The Weekly Roundup: Welcome back, Sabrina Ionescu!
A year after a season-ending ankle injury, the New York Liberty point guard had quite the debut at the Barclays Center.
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The WNBA season has arrived! Diana Taurasi demonstrated why the majority of GMs picked her to take a shot with the game on the line. Sabrina Ionescu returned to the Barclays Center in triumphant fashion. ESPN released the must-watch documentary 144 giving fans an inside look into what life was like inside the bubble last season. For these stories and more women’s hoops content, the weekly roundup has you covered!
Sabrina Ionescu Knocks Down Game-Winning Three-Pointer in Thrilling Return
Sabrina Ionescu had a premonition that things might unfold this way. “I actually, not gonna lie, dreamt about it last night… I 100% had envisioned hitting a game winner. So, when we were tied and walking into the huddle, I just was smiling because it was almost like too good to be true,” Ionescu explained after knocking down the game-winning three-pointer and lifting the New York Liberty to a heart-stopping 90-87 win over the Indiana Fever in the teams’ season opener Friday night. Ionescu, who missed most of her rookie season last year with a grade 3 ankle sprain, finished with 25 points, 11 assists, and six rebounds. To put this performance in perspective, only four players in WNBA history have put up a 25 point, 10 assist, and 5 rebound stat line. It’s hard to envision a more thrilling Barclays Center debut for a player Liberty fans hope will be the cornerstone of the team’s return to prominence.
New York’s offense was firing on all cylinders Friday night, knocking down 47% of its shots from the field, including 13-26 from beyond the arc. That’s good for an effective field goal percentage of 56.8% and an offensive rating (points per 100 possessions) of 105.8, figures the Liberty eclipsed only once during last year’s lackluster 2-20 campaign. New York can thank the trio of Ionescu, reigning Most Improved Player Betnijah Laney, and first-round draft pick Michaela Onyenwere for these eye-popping offensive numbers. Laney picked up where she left off last season in Atlanta scoring a game-high 30 points, including 4-5 from long range. Onyenwere also impressed in her Liberty debut with 18 points on 6-12 shooting from the field.
Indiana dominated New York in the rebounding department 45-28, including a whopping 19-3 edge on the offensive glass. Teaira McCowan, who has been in the top two in offensive rebounding rate in each of her first two seasons, and Jantel Lavender combined for 26 boards, 15 of them offensive. It seemed as though this would be the main storyline when the Fever took an 86-82 lead after Kelsey Mitchell’s pull-up jumper with 47 seconds left in the game. Of course, that was before Ionescu went off for eight points in the final 40 seconds. Mitchell led the Fever with 23 points; McCowan dropped 22.
Is it the dawn of a new era in Brooklyn? A one-game sample size is hardly enough to conclusively answer that question. However, with a core group of Ionescu, Laney, Onyenwere, and Natasha Howard, Liberty fans have a lot to be excited about this season and beyond.
Old People Can Dream Too: Taurasi’s Triple Sinks Lynx in Opener
Diana Taurasi drained a game-winning three with 1.1 seconds remaining catapulting the Phoenix Mercury to a 77-75 opening night victory over the Minnesota Lynx. Or was it 6.8 seconds remaining? Following a Brianna Turner steal with 6.8 seconds left and the Mercury trailing 75-74, the game clock suddenly froze, yet play continued as Taurasi drained a three pointer. After a 12-minute review, officials counted Taurasi’s bucket and set the game clock to 1.1 seconds; the Lynx failed to get off a last-second shot on the ensuing possession.
Skylar Diggins-Smith (18 points, five assists) led a balanced scoring attack in which every Phoenix starter finished in double figures. Taurasi added 14, and Brittney Griner notched her 42nd career double-double, tying a Mercury franchise record, with 17 points and 12 rebounds. With the Minnesota squad missing 2019 Rookie of the Year Napheesa Collier (playing overseas) and first-round draft pick Rennia Davis (left foot stress fracture), Aerial Powers dropped a game-high 18 points. 2020 Rookie of the Year Crystal Dangerfield added 17. Kayla McBride matched that fresh off her return from playing in Turkey despite not having practiced with the team.
Adam’s Week 1 Power Rankings
With just one weekend’s worth of games in the books and several impact players completing their commitments to teams abroad, the difficulty of ranking all twelve WNBA teams is a task on par with beating Usain Bolt in a 100-meter dash...while wearing Timberland boots. With those excuses now made, here it is, my week 1 WNBA power rankings. Let the debate begin!
Three Things I Learned from the ESPN Documentary 144
Back in March, Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green tweeted his thoughts on how to grow the women’s game. In part, Green mentioned the importance of telling stories about individual players so that fans can better connect to WNBA players and are thus more engaged in the league. The fallacy in this argument is that these stories are already being told by some pretty outstanding storytellers. Exhibit A is the powerful ESPN documentary 144, which chronicles the experiences of 144 players in last season’s bubble environment. While there’s a lot to unpack from this compelling film, here are three things that stood out to me:
The Very Real Possibility of Canceling the 2020 Season
Whether through protesting police brutality against people of color; helping flip the U.S. Senate; or through putting forth a high-quality product on the court, the social and political impact of the 2020 WNBA season is undeniable. That’s why it’s a bit jarring to imagine a world where last season was canceled.
Comments from Breanna Stewart and WNBPA President Nneka Ogwumike helped me appreciate players’ skepticism regarding the bubble concept and how many obstacles stood between the league and a successful season. “I didn’t think the bubble was going to happen… I just thought it was going to be really difficult to keep the bubble safe,” Stewart said. “There was concern around coronavirus. There was concern around the intricacies of not playing for five months and then being asked to play… There were concerns around preexisting conditions, high-risk players,” Ogwumiike added.
In the end, the bubble concept was competently executed, as there were zero positive COVID-19 cases among players and team staff during the regular season and playoffs.
How Demanding the Physical and Emotional Toll Was
In a veritable sprint to the playoffs, players powered through 22 regular season games in just 50 days last season. By comparison, teams this season will play 32 regular season games over 128 days with a break from July 12 to August 14 for the Olympics for a total of 95 regular season days. “Every-other-day games consisted of maybe I want to say between 20 and 30 percent of our season last year compared to 70 percent of our season this year,” Nneka Ogwumike explained. There’s no question such a schedule exerted a significant physical toll.
Daily COVID-19 testing, isolation from friends and family, processing the various incidents of police brutality, and organizing league-wide protests against these heinous acts all exerted an emotional toll on the 144 players.
Tianna Hawkins, then with the Washington Mystics, is shown crying after the postponement of Washington’s game against Atlanta in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting. Hawkins’ five-year-old son asks her why she is crying, and she responds that he wouldn’t understand, possibly thinking that a child his age would be unable to wrap his head around the reality of systemic racism.
Current Minnesota Lynx forward Natalie Achinowa explained how the Breonna Taylor shooting affected her, “It really hits home because it could have been me. And that’s the hardest part… At the end of the day, I take off this jersey; I’m still a black woman...it could have been me. It could have been my sister. It could have been my teammate.”
It’s remarkable how the players in 144 shouldered these physical and emotional burdens throughout their time in the bubble.
Age is Just a Number to Diana Taurasi
In 144, Diana Taurasi addressed the speculation that last year was going to be her final season in the league. For someone widely regarded as the GOAT of the WNBA, one might reasonably expect a GOAT-caliber response to such rumors. Taurasi didn’t disappoint.
“Coming into this year everyone’s like ‘Oh, it’s probably going to be your last year.’ It’s like, why can’t old people dream too? What, there’s an age limit to being great?” she said.
Following a season where the 38-year old ranked fifth in the league in scoring, fourth in win shares per 40 minutes, and made the All-WNBA Second Team, I am inclined to agree with the GOAT.
Her Hoop Stats New Website Features
One of our goals here at Her Hoop Stats is to unlock better insight about women’s basketball. As such, we are always on the lookout for ways to better achieve this objective and improve user experience. To that end, we recently added a few really neat features to herhoopstats.com!
For those fans of data visualization, we added charting tools that allow you to plot any pair of stats for players or teams. These tools work for the WNBA as well as all three NCAA divisions. For instance, you could plot the offensive and defensive efficiency for each NCAA Division I team last season.
Schedule pages for both WNBA and NCAA are also now featured on the Her Hoop Stats website. The NCAA schedule pages contain our predictions for each game, and we plan to incorporate this functionality into the WNBA schedule pages soon.
We’re pretty excited about these new features, and we certainly hope you are as well! If you have any feedback regarding these tools or have ideas for how we might improve the site, please let us know on Instagram or Twitter @herhoopstats or by emailing our founder, Aaron Barzilai, at aaronbarzilai@herhoopstats.com.
WNBA Schedule This Week (All Times Eastern)
Here is a full listing of this week’s games, start times, and where you can catch the action.
Her Hoop Stats Content in Case You Missed It
In the week leading up to opening night of the 25th WNBA season, Her Hoop Stats released the following new podcast content:
On the Her Hoop Stats podcast, John Liddle spoke with Dallas Wings play-by-play announcer Ron Thulin. Ron offered a glimpse into his experience with broadcasting remotely last year and also previewed the 2021 season.
On the latest episode of Courtside, Christy Winters-Scott and Gabe Ibrahim broke down the final roster cuts and previewed the weekend’s docket of games.
What were the most impressive statistics from this past NCAA season? What were the weirdest? And what in the world are Trillions and Pareto efficient games? Jacob Mox covered all of this in his recent piece about interesting statistics from the 2020-21 NCAA season.
From number one pick Kelsey Plum to WNBA Rookie of the Year Allisha Gray, Jacqueline LeBlanc analyzed how the careers of the 2017 WNBA draft class have panned out so far.
Aneela Khan discussed what to expect from the WNBA’s top veterans ahead of the start of the league’s 25th season.
Richard Cohen provided a very helpful guide detailing how teams arrived at their opening day rosters and how they will manage these rosters as the season progresses.
Other Recommended Content
On his podcast ESPN Daily, Pablo Torre spoke with Rebecca Lobo about the WNBA’s growth as well as her experiences during the league’s beginnings in 1997.
For NBC Sports’ On Her Turf, Alex Azzi discussed a quirk in the WNBA collective bargaining agreement that prohibits teams from using women as practice players.
For The Ringer, Mirin Fader wrote a compelling profile on WNBA superstar Breanna Stewart. This must-read article covers the difficult road back from Stewie’s career-threatening Achilles injury; her deal with Puma to create her signature basketball sneaker; and her drive to be the best.
For Sports Illustrated, Kate Fagan wrote about the unique obstacles the WNBA faced during its first 25 years of existence and the steps recently taken by players and ownership to facilitate growth.
For the Washington Post, Robert O’Connell wrote about the changing dynamic between Liz Cambage and reigning WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson.
WNBA Trivia Questions of the Week
The answers to last week’s questions will be posted on Twitter @herhoopstats. Here are this week’s questions - good luck!
Easier: Accomplishing the feat in 2018, who is the last player to average a double-double in a season? The player in question has achieved this feat six times in her career - four times as a member of the Chicago Sky and twice as a member of the Minnesota Lynx.
More Difficult: The WNBA’s annual sportsmanship award is named after which three-time WNBA champion?
Ken Jennings-Level: Who is the only person to win Coach of the Year honors in a year where their team failed to boast a winning record during the regular season?
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, Facebook, and Instagram.