Breanna Stewart’s Unrivaled struggles now have a possible explanation

Breanna Stewart didn’t have the best Unrivaled season — at least not by her standards. The two-time WNBA MVP still averaged 19.1 points and 11 rebounds per game, making her the league’s sixth-leading scorer and third-leading rebounder, but her efficiency was down and her Mist Club finished with a 5-9 record and missed the playoffs.

Stewart, one of the two co-founders of the new professional women’s basketball 3-on-3 league, was also eliminated in the first round of its 1v1 tournament. She fell to Washington Mystics rookie Aaliyah Edwards 12-0.

Now, there’s a possible explanation for the 30-year-old’s uncharacteristic struggles.

Per ESPN’s Alexa Philippou, Stewart “underwent a successful minor scope on her right meniscus” on Thursday. Philippou reported that, per team sources, Stewart will be back on the court in time for WNBA training camp. A knee scope is a minimally invasive surgical procedure where a surgeon uses a thin, lighted tube with a camera inserted through small incisions to view and treat problems inside the knee joint.

Stewart appears to have waited until the conclusion of the Unrivaled season before undergoing the scope. And, considering training camp is scheduled to begin in just over six weeks, on April 27th, the recovery timeline should be pretty quick.

Though Stewart was still one of the league’s better players, she shot below 50% from the field in 9 of her 14 contests with the Mist Club, and only exceeded 23 points twice. She also wasn’t named to the All-Unrivaled First or Second Teams (Napheesa Collier, Chelsea Gray, and Kayla McBride were named to the First Team, and Angel Reese, Rhyne Howard, and Skylar Diggins-Smith were named to the Second Team).

While averaging 19.1 points and 11 rebounds still made Stewart one of the league’s more productive players, given the fact she typically dominates the WNBA’s MVP conversation, the fact that she wasn’t in the mix for All-Unrivaled honors reflects a drop-off in her performance this winter.

And, while it’s always possible that her struggles were simply the result of a shooting slump, reports that Stewart underwent a knee scope appear to reflect that she was dealing with some sort of knee issue. The Liberty star doesn’t have a known history of knee problems, but she did undergo surgery in 2019 to repair a torn Achilles.

The good news for Breanna Stewart is that she should be back in time for the beginning of the Liberty’s title defense — and, she can sit back and watch Unrivaled’s postseason, which begins on Sunday, March 16th, from the comfort of her home.