Leila Lacan Only Connecticut Sun Player to Earn AP All-WNBA Honors

The Connecticut Sun has a building block for next season with Leila Lacan, who was named to the AP’s All-WNBA rookie team.

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Leila Lacan didn’t play the final few games of the Connecticut Sun season for personal reasons, but she has already done enough to impress award voters.

Lacan was named to the Associated Press All-Rookie Team, voted on by AP voters and released by the WNBA and the AP on Friday. The release also featured other league awards, but Lacan was the only Sun player to earn an award this season.

Connecticut wrapped up the 2025 season on Wednesday with a loss to the Atlanta Dream, which is playoff-bound under first-year coach Karl Smesko.

Leila Lacan’s Rookie Season

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Lacan played in 25 games for the Sun, with 15 starts, and her surge at the end of the season likely helped her clinch the award. She averaged 10.4 points, 2.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 2.2 steals per game. Her 2.2 steals per game average was first among all rookies this season and second across the entire WNBA.

She had five or more steals in three games, tying Gabby Williams for the most of any WNBA player this year. She also had a career-high 14 assists on Aug. 17 against Indiana, the most assists for a rookie in a single game in franchise history. She followed that with back-to-back games in which she scored 22 points in each game.

She joined Nykesha Sales and teammate Saniya Rivers as the only three rookies in Sun history to finish their first season with at least 250 points, 90 assists and 55 steals.

Leila Lacan Before Connecticut

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Lacan didn’t go the collegiate route before she was drafted No. 10 overall by the Sun in the 2024 WNBA draft. She has already played two years of pro basketball for Angers in the LFB, where she averaged 12.7 points and 2.7 rebounds in the 2023-24 season.

She played for the French team in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and played the following season with Basket Landes. She helped the team qualify for EuroLeague Women, where Landes won the championship and earned finals MVP honors. After the season she signed her rookie deal with the Sun.

Connecticut enters an offseason in which the team could be sold by the Mohegan Tribe, which has entertained four different offers for either minority or majority ownership of the team. Some of those offers would move the team from Connecticut. The franchise must also wait for a new collective bargaining agreement to be negotiated and ratified before it can begin working to build next team’s roster.  

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