The Next Steps for Sabrina Ionescu
What does the New York Liberty guard need to do to improve her game at the professional level?
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For Sabrina Ionescu, it’s been a long time since she had anything to prove. The player who had more triple-doubles than any basketball player in NCAA history was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 WNBA Draft for a reason. But after her injury-shortened rookie season, there might have been at least a little something to prove.
Ionescu took her second season by storm from the start. In her first game, she put up a double-double with 25 points and 11 assists. Six rebounds and a steal rounded out a stat line that was enough to make people wonder what she would do next.
Just two games later--in only her sixth career game as a professional--she had the first triple-double ever recorded by a member of the New York Liberty. This time it was 26 points, 10 rebounds, and 12 assists. As a founding club in the WNBA, the Liberty’s record stretched back 25 seasons.
As a result, Ionescu, along with Betnijah Laney, drove the team to a hot start. The Liberty are 6-5 in the early going after ending the bubble season with a league-worst 2-20 record.
More recently, Sabrina has scored in just single digits in her last three games before being sidelined Sunday by tendonitis. For the season, Ionescu is scoring 13.7 points per game while dishing out 7.1 assists. She is also grabbing 6.4 rebounds per game and generates a much-debated amount of media buzz. No player has managed to average 13/7/6 for a full season. What more can she do?
For a player who was projected to be a leading point guard, her ability to protect the rock is emerging as an area of concern. In her young career, she averages 3.8 turnovers per contest. Ionescu is averaging two assists per turnover in nine games this season. Those numbers are nowhere close to the phenomenal output she had in college.
In her final year at Oregon, Ionescu averaged 9.1 assists and 3.0 turnovers per game. That 3.05 assist-to-turnover ratio was near the top of NCAA basketball in 2019-20. Her 2.00 assists-to-turnovers in the WNBA place her in the top 82 percent, but well behind top producers like Sue Bird (3.65 assist-to-turnover rate).
As implied by the gap between her league percentile ranking in assists per game (99th percentile) and turnovers per game (4th percentile), it’s Ionescu’s turnovers that are the pressing concern. She turns the ball over on 21.8 percent of plays. That turnover rate puts her in the bottom 18 percent of WNBA players.
In 2018-19, Ionescu had her best season as far as turnover percentage. As a junior, she turned the ball over on 12.4 percent of plays placing her in the 90th percentile of college basketball. That number was not as good her senior season, increasing to 17.6 percent and landing her in the 58th percentile.
Ionescu is also struggling from inside the three-point line. While the Liberty’s star guard is hitting 41.5 percent of her three-pointers, she’s connecting on just 29.2 percent of her two-point shots.
The drop in two-point efficiency is an even bigger decline from her college days. At the NCAA level, Ionescu was good on 59 percent of her two-point shots during her final year in college. Her lowest two-point shooting percentage came her freshman season when she connected on 37 percent of those shots.
The Liberty are trying to get her more involved in the offense according to head coach Walt Hopkins. Taking her off the ball is one option that may help both her scoring and her ability to limit her turnovers.
“We took her off the ball against Atlanta almost completely because of their ability to pressure,” Hopkins told the AP’s Doug Feinberg during his June 5th pregame press conference. “We have to do a better job of making play calls that will get her the ball in those second and third side actions.”
Ionescu’s ability to dominate multiple facets of a game can’t be denied. She spent four years at Oregon proving it. She has already shown that she has the ability to do that at the professional level just 12 games into her career. The problem for her is consistency.
The combination of a lost season, injury, and the need to adapt to the professional level is likely affecting Ionescu’s performance The Liberty are not overly concerned at this point in her career.
“This is very, very early,” Hopkins said earlier this season. “It’s Sabrina’s ninth or tenth game as a professional basketball player. There’s a lot of learning to do, and I hope everybody’s being as patient as is necessary.”
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Sabrina is not as good as advertised. The triple double came against the Indiana fever and a high school team cab beat them