The WNBA is the hardest league in American sports to even get a proverbial cup of coffee in. It’s not hard to see why; with just 15 teams (and that’s only as of this year) and 180 total roster spots, most of which are already taken by the best players in the world, there isn’t a lot of room for anybody to break in. Imagine how happy you’d be, in your favorite pro sport, if you could say that your favorite team had a borderline top-10 starter at every position — before this year, that was true of the absolute
worst team in the WNBA. I bet you’d be happy to just have a top-15 starter at every position, which is the situation now.
The WNBA Draft lasts 3 rounds and 45-ish picks, and when you compare that to all the talent that exists in college and internationally, even with the draft’s age restrictions, it means a whole ton of really good basketball players are not going to be drafted. And the WNBA is so tough to break into that most of those who are drafted, even first-rounders, probably aren’t going to stick. It is, in short, an incredible achievement to be drafted by a WNBA team — so when I say that senior wing Indya Nivar, last night, became the first Tar Heel to be drafted into the WNBA since 2021, it is not an indictment of the program. It is simply a celebration of Nivar, who leveled up her game on both ends of the floor as a senior, led a renovated team to a second straight hosting seed and Sweet Sixteen appearance, and now, for the moment, is a member of the Atlanta Dream after being drafted in the second round, with the 28th overall pick.
After coming home to UNC as a sophomore following a first year at Stanford, Nivar’s defense, rebounding, passing, and athleticism had always made her a valuable player for UNC. But in her first two years in Chapel Hill, the 6’1 Apex native had been a sometimes frustrating player on the offensive end, shooting below 40% from the field, below 25% from 3, and 50-55% from the free throw line — and yet attempting shots like she was a much more efficient player. In her senior year, nearly all of that improved — her overall field goal percentage (45.1%) and three-point percentage (31.3%) were career highs, leading to a career high in scoring at 10.6 points per game. And while she still wasn’t a sniper, she was at least efficient enough to keep defenses honest and make the rest of her game really shine. With her coaches no longer concerned about her being an offensive liability in clutch situations, she played a career high in minutes and rewarded her coaches and her team with career highs in every statistic — 5.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 2.7 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game. The rebounding and steals numbers highlight particular strengths of hers; she plays much bigger than she is on the glass — she maybe had no moment more memorable this year than when she grabbed an offensive rebound through four N.C. State players off her own free throw miss to seal a win — and the steals numbers speak for themselves; 2.7 is an outrageous number.
She became the ultimate utility player that she’d always looked like she could be with some refinement, capped by recording the program’s second-ever triple double with a 13-point, 12-rebound, 10-steal (!) performance against South Dakota State. She was a second-team All-ACC player and made the conference’s All-Defensive team, and likely would have been Defensive Player of the Year in the ACC if not for Hannah Hidalgo recording more steals than literally anybody ever. She did record more steals than any Tar Heel since Cetera DeGraffenreid in the 2010-11 season (the UNC press release says since 2012-13, but as far as I can tell, UNC’s steals leader that year was Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, who had 92 steals to Nivar’s 94).
Nivar’s versatility and full-court impact make her a fit on any roster, and she has the positional size and athleticism to compete even at the WNBA level even though her offensive numbers aren’t very gaudy. As for nearly anybody, it would be an uphill climb for her to make it, but like I said at the outset, it’s a tremendous deal for her to be even in this position both given what the WNBA world is like and where she herself was in her development a year ago. Her developmental story is one I’ll personally remember for a while, and I suspect she’ll be a Tar Heel favorite for years to come — we’ll certainly be rooting for her as training camps start in a month or so.
