By: Jennifer Portee
7/30/2026
You know that feeling when something’s been hanging in the air for so long it starts to feel inevitable? That’s where Dominique Malonga was headed into Saturday night’s All-Star Game. The 6-foot-6 French center had been throwing it down everywhere else Europe, Unrivaled, even in warmups. The only place the dunk hadn’t shown up was in an actual WNBA game, 63 regular-season appearances in.
Then, on July 25, 2026, Angel Reese found her on the right block, the defense collapsed a half-step late, and Malonga was gone. Two strides, gather, up and through. Clean, right-handed, no extra spin. The kind of slam that makes a crowd forget to breathe for a second.
By the time the buzzer sounded, Malonga had 12 points and 13 rebounds off the bench for Team Coop, making her the youngest player in WNBA All-Star history to record a double-double. She also became the seventh player ever to dunk in the event and, at 20, the youngest to do it.
The backstory’s worth the detour. Before tip, Flau’jae Johnson made it clear: no dunk, no talk. Consider that threat retired. Malonga’s been dunking since she was a teenager in France, and the only place it hadn’t happened was in a Storm uniform until that July night.
Seattle took her second overall in the 2025 draft, and she’s doing what top picks should do in year two getting stronger, faster, more decisive. The Storm’s 6–23 record tells you the team’s still figuring things out, but nights like this give you a clean read on the ceiling.
If you’re looking for where the Storm’s future is headed, it’s not in the win-loss column. It’s in a 20-year-old center who finally dunked on the league’s biggest stage and made it look like the start of something.
