Give the WNBA rookies time, everybody
It was a tough first week for the most notable WNBA rookies, including Caitlin Clark, but history suggests this is normal
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There are a lot of people who need to get out a pen, buy some stamps and mail an apology letter to Diana Taurasi.
During the NCAA Tournament, Taurasi pointed out during a live broadcast that “reality is coming” for rookie players when they reach the WNBA.
Because the Caitlin Clark hype train was traveling at full speed while on fire like something out of Mad Max, Taurasi was shouted down as an old salty hater.
Maybe she is an old salty hater, but she wasn’t wrong. Rookies across the WNBA faced a whole lot of reality in their first week.
During Clark’s last two years of college basketball, her teams lost a grand total of five games by double digits. This week her Indiana Fever not only dropped all three of their contests by double digits, they lost by a combined total of 68 points. Clark scored 17.0 points per game but shot just 40% from the field, 32% from 3-point land and turned the ball over 21 times in the losses. She also averaged four fouls per game.
At least she wasn’t alone. The Sparks’ No. 2 overall pick Cameron Brink, shot just 5-for-13 (38.5%) and spent much of her first two games on the bench in foul trouble. Popular forward Angel Reese went 8-for-23 (34.8%) and 7-for-15 (46.7%) at the free- throw line in her first pair of games. The No. 5 overall pick Jacy Sheldon shot 2-for-7 (28.6%) in 26 minutes and turned the ball over five times.
I’m not picking on these players for their rough first few days, but rather pointing out that it’s an incredibly difficult league for newbies. Amidst the excitement for the season starting, it’s easy to forget that Aces star Kelsey Plum averaged 8.5 points per game as a rookie and shot 35%. Or that All-Star Kelsey Mitchell only started half of her games as a rookie and likewise made 35% of her shots.
The list goes on. Las Vegas’s No. 1 pick in 2019, Jackie Young produced 6.6 points per game. Last year she got MVP votes. Sabrina Ionescu’s first full season in the W saw her shoot 32% from 3-point land. In 2023 she made 45% on her way to breaking the single-season record for made threes.
There have been great performances from rookies over the years. Candace Parker won MVP. A’ja Wilson scored 20.7 per game. Elena Delle Donne finished third in MVP voting. Breanna Stewart averaged 18.3 points and was voted second in defensive player of the year. Aliyah Boston scored 14.5 points and grabbed 8.4 rebounds per game last season.
You might notice a similarity with the players who have thrived right away: They are big.
One of the things that makes the transition from college to the WNBA so darn difficult is the size of the players. With all respect to Nebraska, who handled Clark as well as anybody, they do not have players the size of Jonquel Jones or Stewart in the paint or players of the speed and experience of DiJonai Carrington. When players like Delle Donne or Stewart entered the league, they were already as big or larger than average for their position – not to mention their coordination at that size was elite, giving them a distinct advantage even over the experienced pros.
The size edge might not apply offensively as much for Brink or Reese because both players’ most immediately translatable skills are on the defensive side rather than as scorers. Brink has seven blocks in two games and Reese has 17 rebounds in 52 minutes. They will need adjustment time to learn how to effectively score in the WNBA just like defensive-minded Alyssa Thomas, who didn’t clear 11 points per game until her third year, or Jonquel Jones, who averaged 6.8 points per game as a rookie, or Ezi Magbegor, who averaged under 10 points for her first three seasons.
Even the guards who did produce points early on had trouble being efficient. Arike Ogunbowale scored 19.1 points per game but shot 39%. Jewell Loyd shot 41% from the field but just 21% from 3-point land as a rookie.
So what does it all mean? Is Clark destined to struggle? Should we expect Brink, Sheldon and Reese to need multiple seasons before they can be difference makers?
It doesn’t have to be that way, but it’s going to take some time.
Clark’s Fever have faced two of the three best teams in the WNBA to start the year. The team had only a couple of weeks in training camp to come together with Clark as its main ball handler, meaning they will need time to gain chemistry. Kelsey Mitchell, recovering from injury, did not start the first two games and they haven’t quite figured out how to get Aliyah Boston opportunities underneath the hoop or open jumpers for NaLyssa Smith (she has just eight shots outside of 10 feet in the first three games per Basketball-Reference).
There might not be many answers for the Fever defensively – that could take a roster adjustment in the future – but they have the offensive talent for Clark to rack up assists and get open off the ball when attention ends up being drawn to other scorers. We started to see more of that with Mitchell playing more in the third game of the season but it always takes time.
The start of the W season has featured a number of sloppy games, including a matchup between Seattle and Minnesota that had the third most turnovers in history. The short training camp and preseason and time away playing overseas impacts everyone’s chemistry, especially a team with so many young players.
Clark’s turnovers are a concern though. She averaged 4.7 turnovers per game in college, which was among the most in college basketball. It may be a feature rather than a small sample size bug. Bringing the turnover numbers down completely might be hard in Year 1, but ball movement could help limit the amount of dribbling into traffic or high-difficulty passes that are being made so far.
Another thing that stands out is that Clark has averaged four 2-point shots and nine 3-point shots per game. Finding ways to get her moving downhill toward the basket could get her some easier buckets and set up kick- out assists.
I noticed that Iowa fans were already calling for coach Christie Sides’ job on social media, but she needs time to figure out where all the pieces fit to maximize her talents. That takes more time than three games against two great teams. If these problems still exist 25 games into the season, then more questions need to be asked.
How about the other rookies?
The makeup of the Sparks’ roster should allow Brink to play big minutes if she can stay out of foul trouble. Her history at Stanford would suggest she can be an impact player on the offensive end. Brink shot 55.2% on 2-point shots, which was in the 92nd percentile in college basketball and she hit 84% of her free throws (90th percentile). Her 3-point shooting improved to 21-for-69 last season.
The Sparks’ offense around her has 3-point shooters in Lexie Brown and Kia Nurse, so there should be opportunities to spread the floor and get her chances in space eventually. But like Indiana, that might take time to come together with so many new faces in LA.
When it comes to Reese, generating offense at this level could take a lot more work fundamentally. While she did produce points at LSU, Reese’s 2-point field goal percentage was only in the 66th percentile, which is quite low for a player who played underneath the rim. While she excelled at getting to the free-throw line, Reese’s free-throw percentage ranked only in the 50th percentile at LSU last season. She also took just nine 3-point attempts.
We have seen players improve their shooting and finishing around the rim, but that could take multiple seasons to make progress.
Other players in this rookie class are going to have more time to develop slowly. Sheldon can mix in with the Wings while Ogunbowale handles most of the offensive pressure. The same goes for Washington’s Aaliyah Edwards, who played 33 minutes in the first two games and then saw 25 minutes on Sunday (3-for-9 with 11 rebounds and five fouls).
The common thread is that the adjustment to the WNBA takes a combination of players discovering which of their skills from college are translatable and which areas of their game need to be much better at this level. Explosions on the scene are pretty rare because that adjustment can be so difficult. Thinking that these players were going to steamroll the WNBA because they were popular in college was unrealistic, but in time this draft class could have major impacts on their franchises. Be patient, friends.
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Rookies always have a transition period. The problem with CC is that she was improperly assessed as a player. 99% of the hype around her as a player was a function of generic, volume based stats like scoring and assists, without any understanding of how she put up those number. In all honesty, any good player who takes 27 shots a game, including14 3 ptrs, can score 32. That's not hyperbole, it's pure math. That's not talent...her status was way overblown because taking a lot of shots isn't talent and there's no chance she'll be allowed to shoot like that in the league. Her TOP was also ungodly, so it's almost impossible not to get 8-10 assists being so ball dominant. Once again people mistook a big nunber of assists for great passing talent. Her TOs are a perfect example that shows she's not a great passer, she makes some exciting plays but also way too many mistakes. No one talks about TO, or D, which is a disaster. If anyone had bothered to look at non volume based advanced stats, or even at what her box score and advanced stats woukd look like if she had similar usage and shot/ball handling volume as other stars, they'd have realized she was maybe a top ten player. I feel bad for CC, it was the NCAA,WNBA, NBA and the media that were so money hungry that they created this superhero and she's not that. It worked for them, but it's going to catch up. She's probably Rachel Banham. If she gets some breaks and works really hard, maybe she's Kelsey Plum and makes an all star team in 5 years. Either way, all this GOAT crap and changing the game narrative is pure hype
Could be worse. They could be Marquesha Davis who has a terrible coach with the Liberty who doesn't play or develop rookies.