to Geno Auriemma on the U.S. Olympic team that won gold. So she managed that extra duty well, as did her Lynx players -- Moore, Fowles, Lindsay Whalen and Seimone Augustus -- who competed in Rio de Janeiro.
Reeve has won the Coach of the Year award once previously, in 2011, when the Lynx took their first title. It's time she gets it again for what has now been her team's six-season stay at, or very near, the top of the league.