Deep Dive: Are The Mercury Contenders With Brittney Griner Back?
The return of the star center has reinvigorated Phoenix.
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With center Brittney Griner out with a toe fracture to start the season, the Phoenix Mercury were floundering a bit. Griner made her season debut on June 7 against the Lynx. At that point, the Mercury were 4-6 on the season and had lost five of their past six games.
But getting Griner back seems to have cured some of what ailed the team. Phoenix is 4-2 with Griner in the lineup, beating the Lynx, Storm and Liberty in the process, all teams in the upper echelon of the league. Is it safe to call the Mercury title contenders at this point?
Let’s start with the offseason
The Mercury had one of the league’s most eventful offseasons, signing Natasha Cloud and trading for Kahleah Copper and Rebecca Allen. After a disappointing 9-31 season in 2023, the franchise’s fewest wins since 2012, Phoenix did all it could to build a contender for the final years of the Diana Taurasi era.
And while the Mercury struggled last season, there were extenuating circumstances. Griner was returning after missing the 2022 season due to being wrongfully detained in Russia and had one of her worst statistical seasons as she shook off some rust. Griner averaged her fewest points and rebounds since 2016 and fewest blocks ever.
Taurasi missed 14 games. Sophie Cuningham missed nine games. The only Phoenix players to play over 1,000 minutes were Brianna Turner and Sug Sutton. All in all, the team’s struggles last year made a lot of sense, but a healthy version of the 2023 Mercury would have won more than nine games. That matters when discussing the 2024 season, because this wasn’t a rebuilding team that added three good players; this was a team that already had a solid core and added three good players.
One other key offseason change was the addition of head coach Nate Tibbetts, who came to the team after spending time as an assistant in the NBA, with stops in Cleveland, Portland and Orlando between 2011 and 2023. One thing Tibbetts brought with him from the NBA is an emphasis on 3-point shooting. Last year, Phoenix averaged 20.7 3-point attempts per game. This year, the team has upped that to 28.9 per game. The offseason moves helped bring in shooting, specifically Allen and Copper.
Phoenix’s struggles without Griner
One thing that can make a 3-point focused offense work well is to have an elite big in the middle, a player who can take advantage of the extra spacing to put up buckets. Before Griner’s return, the Mercury didn’t have that, with Natasha Mack starting the first 10 games of the season.
I’ve been a big fan of Mack since her college days at Oklahoma State, largely because she provides really strong defensive minutes. For example, Mack is averaging 1.8 blocks per game this season. The Mercury have a 101.95 defensive rating with Mack on the floor, while their defensive rating in the 176 minutes with neither Mack or Griner on is 109.58.
But Mack has similar issues as Brianna Turner. While both players are impactful on defense, they also don’t provide much on offense. It’s hard to take advantage of the increased space inside when you have a low-usage player at the five, and that’s what Mack is. She’s averaging 3.1 field-goal attempts per game.
Some of that could be smoothed over if the Mercury were shooting really well, but they rank just sixth in 3-point percentage. Running this four-out approach with Mack at the five simply wasn’t a winning path when you’ve got Cloud shooting 23.1% from deep. You need a big inside who can make big shots.
What’s the ceiling with Griner on the floor?
That’s where Griner comes in. In six games, Griner is averaging 13.5 field-goal attempts per game, and the Mercury have a 106.82 offensive rating in her 150 minutes. Contrast that with the team’s 98.73 offensive rating in Mack’s minutes and you can see the offensive boost Griner has provided. Phoenix’s defensive rating has also been much better with Griner out there, and overall the Mercury have a net rating of +10.13 with Griner on the floor this season vs. -8.29 with her off the floor.
With Copper taking another step forward this season as a scorer and Allen and Cunnigham both shooting around 37% from three, Phoenix has the personnel to make a run in the postseason, especially in a year where it feels like the top of the league has come closer together. Vegas isn’t playing like the Vegas of the past two seasons. New York looks like the favorite right now at 15-3 on the year, but the Liberty lost to Phoenix on June 18, allowing 99 points in the game.
The Mercury are a viable title threat with Griner on the floor. She’s the thing that makes Tibbetts’ system run, a complete mismatch on both ends. Griner’s still among the best bigs in the league. She’s shooting 71.4% in the restricted area on 4.7 attempts per game, the best percentage of any player who’s averaged 4.5 or more attempts per game from there.
Plus, she draws defensive attention, which often means better spacing for other players. It’s a small sample, but Phoenix is shooting 36.4% on corner 3s with Griner on the floor while the team’s at 33.3% from there with her off the floor per PBP Stats.
I wouldn’t call the Mercury title favorites, but Griner’s interior presence plus the upside of their 3-point barrage means that it just takes a few hot shooting games for this team to go on a postseason run. Phoenix might be the fifth-best team in the WNBA right now, but we’ve seen teams get hot and win a title while not being a top seed, like when the sixth-seed Sky won the title in 2021. Don’t count Phoenix out.
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