KFC has been cooking.
This season, Kahleah “Freaking” Copper has six 30-pieces, with the latest coming on Thursday night, when, a night before her 32nd birthday, she scored a sizzling 35 points.
Yet, it also was the the fourth time this season that one of her gun-slinging games of 30 or more points came in a loss, as the Phoenix Mercury fell to the Washington Mystics, their fourth-straight loss. Along the way, she also scored her 2,000th point in a Mercury uniform, becoming the fastest Phoenix player
ever—yes, faster than Diana Taurasi—to reach that milestone.
That’s the KFC conundrum.
Copper is production and prolific as ever, capable of pouring in points from all over the floor. And yet, the Mercury are the WNBA’s most disappointing team, following up a trip to the 2025 WNBA Finals with an early elimination from playoff contention.
Early this season, however, Copper looked like the culprit for Phoenix’s woes.
Copper was shooting incredibly inefficiently. It took until her 14th game of the season—her career-high 41-point outburst in her bucket-getting duel with now-teammate Kelsey Plum—for Copper to shoot better than 50 percent from the field in a game. Over those first 13 games, she only creeped over 40 percent from the field once. Only her ability to generate trips to the foul line stabilized her scoring output.
That 41-point night, in fact, was the turning point. Since then, she’s converted less than 40 percent of her shots just four times. That’s the Kah we know!
Her pre-All-Star numbers of 20.5 points on 42.8 percent shooting and 27.5 percent from 3 have elevated to 23.4 points per game on 48.6 percent shooting with a 36.2 percent clip from 3. That progress makes her All-Star selection, as she was a somewhat questionable substitution choice at the time, seem routine.
But Copper’s reemergence as one of the more lethal scorers in the WNBA has done little lift Phoenix out of their season-long malaise. Just two games before she ignited for 35 points on Washington, she doused the Atlanta Dream for 38 points, hitting nearly 62 percent of all her shot attempts—in another loss.
Individual offensive excellence cannot compensate for poor roster construction.
The Mercury, after compiling an effective supporting cast of unheralded players last season, seemed to get a bit too overconfident in their ability to excavate adequate contributions from older or unproven players, failing to surround with Copper and Alyssa Thomas with enough two-way talent.
Their last-ditch effort—a midseason trade for Plum that required the organization to sacrifice what will be a lottery pick—also has fallen flat, as Plum has been healthy for just five games. Her absence has robbed the X Factor of the opportunity to at least enjoy some scoring fireworks from the Copper-Plum backcourt.
But, there is an upcoming temporary solve for the Copper conundrum: the FIBA World Cup.
While WNBA Kah is special, Team USA Kah is really special.
And unlike in Phoenix this season, she’ll be part of a roster that will amplify the impact of her scoring prowess, something she proved without a doubt in the 2024 Olympic gold medal game, famously inspiring a succinct stamp of approval from A’ja Wilson.
Her speed, always dangerous, acquires extra potency when she dons the red, white and blue, making her the perfect complementary weapon in lineups organized around Team USA’s foundational duo of Wilson and Breanna Stewart.
In all the sure to come conversations about the rotations Team USA head coach Kara Lawson should (or shouldn’t) deploy in Berlin, it would be wise not to forget Kah. I expect her to come through in a big moment or two as Team USA marches toward World Cup gold.
First, she and the Mercury finish out their pre-World Cup schedule with a visit from the Toronto Tempo, another team aimlessly trudging through the end of the regular season (10 p.m. ET, WNBA League Pass). Copper is listed as probable to play with a tweaked left ankle, while Plum is out due to the management of her left leg issue.
What do you expect from Kah, first on Saturday and then in Berlin? Can she cook up another 30-ball to give the Mercury a feel-good win? For Team USA, do you see her emerging as a key player?
Share all your Copper thoughts, as well as some appreciation, in the comments.
