Scouting Kristy Wallace
How the Former Baylor Wing Has Brought Her Versatile Game to the WNBA
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Early on in the 2022 WNBA season, there have been few teams that have surprised in such a positive way as the Atlanta Dream. While they have had the benefit of playing the Indiana Fever twice, the league’s most southeastern franchise has jumped out to a 5-3 start, most recently featuring a blowout win over the Phoenix Mercury on national television. Rhyne Howard has of course blown the doors off even some of the most optimistic projections, but there has been another wing player whose role on the team may have been even less expected.
2018 second-round pick Kristy Wallace has finally made it to the WNBA, and while her game has not been particularly flashy, she has spent a lot of time out on the court as Tiffany Hayes continues to rehab a knee injury suffered overseas in Turkey. Despite the absence of their max salary shooting guard, the Dream are 5-3, and Wallace has averaged more than 25 minutes per game in that stretch.
Even if Wallace has not quite lit the WNBA on fire, her non-WNBA resume makes significant minutes in the USA’s top professional league a serious surprise. Wallace did not attend training camp when she was first drafted because she suffered a major knee injury toward the end of her senior season at Baylor, and then suffered another after just two games in her first Australian WNBL season. She then missed two entire years, only returning to game action in 2021 during the Australian spring league circuit. (That is where the legendary Lauren Jackson is making her comeback tour, and it is not an especially high level of competition.) She finally played a full professional season during the 2021-22 Australian WNBL campaign which started three and a half years after her draft selection. Since her return, Wallace’s on-court production does not make her stand out as a current WNBA prospect. She joined Australia’s FIBA Women’s Asia Cup side in fall 2021, but this was a B-unit featuring no Olympians, and she was still ninth on the team in minutes. When Australia produced a full-strength unit for the World Cup Qualifying Tournaments, she played all of six minutes in the team’s two meaningful games. In the WNBL, she was the sixth woman for a Southside Flyers team that finished seventh out of eight teams and included no import (non-Australian) players. While she did play starting-level minutes and earned WNBL Sixth Woman of the Year honors, she averaged 8.2 points per game on modest efficiency and did not stand out in any statistical category. Let’s take a look at some of the film.
Where Wallace looked most like a WNBA player was with her offensive versatility, especially her ability to handle the ball. Wallace was often asked to dribble the ball up the floor and initiate the offense despite never really being the smallest player on the floor for her team. While she was not necessarily asked to run an aggressive action immediately after crossing the timeline, nor was she relied upon as a passer nearly as much as she was at Baylor under Kim Mulkey, she also demonstrated her ball-handling elsewhere in the halfcourt. She was able to get all the way to the rim with a live dribble and just as crucially finish the lay-up over the rim protector once she got there.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxZDkM0eT9nqd_pVZTPFdFzyJ49I2djWd9
She also consistently showcased her passing and ballhandling chops in transition.
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3k-fsFhj2Eal9jVT0iWITuJxcpoFtInV
Despite all of that, Wallace was not a high level scorer in the WNBL. The team did have one of those in fellow wing Rebecca Cole, a WNBL veteran who has earned a lot of respect around that league. However, Cole is not a ball-dominant player, and it is certainly plausible that Wallace could have taken a more assertive position in the pecking order.
In addition, the most important skill for a perimeter role player in any professional league is the ability to space the floor, and Wallace was something of a reluctant three-point shooter. Sometimes, she would pass up a shot altogether, while other times she chose to attempt a mid-range pull-up. This level of confidence seems more closely related to the distance than the open-ness as those pull-ups could be decently contested. Sometimes, this worked for her team, as in this clip where she impressively cans a pull-up in a clutch situation over an excellent defender in Stepanie Talbot.
https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxFf0CdwkauAEvmhAK-wmbdhiNqAT_ATaQ
Other times, it did not. Wallace could be guilty of causing “record-scratch” moments where her refusal to take a shot bogged down her team’s offense. Even on that clutch bucket above, the Flyers offense grinds to a brief halt while Wallace decides what to do. Often, it could be worse, such as when Wallace gets called for pushing off on Talbot here after never even considering the open three-point attempt.
https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxqqYzENsGALZQsAatofw4p1w-n0syLruf
To be clear, Wallace did attempt threes, shooting 9-for-26 from deep range over the course of the season (14 games played). This included attempts where she relocated into a better position before firing. The point is rather that she missed opportunities she could have taken, sometimes leading to less efficient shots and possessions. This helps explain why Wallace averaged 0.97 points per shot in the WNBL.
Wallace also had some issues on the defensive end, although it seems that Southside’s scheme and coaching were at least partly to blame. In the three games I watched, the Flyers utilized a variety of schemes, including going very zone-heavy in a game that came after several WNBL teams dealt with extended COVID pauses. In another game, we see some extremely “soft” switching that does not require any effort to avoid the switch, essentially ceding any match-up advantage the opponents might want to attack. In this particular case, Wallace expects the soft switch, but power forward Sara Blicavs seems to miss the memo, and dead-eye shooter Marina Mabrey gets an open three.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxsxkRN_kDOexDDREPo2twp9mAJFwGn3la
However, some issues cannot be blamed strictly on scheme concerns. On this play, point guard Maddison Rocci gets beat on a cut and calls out for help. Throughout the play, we see Wallace aggressively sagging off Jackie Young, essentially a non-threat from beyond the arc prior to the current WNBA campaign, with the apparent purpose of protecting the rim. However, when Rocci gets back-cut, it is Abby Bishop, not Wallace who helps down from the wing, peeling off a capable stretch big in Lauren Scherf. Unfortunately for the Flyers, Bishop is still behind the cutter, and Wallace reacts way too slowly to prevent the easy lay-up. It is a messy play all around, but Wallace could have done more.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxO7qh1nbshpct_BLCCQkdCvT-Qy3WdM2H
This is not to say that Wallace’s defense was all bad. One thing that definitely stood out about Wallace’s game was her hustle. She clearly demonstrated her willingness to mix things up and dive on the floor.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxccAFcdDNkMwC5I69HDbpTkRjOzvZqrq3
So what has happened in the WNBA where Wallace is playing significant minutes on a team that has been winning games? Well, Wallace’s primary role has come on the defensive end for Atlanta. Generally, her job has been pretty straightforward—stop high-level opposing perimeter scorers. In the games I examined in detail, she spent most of her minutes covering Kelsey Mitchell and Ariel Atkins, definitely their respective team’s most potent perimeter options. This has had two major positive effects. One is that it simplifies her job; these high-level players are often going to be involved in primary actions and are less likely to be in the corner, forcing Wallace to make fewer reactive decisions and allowing her to focus on the ball. It also allows her to tap into her natural aggression both in ball denial and corralling drives.
There obviously remain some flaws. Probably the most acute issue at the defensive end has been allowing offensive players to attack easily when she closes out to them. This play is a particularly good example. Wallace sags off Danielle Robinson, a relatively unwilling three-point shooter, and she theoretically should not have to close out hard at all after tagging the roller, Alanna Smith. Technically, she doesn’t close out hard, but her technique is awkward enough that she undoes the benefit of playing off Robinson and essentially grants the veteran point guard a free run to the rim. Even though Robinson misses the lay-up, this is still far from ideal.
Now, when any player advances to a more difficult level of competition, it is reasonable to expect some of the less fleshed out or lower-tier aspects of their offensive skillset to fall by the wayside. In Wallace’s case, since she showed several distinct offensive skills but did not have a clear go-to option in the WNBL, it was a very open question which—if any—of these elements would translate to the WNBA. Surprisingly enough, the answer was basically all of them!
Wallace still has been aggressive in transition as both a passer and a driver. She has been able to take advantage of driving lanes and get to the rim. In fact, she is actually getting fouled more often than on two-point attempts than in the WNBL. She has even been able to utilize her mid-range pull-up on a few occasions even though those shots are generally reserved for point guards or high-level scorers. Moreover, Wallace has been more willing to let the threes fly when she is open. She may not be making a ton of them yet, starting the season 5-21 (23.8%) from deep range, but shooting when open definitely helps a team’s offense flow more naturally, and we have not seen the same frequency of record-scratch moments in a Dream uniform as with the Flyers. We can see just about all of this in action in this highlight reel the WNBA put on Twitter of her 17 points against the Mercury.
So how do we explain Wallace’s WNBA output? One cannot underestimate the value of continued recovery time and comfort out on the floor after essentially missing three whole seasons with injury. Even during the WNBL season, it had been a while since Wallace had played high-level basketball, and she could still have been getting her feet under her. I also have to credit Atlanta’s organization and coaching staff. Even if the front office did not specifically foresee this role for Wallace (or if they did so based on extremely old and therefore dubiously valuable Baylor tape), they still hired Tanisha Wright as their head coach. To put it bluntly, Wright has the team playing great ball and has specifically utilized skillsets such as Wallace’s, as well as Rhyne Howard’s ability to shoot off screens, to great advantage.
Wallace’s basketball journey also hints at how a lot of luck is involved in making a WNBA roster. Proper utilization, team need, and behind-the-scenes factors all play a role in how athletes perform at any level of competition. Over the course of her career, Kristy Wallace has had more than her fair share of bad luck—it’s high time some good luck came her way.
Thanks for reading the Her Hoop Stats Newsletter. If you like our work, be sure to check out our stats site, our podcast, and our social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.