SEATTLE — Storm guard Natisha Hiedeman is well known by most WNBA fans for her off-court activities, as one half of the beloved Studbudz. She and Courtney Williams recently pulled off another 72-hour livestream over WNBA All-Star weekend as part of their joint venture. But how she has elevated her game on the court for Seattle this season warrants more recognition.
Shortly after another successful stream, on Tuesday, Hiedeman was back on the court in Seattle. Hair still strikingly blue, matching Williams for All-Star, Hiedeman scored a career-high 33 points on 55% shooting, and added six rebounds and four assists, in a loss to the Indiana Fever, taking more shots to make up for the absence of injured All-Star Dominique Malonga. The performance showed off every part of her game, not just top-tier passing and 3-point shooting, but also impressive midrange, downhill driving, nice shooting touch and elite handles.
The couple-day stretch is representative of Hiedeman’s season as a whole: while her brand with Williams has continued to grow and gain recognition for their magnetic personalities, Hiedeman is putting on the best performances of her WNBA career, having taken on a bigger, more central role with a new team.
“I just think I’ve been taking what the defense is giving me. I feel like my teammates, my coaches just trust me to make the right play and the right decision,” Hiedeman said after the performance. “We’re down one of our key scorers, one of our key players, and it’s just like, gotta step up. So [I was] just being a little bit more aggressive and just trying to do what I can do to win this game.”
For the first seven seasons of her WNBA career, Hiedeman played on some of the best teams in the WNBA, only finishing below the league’s top three in 2020 when the Sun came in seventh. Ahead of the 2026 season, the guard decided she was ready for a new challenge after two very successful years in Minnesota with Williams, signing a two-year $1.5 million deal in Seattle. Now, she is the veteran point guard leading one of the league’s youngest teams through the start of a rebuild.
Hiedeman said on media day that she felt she was at the point in her career where she was ready for the change, always able to fully immerse herself in and embrace whatever her role was. After talking to different teams in free agency, Hiedeman said that, in addition to a good fit and new coaching staff, the Storm really made her feel wanted, and that was the ultimate reason she chose Seattle.
Amid her personal boost in notoriety and the change in team, the biggest adjustment for the 29-year-old has not been the basketball; it has been taking on a leadership role she hasn’t had previously. It is showing up every day, communicating consistently and having people rely on her to answer questions and pick them up, Hiedeman said.
Of their 13-player roster (including one development contract), nine players are 25 years old or younger. Ezi Magbegor is only 26. Only Stefanie Dolson is older than 30. Of the starters alongside Hiedeman, all four are 23 or younger. Awa Fam and Dominique Malonga both entered the league as teenagers and are the youngest frontcourt duo in WNBA history, both just 20.
In the prior two seasons, Hiedeman was playing alongside veteran All-Stars like Napheesa Collier, Kayla McBride and Williams in Minnesota. Even in Connecticut, she was alongside similarly experienced talent like Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones and DeWanna Bonner. But Seattle’s need has pushed her to be that veteran leader. Williams, who Hiedeman affectionately calls “twin,” acknowledged that Hiedeman wasn’t much of a leader in Minnesota because she didn’t have to be.
“That was like my little dog, so now it’s like she got all her little dogs,” Williams told The IX Sports ahead of the teams’ matchup in Seattle on July 20. “When she came over, I told her, ‘You got to spread your wings, you got to step into taking on that veteran leadership role because you’re on a young team.’ So I think that’s what you’re seeing.”
However, that doesn’t mean her leadership potential was invisible as a part of the Lynx.
“That was one of the things that we enjoyed is whether it was a leader or just a personality, she’s somebody that people like to be around,” Minnesota head coach Cheryl Reeve said pregame on July 20. “She’s good at giving to teammates, and I think she’s just in a great position right now in terms of the knowledge she’s collected to be really, really helpful to this team with young players.”
This is part of why Seattle head coach Sonia Raman thinks that Hiedeman has probably been a leader her whole career, just tapping into different aspects of it with different teams; this team needing her to be more vocal.
“I think T is an exceptional person when it comes to understanding the people around her, her teammates, the relationships she builds,” Raman said pregame on July 20. “So when she needs to lead, it’s very authentic, it’s very genuine, and there’s a really high level of respect and trust that her teammates have in her.”
Hiedeman views this as an important component of her leadership. She said she builds an individualized relationship with everyone on the team so she knows how to get them going or what they need in that moment because “you can’t be teammates with everybody the same way.”
In many ways, it is that charismatic personality that has shone via the Studbudz and led to the associated off-court opportunities. And Hiedeman seems to be a master of balancing her fun-loving personality with her professionalism to maximize her performances on the court.
“Man, if I ain’t come back focused, it was over with for me,” Hiedeman said postgame Tuesday of the mental shift after all the All-Star partying. “I don’t think it’s really like a mentality. It’s just the way it is. You know, we had a couple days off. Go enjoy the couple days, and then when you come back, be ready to come back. Whatever that is, whatever that looks like for you.”
Becoming a leader
Hiedeman has grown into her leadership role throughout the season. At the beginning of the season, even though Hiedeman is the kind of person who always seems comfortable, Dolson says Hiedeman wasn’t quite as talkative in the way that people are normally a little quieter when they come to a new team. As of late, she has been more vocal, and it has seemed more natural as she is “trying to push people, stay positive and just give people some wisdom,” Dolson told The IX Sports at shootaround.
“I think at the start she would say a couple things, but wouldn’t be kind of that voice that we constantly heard,” fellow point guard Jade Melbourne said ahead of their July 20th contest. “But now it’s like that one where we’re like, ‘oh, yep, T’s in the room, she’s got our attention, that kind of stuff.’ … When T speaks, she’s got the attention of the whole locker room, and we value everything she says.”
While Dolson is Seattle’s veteran “calm in the storm,” she landed on describing Hiedeman’s contribution as controlled energy rather than calming, praising the way she takes control in key moments.
“Sometimes our team needs a little bit of an oomph, less calm; we’re too calm sometimes,” Dolson said. “I think when we’ve been down, there are a lot of moments that we could go haywire and just spiral a little bit. But I think she’s done a great job of being out there and taking control of the game and settling people down and making sure that we don’t go downward and we stay in the fight and we are in these games at least to try to win at the end.”
Hiedeman accomplishes this through a leadership style that Dolson describes as a mix of a little bit of everything.
“She plays really hard. She’s vocal, but not super vocal … but also kind of keeps that positivity and that fun, that light energy as a vet, doesn’t always make it so serious, which, at the end of the day, we’re playing basketball so it’s a nice change,” Dolson said.
Melbourne thinks that Hiedeman is always going to lead by example through “passion and love for the game. She goes out there, she gets everyone up with her big plays and highlights.” For rookie guard Flau’jae Johnson, the example is remarkable consistency, the same person they need every day.
“Never too high, never too low. She’s always optimistic; she thinks we can win every game. She plays hard to do that. She’s always talking to me on the court, giving me energy,” Johnson told The IX Sports at shootaround. “She’s able to be an anchor for us as a young team to really help us get through our rebuilding process.”
It is hard to say why exactly Hiedeman gets along so well with her young teammates, but Johnson has a theory.
“Because T is like old, but she’s like young. She don’t act like an old person. And then we’re like very mature, so it’s not like we running around crazy — sometimes, but not like all the time,” Johnson said. When pressed on whether her veteran teammates would agree and describe the young Storm players as mature, Johnson initially said yes, but then, after some silent thought, relented, “maybe, that should be a question for social media [to ask them].”
Still, Hiedeman says she is enjoying being a veteran leader on a young team.
“I feel like it builds character,” Hiedeman said. “You got good days, bad days, but just continuing to show up every single day and be a leader and be positive, it’s easier to show up when you know you have however many people relying on you.”
Williams thinks that coming from a veteran group like Minnesota makes the transition even more difficult and impressive.
“You go on a young team, you kind of got to go back to just straight basics,” Williams explained. “She got kids that ain’t even 23 … and the reality is, in our league, sometimes it takes experience. No matter how good you are, you just need that experience.”
However, this difficulty has forced Hiedeman to grow outside of basketball in a way she values.
“We’ve been kind of losing a little bit, but I don’t know, I feel like you can always take something positive away from it, even though it’s not the result you want,” Hiedeman said. “So I feel like it’s been helping me handle adversity … just like with life. Like this is life, and everything’s not going to go how you want it to go or what you’re used to. So just being able to continue to show up, continue to be a leader, and still see positive.”
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Career-best performances
This shift has coincided with an increased role on the floor and the best performances of Hiedeman’s career.
Having never before averaged double-digit scoring, Hiedeman is averaging career highs in almost every major statistical category — 16.1 points, 4.6 assists, 2.7 rebounds and 1.1 steals in 29.3 minutes per game. She is shooting her second-best at 45.6% from the floor and best from the free-throw line at 85.4%.
On July 12, facing the Mystics in D.C., Hiedeman eclipsed 30 points for the first time in her career, scoring a then career-high 31, and setting a new career best for total points in a season. It was her 17th straight game scoring in double figures, a streak that began June 30th in Toronto. Hiedeman also set a new career-high for assists with 11 against Dallas on June 22. More recently, she hit double-digit assists again when she recorded 10 against the Lynx on July 20.
Hiedeman has always been a talented scorer going back to college, but Seattle has provided a different opportunity to show it off. In Connecticut, though she was a starter, Reeve described her job as largely running the offense and playing a little bit of defense. In Minnesota, she was in a supporting role coming off the bench.
“This is really her first true opportunity to show every part of her game, and without concerns for stepping on toes of other players, or without concerns for ‘if I make a mistake, I’m probably coming out, here come the starters,’” Reeve said. “So it’s a brand new opportunity that [comes with] a lot of freedom.”
Last season in Minnesota, she finished second in Sixth Player of the Year voting and third in the Most Improved Player race, averaging 9.1 points and 2.8 assists in 18.9 minutes off the bench.
Williams said she knew Hiedeman was ready for this change. Being “in the trenches with her” every day, she can see when somebody is ready to take that next step in her career.
“Honestly, she came to Minnesota and kind of took the back seat for the greater good of the team, but she has been a starter in our league,” Williams said. “She just stepped back into something that she already had experienced before.”
Whenever a player goes somewhere new to take on a bigger role, the hope is always that it results in similarly increased production. But that is not a guarantee. Hiedeman was a starter in Connecticut but didn’t statistically contribute as much as she is now.
The 2019 second-round pick out of Marquette (a school with three players drafted into the WNBA all time, the other two in 2000 and 2011) has continually evolved through every stage to carve out an increasingly strong career. Perhaps this season’s evolution has been successful because Hiedeman has adjusted to her team wanting her to be more aggressive, balancing her scoring with her passing.
“I feel like she’s just owned that in big moments we rely on her, and that’s something she’s never had to do,” Melbourne said of the evolution she has seen from Hiedeman this season. “She’s really been like, ‘Yep, this is my role, this is what I have to do night in, night out,’ and she’s really run with it.
“And when T’s up and about and going, all of us get that vibe, get that energy, and bounce off it, and we all get up and going too. So it’s been a really cool evolution for her. And credit to her, I feel like she’s done a really good job of just gravitating to that and claiming it really quickly.”
As Hiedeman grows, so does her team. The Seattle Storm have been performing in closer and closer contests, unable to come out victorious at the final buzzer, but getting better. As her young teammates continue to gain their own experience and learn from Hiedeman’s seven full seasons in the WNBA, the goal of the Storm’s rebuild comes into view.
