WNBA Dissected: 2021 WNBA Awards Picks
After a year of dissection, one writer makes his selections for every single end-of-season WNBA award
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Most Valuable Player
I'm not going to be throwing any huge curveballs at you here. In recent days the vast majority of writers, broadcasters, podcasters and anyone else with a WNBA opinion has selected Jonquel Jones as their MVP, and I'm right there with them. In some ways it got a little closer as the season wore on. Her scoring dropped off slightly post-Olympic break, with her three-point shooting in particular falling into a huge slump. But she was comfortably the best player in the league in the first half of the year, both as an effective inside-outside scorer, consistent heavy rebounder, and significant interior presence on easily the best defense in the league. That's more than enough.
She also benefited somewhat from most of the other contenders missing games here or there during the season. Jones missed five games to play for Bosnia and Herzegovina in EuroBasket Women earlier in the year, more games than have been missed by any MVP in league history. At the time, many wondered if it could cost her the MVP. However, for a variety of reasons Brittney Griner missed a couple of games, Breanna Stewart was out for four, Tina Charles five and even Sylvia Fowles missed one. Unless you were talking yourself into A'ja Wilson as a repeat candidate or Skylar Diggins-Smith for her work alongside Griner, everyone at least missed some time. That made Jones's five games less critical and easier to ignore.
The advanced numbers like Jones as well, albeit not in quite as overwhelming a way as some other recent MVPs. She finished second in PER after leading the league for most of the season, with Griner pushing past her via her late surge. Net plus/minus has her second behind Diggins-Smith, with Connecticut's defense in particular going from exceptional without her to frankly absurd with her. On/off numbers show Connecticut as actually having a negative net rating of -1.7 without her on the court, before shooting up to 20.0 when she plays. So she's not running away at the top of all these statistical measures, but she's very high across the board. Combined with being at the heart of Connecticut's team success, she's an easy pick. The Sun this season were essentially the same squad as last year except for losing Alyssa Thomas and replacing her with Jonquel, and they went from being a .500 team to 26-6 and the number one seed. There's your MVP.
Notable mentions go to Breanna Stewart for yet another exceptional year, albeit with some struggles after the Olympics and then the injury right at the end; Brittney Griner for her best season in years, showing growth both as a scorer and, finally, as a rebounder (and combining with Diggins-Smith to prove the Mercury can actually win games now even without Diana Taurasi); and to Sylvia Fowles, who bounced back from an injury-ravaged season in 2020 to show that she's definitely still got it at both ends of the floor, even at the age of 35. My ballot (unofficial - still waiting on that call from the league), would have Stewart just barely holding off Griner for second, Fowles fourth, and probably A’ja Wilson in fifth. Wilson’s had another great season, with a very slight drop-off from last year that for me moves her just off the edge of this debate.
Picks:
Jonquel Jones
Breanna Stewart
Brittney Griner
Sylvia Fowles
A’ja Wilson
All-WNBA Teams
Makes sense to do this here, given that much of the discussion trails off from the same lines as MVP. Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart are the easy picks at forward for the first-team. The guards are a little more complicated. Diggins-Smith makes it in for the way she's helped carry the Mercury offense alongside Griner this year, and for raising her defense from deplorable to at least reasonable. Alongside Diggins-Smith I have Jewell Loyd's slight step up this season inching out Courtney Vandersloot's continued metronomic leadership (but slight step back) in Chicago. The other second-team guard joining Vandersloot is a bloodbath between the likes of Sue Bird, Ariel Atkins, Jackie Young (if you consider her a guard despite starting all year at small forward), Chelsea Gray and others. Many will have Arike Ogunbowale in the mix for her electric scoring prowess in Dallas, although looking beyond the counting stats shows somewhat inefficient scoring and really ugly defensive numbers. I think I like Gray. She’s come in as a solid leader in Las Vegas without disrupting their post-led offense, stepping up in big moments when they need a perimeter player to take vital shots. But I could change my mind in five minutes.
The second-team forwards seem almost as straightforward as the first-team, with Tina Charles and A'ja Wilson ahead of any chasing pack. And then the All-WNBA centers are Griner and Fowles, and I can just leave it there, right? Ugh, apparently I have to choose which way round they go. All I can say is, thank your favourite deity that Jonquel Jones can genuinely count as a forward this year, because having to leave one of them off entirely might've even made me cheat with the positions. Long-time readers will know that I hate the way the WNBA demands that votes are cast for players in the positions they play, then often fudges the final teams however they please.
Anyway, this year, I think I have Griner by a hair over Fowles, but if you want them the other way round I wouldn't fight you over it. If we were picking a straight top-five regardless of position, they'd both be in it.
Picks - First Team:
G - Skylar Diggins-Smith
G - Jewell Loyd
F - Jonquel Jones
F - Breanna Stewart
C - Brittney Griner
Second-Team:
G - Courtney Vandersloot
G - Chelsea Gray
F - A’ja Wilson
F - Tina Charles
C - Sylvia Fowles
Defensive Player of the Year
Part of the reason Fowles doesn't quite hold off Griner for first-team All-WNBA for me is the same reason I don't have her winning this award. Fowles is going to receive plenty of votes and attention for DPotY - and may well actually win it again - thanks to her reputation and the remarkable achievement of finishing second in the league in both blocks per game and steals per game. However, some of the more complex defensive stats don't back her quite so forcefully this year. Minnesota's defensive rating was just as good - actually very slightly better - when she wasn't on the court this season. In several previous years, they've cratered when she's come out. The eye-test and the basic stats both tell you that she's still very, very good defensively, and very impactful, just maybe not quite the game-changing force that the Lynx campaigning would like you to believe.
As a team, Minnesota finished fourth in the league in defensive rating, back in a fairly tight pack with teams like Las Vegas and Los Angeles that trailed in the distance behind league-leading Connecticut. A glimpse at those numbers and the only way you don't pick a Connecticut Sun player as DPotY is if you can't find a way to choose between the. It's admittedly difficult, with the backcourt tandem of Briann January and Jasmine Thomas harrying opposing guards, DeWanna Bonner's disruptive length on the wing, and then both Jonquel Jones and Brionna Jones providing stiff resistance in different ways against bigs.
I give it to Jonquel for her fluidity and flexibility in both being able to protect the paint and follow around the more mobile 4s in the league. Bigs inevitably have a chance to make more of an overall impact defensively, because they're the ones sliding across to protect the rim when players penetrate. The Jones/Jones tandem is why Connecticut have the lowest opponent’s shooting percentage in the paint this season. So for me, Jonquel wins it, partly as a representative of the dominant Sun defense - the same way Alysha Clark (or Natasha Howard, or Breanna Stewart) should have won it last year as a representative of Seattle's stifling D.
Pick: Jonquel Jones
WNBA All-Defensive Teams
How many Sun players can we pick here? Jonquel Jones obviously gets in, and I'm probably not going to stop picking Briann January for these teams until she retires. Brittney Sykes makes it as the standout defensive player on a Los Angeles team that was surprisingly good defensively all year (they just couldn't work out how to score). Some of the same metrics that love Sykes also press the case for Phoenix's Brianna Turner. The Mercury's defensive rating was far worse when Turner came out, even though that would often have meant Brittney Griner was still on the floor.
Las Vegas as a team feel like they should be represented on these squads, but it’s hard to decide who. The advanced numbers - and we still don't have great stats to decipher defensive value, even if we have a lot more than we used to have - suggest Dearica Hamby, as the Aces defense had the most noticeable improvement when she was on-court. The eye-test, which I'm going with here, pushes Riquna Williams into the mix. Asked to take on less of a scoring role but much more significant defensive responsibilities, she stepped up this season and became their first option to cover opposing scoring guards.
For the second-team, Fowles is still impossible to ignore at center (and there's a temptation to slide her onto the first-team for Turner so that Brionna Jones could make it as well). Call me crazy, but as someone who likes to look at the numbers for these things where possible, I'm putting Dallas's Bella Alarie next to Fowles on the second-team. On a Wings squad that was often a mess defensively she consistently managed to stand out as the one making a positive impact (and she jumps out in virtually every defensive metric). She barely played 400 minutes for the season, which admittedly is a mark against her. Breanna Stewart comes in at the other forward spot, a mobile and lengthy defensive presence for Seattle (Mercedes Russell alongside her is also worthy of an honourable mention).
Washington's backcourt of Natasha Cloud and Ariel Atkins feels like it should be represented here, but the numbers don't back up putting anyone from Washington on these squads in 2021. The Mystics were a bad defensive team, and it didn't vary much depending on who played. The remaining guard spots I'll give to Jasmine Thomas - yes, yet another Sun player - and then I could not find a fourth guard that I wanted to put on this team more than I wanted to fudge the position rules very slightly to get Bridget Carleton in the final spot (she's a wing - it's close enough to a guard). Her activity and energy on the perimeter for Minnesota whether starting or coming off the bench has been very important for the Lynx, so in she goes.
Picks - First-Team:
Briann January
Riquna Williams
Brittney Sykes
Brianna Turner
Jonquel Jones
Second-Team:
Jasmine Thomas
Bridget Carleton
Breanna Stewart
Bella Alarie
Sylvia Fowles
Rookie of the Year/All-Rookie Team
I have to admit, I was going to throw some joke categories into this piece. Then I realised that we already had the 2021 All-Rookie team, so there was no need. Michaela Onyenwere might well be the weakest Rookie of the Year that the league has ever seen. The only RotY to average fewer points was Armintie Herrington (then Armintie Price) in 2007, who at least added on 6 rebounds and 3 assists per game, leading to a PER over 15. Onyenwere started the season promisingly but ultimately shot barely 40% from the field, averaged under 3 rebounds a night, had 18 assists all year and lost her starting spot in the final weeks of the season. Despite that, by default, she's the clear Rookie of the Year.
Aari McDonald at least started playing more minutes down the stretch, as Atlanta were running out of players, but shot poorly all year and had the usual growing pains of a lead guard learning the pro game. Only three other rookies played in at least 8 games while averaging over 10 minutes per game: Charli Collier, who was given a lot of rope in Dallas, before Vickie Johnson eventually noticed that her team were consistently worse whenever Collier was on the floor (net rating of -16.5 oncourt vs +4.5 when Collier sat); Arella Guirantes, who shot 27% from the field while being largely invisible in Los Angeles; and DiDi Richards, who at least had some bright moments down the stretch for New York, hitting a few outside shots and playing tough defense.
If it wasn't for the fact that it would be such a story, this is the year when they absolutely shouldn't name an All-Rookie team. But they will. Onyenwere, McDonald and Richards have to be in. I don't want to put Collier in, because she was very rarely a positive for Dallas, but she played so there's really no choice. I felt like I saw slightly more from DiJonai Carrington early in the season than from Guirantes, so Carrington gets in as the fifth for me, but obviously grudgingly. No, Sabrina Ionescu isn't eligible. I was tempted to include Indiana’s Bernadett Hatar for her seven brief appearances before getting hurt and disappearing back to Hungary.
Just a brutal year for rookies.
Picks - RotY: Michaela Onyenwere
All-Rookie Team:
Michaela Onyenwere
Aari McDonald
DiDi Richards
DiJonai Carrington
Charli Collier
Coach of the Year
They made this one way easier than usual. Typically, this award goes to the coach of the team that significantly surpasses expectations, and if no one glaringly fits that criteria then just the coach of the best team. This year, Curt Miller was both of those. Very few people thought Connecticut would even be a good team without Alyssa Thomas, never mind the best team in the league. He molded them into a cohesive unit that dominates defensively and has been very effective on offense while playing to its strengths. A very straightforward choice.
Bill Laimbeer, Cheryl Reeve and even Sandy Brondello might be mentioned by people debating their choice, but it wouldn't be a surprise if the vote was unanimous.
Pick: Curt Miller
Most Improved Player
I'm never a huge fan of this award. It often goes to a player who either hit enough of a hot streak or found themselves in a more advantageous position and therefore improved their counting stats. Rarely does it reward clear development in skills. Mercedes Russell, for example, has had a good year. Her stats are much better than last season. However, that's largely because Natasha Howard left Seattle and opened up much greater opportunities for Russell, who then bounced back to her 2019 production. That's not what I like to see rewarded with this award, but it often is.
Crystal Bradford also technically could be in this discussion, but when there are six years between your appearances in the WNBA, and barely anyone remembers your play from the first time around, it doesn't feel like it should count. Kelsey Plum is trending more towards actual, visible improvement in skills, as she's significantly raised her usage rate while shooting just as well, and adding a much higher free throw rate which has pushed her efficiency up dramatically. However, it does feel like we're mostly seeing a more grown-up version of a player that was pretty close to existing before her Achilles injury. That also complicates matters slightly, because she's improving from her 2019 season, rather than last year.
The player who's understandably become the frontrunner for this award is Brionna Jones. In all honesty, it felt like a lot of the improvement we'd be rewarding had already happened before last season. She was very good in the bubble, showing what she could do in a dramatically increased role when Jonquel Jones chose not to play. Then this year with Alyssa Thomas out instead, Brionna again had space to produce. There have still been improvements this year. She continues to look more nimble and mobile than we saw in the past, improving her defense and, despite the touches Jonquel Jones demands, upping her usage rate while remaining just as effective. It's at least in part for her 2020 season as well as this year, but she'll be a worthy winner.
Honourable additional mentions for Marina Mabrey, who started the season like a house on fire but ultimately dropped back to similar levels as we'd seen the previous year; and Nia Coffey, who looked like a real WNBA player in LA after being on the verge of heading out of the league.
Pick: Brionna Jones
Sixth Woman of the Year
It feels like a consensus has built up for this award as well, with Las Vegas's Kelsey Plum the strong favourite, but I do feel like there are some other contenders right there with her. Marina Mabrey had a similar role to Plum, providing energy, ballhandling and immediate scoring off the bench in Dallas; Allie Quigley is back to being a contender for this award after several years as a starter, and continued to be one of the best gunners in the game; Dearica Hamby, Plum's teammate and the winner of this award the last two years, produced as a combo-forward yet again; Isabelle Harrison was one of Dallas's few consistent and reliable interior options; and Crystal Bradford brought energy and excitement as a reserve in Atlanta before being moved into the starting lineup, and then getting hurt.
Ultimately, I think I'd give it to Plum for the important role she's played on a very good team in Las Vegas. But it’s close, and there are several reasonable candidates.
Pick: Kelsey Plum
Executive of the Year
Last but not least, an award that's gone to some odd people since it was brought in four years ago, often rewarding them for moves made before the calendar year that it was supposedly recognizing. Last year, Las Vegas's Dan Padover won for what I'm told was more about his behind the scenes work making the season happen than any playing personnel moves.
From the outside, all we can really look at are the roster moves made by the various GMs. Cheryl Reeve went spending in the offseason, bringing Kayla McBride and Aerial Powers to Minnesota, but their difficulties at point guard make me hesitant to reward the roster construction too much. Weeks into the regular season they realised that they desperately needed another genuine ball handler - an issue that had been pretty clear before the season began - and got lucky that Layshia Clarendon was available and that hardship exceptions made it possible to sign them.
I think I'd probably go with Las Vegas again, which presumably means Padover (although it seems likely that Bill Laimbeer is heavily involved in player personnel moves). They attracted their big lead guard in Chelsea Gray, brought Riquna Williams in at below market-value, extended Dearica Hamby at below what she'd get on the open market, and found a way to add Kiah Stokes during the season - a move which proved important when Liz Cambage missed time. There have been very few missteps on the roster side, and the franchise's moves to recognize their history and bring players from their San Antonio and Utah days to Las Vegas have been very impressive. A worthy winner.
Pick: Dan Padover, Las Vegas
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Good point on Vegas recognizing the past players.
For MIP if you think about who the most surprising success is, that for me is Nia Coffey. Also Bradford but that’s less compelling for me bc of the time gap- she was working on her game elsewhere. The gap doesn’t bother me for kPlum bc it’s not like she was off exclusively at basketball skills camp.