The Storm and Sky Lost Key Pieces this Offseason. What’s Making their 2023 Seasons so Different?
Seattle and Chicago approached losing their star point guards in dramatically different ways.
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On the surface, Seattle and Chicago had very similar fortunes this offseason. Both former champions lost franchise icons in their point guards, Sue Bird and Courtney Vandersloot. They had former MVPs, Breanna Stewart and Candace Parker, join opposing superteams and saw important role players move out to Los Angeles. But now, after both retooling their rosters around an All-Star guard, their fortunes have diverged.
The Sky have a healthy 5–3 record, good for third in the league, and split games with the Liberty last weekend. Meanwhile, Seattle has just one win in its first five games. What makes their two paths so different?
One key part of the puzzle lies in each team’s assist rate (ASR%). Defined as the percentage of field goals made by a team that were assisted, ASR% has steadily increased in the WNBA since the mid-2010s. Last year’s league average ASR% of 67.3% healthily eclipsed the previous high-water mark of 64.7% set in 2019.
High assist rates are crucial for team success. As aggressive ball movement can disrupt an opponent’s defensive strategy, assisted shots are, on average, more open than unassisted ones. A higher ASR% is a sign of good ball movement, cohesion, and a team-oriented offense that moves together to create efficient scoring. It signals that the team is working just like that—as a team—rather than as individual units. Per Synergy, catch-and-shoot jump shots produced 1.04 points per shot league-wide last season versus 0.79 points per shot on jump shots off the dribble, highlighting the importance of a pass-first point guard who knows where to feed the ball.
Seattle and Chicago’s ASR% has outpaced the league for much of the last decade. Chicago’s jumped nearly 10 percentage points between 2016 and 2017 and has stayed above the league average ever since. The Sky set a single-season record for ASR% last year, assisting on 74.3% of their shots.
Seattle, who recorded the second-highest single-season ASR% in league history last year, has perennially been in the upper echelon of passing. The Storm’s ASR% only dipped below the league average twice in the last decade: in 2013 and 2019, both years where Bird sat out the entire season. But now, with Bird retired and Vandersloot having moved on to the Liberty, each team has been forced to rework their rosters without their star point guards.
Sky players who departed in the 2022 offseason accounted for over 80% of the team’s assists last year. To offset that, Chicago brought in Courtney Williams and Marina Mabrey, two established guards who can work both on and off the ball. Mabrey ran the point for much of her time in Dallas, working in tandem with Arike Ogunbowale, but was particularly effective as the 2-guard when Ogunbowale was injured. She and Williams, who ranks fourth in total assists on the season, have split the primary ball-handling duties for the Sky so far this year.
Alongside third-year point guard Dana Evans, who has recorded extended minutes off the bench, each member of the Sky’s backcourt trio is averaging career-high numbers in assists. Nobody can singularly fill the void Vandersloot left behind, and the Sky’s five percentage-point dip in ASR% reflects that. But this new trio of guards has stepped up to stem the bleeding.
Seattle took a different approach. With Bird and backup point guard Briann January both retiring in the offseason, the Storm turned to vets and rookies to rebuild their depth. Yvonne Turner was acquired as the starting point guard, with rookies Jade Melbourne and Ivana Dojkić trading minutes off the bench. While all three have had bright spots in their first few games, none is the steadying presence Bird was throughout her tenure.
That’s not to mention that the Storm haven’t finalized their point guard rotation yet. While Turner has started all games thus far, coach Noelle Quinn has oscillated on her backup. After initially seeming to prefer Dojkić, it was Melbourne who came off the bench for extended minutes against New York and the first match-up with Los Angeles. The Storm’s only win this season came with all three guards playing double-digit minutes.
Though the season is still young, the offensive uncertainty has manifested in Seattle's ASR% dropping from 74.2% to a league-worst 51.5%. As Quinn continues to iron out her rotation, both the scoring and facilitating burden has fallen to Jewell Loyd. While she’s taken it in stride, including putting up a dazzling 37-point, six-assist, and six-rebound showing against Los Angeles, even a Loyd masterclass can’t win games on its own.
As the Storm’s rotation is ironed out and rookies gain experience, the team will hopefully start to build some of the chemistry that defined Seattle in the Big Three era. And when that happens, there’s nowhere to go but up.
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