2024 WNBA Draft Scouting Report: Carla Leite
Providing a summary of the French prospect's game
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Talented players from all across the world have been part of the WNBA since its inception. However, these players often seem undervalued on draft night for a variety of reasons, from legitimate concerns about unavailability, to the difficulties in projecting players drafted two or more years younger than their NCAA peers, to lack of familiarity with overseas leagues. However, quality players have been found from international leagues at every stage of the WNBA Draft, and there are even undrafted players who become quality WNBA players like Marine Johannès. As such, it remains important for teams and media members to scout them, and it can be fun even for more casual fans. We have previously covered Australian wing Isobel Borlase, Australian forward Nyadiew Puoch, and French guard Leïla Lacan and are back to discuss another exciting young player eligible for the 2024 WNBA Draft, Carla Leite from France.
Leite is a 5-foot-9 playmaking guard who plays for Tarbes in the French league. This team has no active WNBA players but features former WNBA draft pick Isabelle Yacoubou (who was an ineligible selection in 2012), former Syracuse and Rhode Island forward Marie-Paule Foppossi, and a high-level 2025 WNBA Draft prospect in center Dominique Malonga. It also recently added another former WNBA draft pick in Argentinian guard Florencia Chagas.
The foremost element of Leite’s game is her ability as a pick-and-roll operator who likes to attack the rim.
Her layup attempts do not always go in the basket, like this attempt against former Louisville power forward WNBA draft pick Sam Fuerhing, but her willingness to go into the body of defenders makes for efficient offense.
These traits also make her a top-tier foul drawer. She currently averages 5.4 free-throw attempts per game after averaging 4.4 per game last season in substantially fewer minutes. Crucially, she also has the strength and dexterity to turn fouls into three-point play opportunities, as she does here over former UCF center Masseny Kaba.
She can also get to the rim and draw fouls even without a screen. On this play, she rips and goes nicely from the corner after deciding not to throw the baseline entry pass, blowing by an effective wing defender in Maxuella Lisowa Mbaka and drawing a foul on the help rotation from former WNBA guard Shavonte Zellous.
She routinely gets fouled by post players playing aggressive pick-and-roll coverages…
And when the defense doesn’t manage to bump her off balance, she is adept at getting all the way to the rim, as she does here in a pick-and-roll defended by former WNBA draft pick Kayana Traylor and Mali international Diana Balayera.
Part of her success is the product of her comfort in changing directions, snaking and splitting pick-and-rolls, like on this play where she opens an angle for a rolling Jess-Mine Zodia.
Leite also likes to make a wide variety of passes, which she throws aggressively. For example, here she nicely slots in a pass to Zodia, who is occupying the flat.
Her ability to get paint touches off the dribble opens up outside shots for her teammates, and she can deliver as she does here with this one-handed assist to the corner.
She does not earn credit for the assist here, but the pass to teammate Camille Droguet lifting to the wing kicks off a nice sequence of ball movement that results in her team scoring off an open corner three.
While this pass to Isabelle Yacoubou may not be perfectly on target, its supreme daring creates a high-value opportunity which Yacoubou finishes with an and-1.
Sometimes, her passes can be a bit too daring, thrown into overly tight windows or forcing
her teammate to move out of position. Turnovers are a serious problem for Leite as she currently averages 4.4 per game.
As seen in the earlier clip of her assist to Yacoubou, her interior passes tend to be thrown a little bit high.
She also seems to struggle more against full-court pressure than someone with her presumptive role should.
This play may not result in a turnover, but it is another example of Leite getting bumped off balance and losing control of the ball, this time in the half-court.
An important element of Leite’s game is her 3-point shot. Last year, playing significant minutes next to pure point guard Marie Pardon, she shot 32.1% from deep on 3.2 attempts per game. This year, absorbing the lion’s share of the ballhandling responsibilities, she is down to 22.2% on 4.2 attempts per game. While many of her shot attempts do come off the dribble, which is more difficult, this is still unacceptably low.
Even when defenses back up and give her a cushion to shoot pull-up threes, it does not always look natural. Switching post players like Masseny Kaba here can give Leite a large cushion because she cannot consistently punish them from long range.
A positive indicator for future growth is her excellent free throw percentage. She converted 80.0% of her attempts last session and is currently at an elite 88.6% this season. Free-throw percentages are generally more stable than 3-point percentages, and they can often be a telling sign of players’ shooting potential.
Another encouraging sign is that she already shows moments where she could leverage the threat of a pull-up to her advantage. Take this play where she pump fakes off the dribble, pulling over a help defender setting up a swing to the now-open Serena Kessler in the corner.
Off the ball, she has had moments where she moves nicely around the perimeter, but she frequently stations herself almost 30 feet from the basket. This may not portend well for transitioning to the less ball-dominant role she projects to have in the WNBA. While this conserves energy, sets up pick-and-roll opportunities, and helps with transition defense, it frequently does not help with spacing the floor as she is not a constant threat to shoot off the catch. Even when she does shoot off the catch from these situations, the opportunities may be a bit harder than they need to be, like this one several feet beyond the arc that goes begging.
Overall, Leite shows a lot of promise as a ballhandler and playmaker. However, she needs a bit more seasoning to be able to handle the responsibility of running a WNBA offense, and she has not demonstrated the skills she would need to absorb more of an off-ball role.
Before discussing Leite’s defense, a critical piece of context is that Tarbes has a very short rotation, and both Leite and Marie-Paule Foppossi are averaging more than 38 minutes per game. Several players have also missed time with injury, notably Leite for three games, Foppossi for four, and Isabelle Yacoubou for seven. This has led to some games with Tarbes playing as few as six players, putting the entire team on energy conservation mode. As a result, Tarbes sometimes makes schematic choices that seem intended to reduce players’ energy expenditure at the defensive end, and Leite’s defensive ability and motor, especially off the ball, may prove better in a different situation than they currently appear.
Defensively, Leite has struggled against ball screens, often getting behind the ballhandler. For example, in this game against EuroLeague team Landes, she consistently got caught by the screener, with this bump from former ACC post player Maeva Djaldi-Tabdi actually being one of the less egregious examples.
This case where she is taken out of the play by a screen by former WNBA draft pick Luisa Geiselsöder also echoes some of the balance concerns mentioned in the context of her turnovers on offense.
Here, she gets completely taken out of the play for a moment because of a solid screen from Kariata Diaby.
While she does not get hit by a screen on this next play, she still remains far behind the ballhandler, Yohana Ewodo, and never reattaches nor switches. It is also worth noting that while Ewodo does get some ballhandling opportunities, her main position is small forward, and she is not exactly considered a point forward.
She also does not always tend to be the most active team defender on the perimeter, rarely digging down or stunting toward ballhandlers. Some of this is also likely a product of scheme - like the fact that the team uses a fair amount of soft switching and zone defense, known energy preservation tactics - and some of it is also a result of her significant minutes load.
There have also been a few moments when her transition defense may leave something to be desired. Take this play where Kayana Traylor may have been much less open from 3-point range if Leite had accelerated a bit more changing ends.
The silver lining of her defense is that she does seem active helping on the interior. Take this play, where she draws an offensive foul on effective slasher Maxuella Lisowa Mbaka.
She also will recognize when she needs to rotate to contain drives when she is closer to the basket. In this example, her matchup is setting a back screen in the paint, so she rotates down to contain the drive from former WNBA point guard Alexis Peterson.
Here, she opportunistically double-teams former WNBA player Julie Wojta in the post in semi-transition when her matchup is in the area before recovering.
While this may be far from a perfect sequence overall, we also see her recognizing, albeit perhaps a bit late, the need to help the helper and then noticing the player left open on the weak side as a consequence of all of the rotations.
She is also willing to play physically against bigger players, as she does in this effort to box out 6-foot-1 forward Janelle Salaun.
These skills may allow her to be “hidden” on wings more effectively. Having the physicality to guard bigger players may enable Leite to leverage this effectiveness in this subset of help defense more frequently. It also may be an encouraging sign of future development at the defensive end more generally.
Like Leïla Lacan, the fact that Leite is French complicates her WNBA draft assessment. The French league has traditionally extended as far into the WNBA season as any other league, and the French national team has recently insisted that players who want to play in international tournaments must report to training camp as soon as their domestic league seasons end. The difference is that, while Leite’s shooting woes are only marginally more pronounced than Lacan’s, she has fewer obvious areas to contribute on the WNBA floor, making her projection more speculative. This makes it hard to justify taking Leite especially high. That being said, Leite’s dynamism and willingness to pass mean that she could very well earn a solid place in the league, possibly like a less physical version of prime Odyssey Sims. Overall, it would be reasonable to start thinking about drafting Leite in the second round, even if it might make the most sense to select her in the third round.
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22% from three and 4.4 turnovers a game ...