2024 Sun First Round Pick Leïla Lacan Starting to Find Her Stride in Recent Games

The Connecticut Sun have focused their efforts on building a strong core of rookies, and it seems as though this may pay off, with Leïla Lacan taking strides.

Aug 11, 2025; San Francisco, California, USA; Connecticut Sun guard Leila Lacan (47) controls the ball during the second quarter against the Golden State Valkyries at Chase Center. / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

The Connecticut Sun are in a difficult position when it comes to their team and their 2025 record, as they only have six wins through August 14 and have not picked up a full steam of momentum as of yet. With a team that is a mixed bag between veterans and rookies or recent draft selections, it makes for an intriguing discussion as to how this offseason may go. 

For now, though, the focus needs to be on surrounding those crucial veteran pieces with young talent, and the Sun have managed to do that by accruing quite a few high draft selections in recent years. Aneesah Morrow and Saniya Rivers are the most recent two first-round picks, selected in 2025, and both are showing promising flashes of success in recent weeks. 

The year prior, Connecticut selected Leïla Lacan from Angers in France, who would choose to remain in France to help the national team during the 2024 Olympics, and to play with French club Basket Landes. In 2025, she signed her rookie scale contract, and in her debut season, she really started to show some signs of improvement. Despite a somewhat slow start to her WNBA career, the second half of the year has been much more promising for the rising star. 

How Well Has Lacan Performed Throughout the 2025 Season?

Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The first eight games of Lacan’s WNBA career included one start, and in that span she averaged the following per game: 8.5 points, 2.8 assists, 2.4 rebounds, 1.9 steals and 1.9 turnovers on .448/.182/.923 shooting splits. In the seven games following, however, she has picked up five starts, producing 10.9 points, 3.4 assists, 2.4 rebounds, 2.4 steals and 1.0 turnovers on .470/.190/.769 shooting splits. 

While the free-throw efficiency has taken a slight decline, given the sample size increase, everything else has been drastically improving or staying near the same for Lacan. This is exactly what the Sun wanted to see by implementing her more into the game plan, especially in the starting lineup. 

Leïla Lacan picks it clean and glides to the rim ✨

She’s up to 8 PTS and 4 STLS!

CON-WAS | League Pass pic.twitter.com/35OnGwofSh

— WNBA (@WNBA) August 20, 2025

A flash of stardom came against the Chicago Sky on August 13, though, where she put together 17 points, five assists, four rebounds and two steals on 6-13 shooting from the field. Not just that, she limited her turnover count to only one, and only picked up two personal fouls on the day, which is impressive given her defensive tenacity. 

These types of performances make it easy to see why Connecticut selected Lacan with the No. 10 pick in 2024, and hopefully, as she continues to get more reps, she will gradually improve her game even further to produce as she did against the Sky consistently.