Is Yvonne Anderson the Next Shey Peddy?

Can the Former Texas Guard Break into the WNBA after 10 Seasons Overseas?

Jan 24, 2022

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You’ve probably heard the story before. In 2012, Temple’s Shey Peddy was drafted in the second round by the Chicago Sky but didn’t make the team. She played in numerous countries overseas before breaking out during the 2018-19 season, leading Latvian club TTT Riga to a surprising Euroleague Women Quarterfinals appearance. In 2019 at the age of 30, Peddy parlayed this into another training camp opportunity with the Washington Mystics, then bounced between being on the roster and coaching. She made the team’s roster in the Bubble but was cut for salary cap reasons, then opted to join the Phoenix Mercury rather than return to the Mystics and ultimately hit a game-winning shot to eliminate the Mystics in the playoffs. Last year, Peddy held a rotation spot on a team that made the finals.

Peddy is far from unique in recent WNBA history. Sami Whitcomb and Yvonne Turner have had similar odysseys without even the initial name recognition of being drafted. Former second-round picks Alysha Clark and Allie Quigley took similarly circuitous, albeit not quite as lengthy, paths to becoming valuable WNBA starters after spending years without even making a WNBA roster.

A candidate to join those unlikely success stories is Yvonne Anderson. Her hopes might be even more remote than Peddy’s. Despite playing in a major conference for Texas, Anderson went undrafted. Turning 32 in March, Anderson is even older than Peddy was when she got her first roster spot and has played overseas for a full decade. Her Euroleague team, Italy’s Umana Reyer Venezia, is not likely to make the Euroleague Women Quarterfinals despite featuring WNBA players Kayla Thornton and Astou Ndour-Fall. And finally, Anderson’s Serbian passport might complicate matters if the team qualifies for the World Cup in Australia this September; she was an important part of Serbia’s rotation at this summer’s Eurobasket and Olympic Games even before national team legends Sonja Vasic and Jelena Brooks retired from the team. Despite all that, I think she is worth a look in the WNBA. Let me show you why.

Anderson’s offensive game begins with her effectiveness as a scorer, especially in the pick-and-roll. First of all, she can get all the way to the rim for lay-ups.

If the defense has packed the paint or otherwise thwarted her drive, she is able to create space and demonstrate her soft touch in the mid-range.

And finally, if the defense gives her plenty of space, she can fire off the dribble from three-point range.

It is worth noting that Anderson does not shoot an especially high volume of threes, and she sometimes passes up moderately open threes for somewhat uninspired driving opportunities. In addition, while she has demonstrated the ability to shoot three-pointers off the dribble, she shoots a number of 20-footers that could be three-pointers with just a slight adjustment in approach, and her shots off the catch, while not always from an outright standstill, do not generally come as the result of defense-bending off-ball movement. However, Anderson does showcase excellent off-ball movement while cutting toward the rim. This has blended excellently with Lithuanian center Gintare Petronyte’s passing vision.

Anderson can make a wide variety of passes off the dribble. Of course, she can operate in the pick-and-roll and make simple kickouts after a dribble or two, but she can also draw the defense deep into the paint and find the open player (often the open shooter) easily. She commands attention with her speed and scoring ability which she can then exploit for easy looks as you can see in this clip.

It is not just out of the pick-and-roll that Anderson makes strong passing reads. For example, here she does an excellent job with the entry pass to Thornton.

While she has not always played against the highest quality of competition (notably, this is her first season in Euroleague Women), Anderson has made at least 50% of her two-pointers in league and continental competition every season starting with 2017-18, and her worst completed three-point shooting year was when she made 33.3% from beyond the arc while playing for two different Turkish teams in 2018-19. She might not command top billing in any offense, but she is exceptionally efficient and is capable of creating for both herself and others, a combination of skills any WNBA team would love to have coming off its bench.

Anderson’s defense is not an endless cascade of highlight plays, but she is fully capable of disrupting possessions. For example, she blows up this dribble hand-off while guarding 2021 Connecticut Sun training camp invitee Sydney Wallace, diving on the floor for the steal and starting a sequence which ended with an easy transition lay-up.

She is also adept at playing passing lanes, such as on this play where she snatches this skip pass out of the air that was not even intended for her match-up.

It is also worth noting that Anderson has played in a variety of line-ups for Umana Reyer Venezia. At the Euroleague level, this has included line-ups where 6’3” former Wake Forest forward Elisa Penna is guarding opposing shooting guards to three-guard looks where Anderson plays alongside the smaller Debora Carangelo and Beatrice Attura. Anderson generally guards bigger players than either Carangelo or Attura, demonstrating her versatility at this end. For example, here Anderson holds her own in the post against 6’0” wing Mamignan Toure.

While Anderson does get beat off the dribble sometimes and misses opportunities to be disruptive, it is fair to say that Anderson is far from a liability defensively, and she has at least some amount of versatility at that end.

At the Euroleague Women level, Anderson is a strong three-level scorer and passer who can match up with bigger guards. WNBA teams are always looking for competent bench guards, especially ones that can effectively run offense. If the scoring translates at even one of these levels and she can hold her own defensively, she can help a WNBA team’s bench. While a potential World Cup berth for Serbia certainly complicates matters (as well as the possibility that Umana Reyer Venezia advances deep in the Italian league play-offs), she at the very least deserves the opportunity to make a roster in the best league in the world should she want to give it a shot.

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