WNBA Dissected 2023 Week 2: Banners that should be banned, when one shot is actually two, and more
Another trip around the interesting topics and trends in the WNBA over the last week
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It’s Not a Small World After All
Firstly, I'm aware that this is a fairly minor, petty little thing. But this is my column so I get to bring it up anyway. This is some Grade-A nonsense:
It annoys me generally that a lot of US sports proclaim their winners as the 'World Champions', but at least some of them have a realistic claim. The Super Bowl winners, for example, have come out on top in what is quite obviously the strongest league in the world in that sport. It's still pretty stupid to claim a world championship, because they've only beaten teams in the United States to win it, but at least there's some vague legitimacy. In women's basketball they don't even have that. For many years, the richest teams in Europe have assembled 'superteams' without the hindrance of a salary cap, restricted only by the cash they have on hand and FIBA's limitations on foreign players. For a long time they were usually in Russia, until the current war put a stop to that. This year, Fenerbahçe put Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot, Emma Meesseman, Satou Sabally, Alina Iagupova, Kayla McBride and Kiah Stokes on the same squad, rolling to EuroLeague Women and Turkish League triumphs.
So the Aces might not even have had the most talented squad on a global scale in the last year. They certainly haven't competed against and beaten all the other teams who could argue for that crown. Las Vegas vs Fenerbahçe would be a hell of an interesting series (we'd either have to clone Stokes or switch her over at halftime), but it hasn't taken place. Winning a WNBA championship is a hell of an achievement. Don't make up something you didn't win and raise a banner proclaiming that instead.
Reckless disregard for knowing the rules
This is such a weird rule:
However, it's a weird rule we ran into multiple times last year, so it'd be nice if league broadcasters were starting to get a grasp of it rather than being wildly confused when it shows up. The 'reckless closeout' is something we've been seeing for a while now. It's still not implemented particularly consistently, but if you try to challenge a shooter and they come down on you (especially if they land on your foot and potentially turn an ankle), then there's a decent chance the foul will be upgraded to a Flagrant 1. But a flagrant foul on a made three-pointer is such a weird thing in any other context that until they started calling these reckless closeouts it had barely ever happened before. So who knew that you could still get two attempts (if necessary) to make one free throw in professional basketball? But that's what happens. The three counts, and then the player gets two tries to make a free throw. It's presumably because the penalty for a flagrant should be two shots, but you're not allowed to make more than four points on a single play. So this is as close as they can get to a compromise between those two rule elements. The fouled team then gets possession of the ball as well, so it's a pretty hefty penalty (they could end up scoring seven points on the possession. Or an infinite number if reckless closeout followed reckless closeout, ad infinitum). The authorities would really like defenders to stop closing out underneath shooters, is the lesson here.
Of course, shooters who jump forward several feet and land on defenders who had every right to stand where they were standing is also an issue, and officials have to be careful not to always consider the contact the defender's fault. But that's a different debate for a different day. Just be aware that sometimes players might go to the free throw line for one or two shots, but you won't know which until they make or miss the first one. And it's okay to be confused.
Doing things by halves
Firstly, any stat at this point in the season has to be qualified by pointing out that it's an incredibly small sample size. 3-5 games is practically nothing. However, within Dallas's positive start to the year, there's been a striking duality to Arike Ogunbowale's production in their opening four games. She's been flying in most first halves, shooting 24-for-51 in total for 66 points, including 10-for-25 from three. Then in the second halves she's fallen off dramatically, going 10-for-40 for 35 points total.
I've heard the theory that this makes sense for a player who dominates the ball and creates for herself so much, that she'd wear down in second halves after expending so much energy to score early on. But then you'd think we'd have seen this kind of break in the past. It's not like she suddenly became a ball-dominant scorer this year. Previous seasons show no real difference between her first-half and second-half stats. So maybe it's just a fluke. Maybe they got a new brand of energy drink for the Wings locker room at halftime and they need to switch back, quickly. Or maybe the new backcourt starters in Dallas, with Marina Mabrey having moved on and taken her scoring with her, really has led to a different approach from Ogunbowale that's taxed her too much in the first half of games. Just as the numbers will likely even out over the season, her game probably will as well if she becomes more comfortable relying on players like Satou Sabally, Natasha Howard and Teaira McCowan to take on their part of the load.
Dallas have to hope for that anyway, because you don't win many games by halftime. Usually you have to show up for the rest of the game as well.
Lineup Minutiae
As inevitably happens early in the season, we've got some coaches who really don't know what to do with their roster yet. Minnesota have gone from starting Rachel Banham at point guard in their opener, to benching Banham entirely when Lindsay Allen was available to start there instead, to benching Allen on Tuesday night and handing the position to Tiffany Mitchell (who'd basically never played point guard before this year but had been getting minutes there as the backup for the Lynx). Mitchell is perfectly capable of bringing the ball up the floor and starting an offense, and has played some decent stuff for Minnesota in their opening games, but she isn't exactly a born distributor. This chaos for the Lynx at the point guard spot is nothing new. Since Lindsay Whalen's retirement after the 2018 season they've cycled through an array of options, often only finding their way to a choice weeks into the regular season. The chosen player has often gone on to impress - Odyssey Sims made an all-star team in 2019, Crystal Dangerfield won Rookie of the Year in 2020, Layshia Clarendon and Moriah Jefferson had good seasons after being picked up in 2021 and 2022 respectively - but never with any sense that there was a long-term plan. Then again, maybe the plan is to hand the spot over to someone like Caitlin Clark or Paige Bueckers, but that isn't going to help them this season.
Dallas have gone in the opposite direction, responding to losing their center by sliding everyone over and starting two point guards. Dangerfield is now in the Wings lineup with Veronica Burton, creating a tiny perimeter with Arike Ogunbowale that has so far survived without creating too many issues due to their lack of size. It's creating an interesting situation in Dallas. Having already missed several games due to injury, Teaira McCowan will now be gone for most of the next month regardless of her health, representing Türkiye at EuroBasket Women. The Wings are yet to face any of the league's powerhouse teams, but they've looked pretty good with their smaller, more fluid lineups featuring Satou Sabally more as a 4 and Natasha Howard often at center. Being flexible and able to attack opponents in different ways is great, but it can sometimes be difficult to integrate multiple styles of play. Kalani Brown has been added via hardship contract to do her best McCowan impression, so hopefully they'll be prepared when their original starter eventually returns.
Brown and Dallas are also illustrating another interesting situation. It's often said that the limited WNBA roster size and restrictive salary cap prevent teams from keeping and developing young players, and there's plenty of truth to that. However, Dallas are one of the teams apparently retaining players more for what they might produce in the future than what they're capable of right now. Brown came in on her hardship deal on Tuesday and played nearly 27 minutes that same night. Meanwhile, Awak Kuier - essentially also a center herself - played only seven minutes and has barely been on the fringes of Latricia Trammell's rotation. Rookies Ashley Joens and Maddy Siegrist, both seen mostly as 4s by the Wings judging from their very rare appearances, played just 77 seconds between them in that game. Unless there's a real breakdown in communication between levels of the Wings organisation and they're keeping players Trammell simply doesn't want, it seems like some of their training camp cuts - one of which was Brown - were very much made with future years in mind. Of course, the problem is that decisions like that can leave you shorthanded. With a couple of injuries and at least two or three players on the bench Trammell doesn't want to play, the Wings have been left with a very short rotation. We'll see how long this holds up. At some point they may have to either trust those bench players to actually see the floor, or cut them to add someone they think is ready right now.
Clark's Corner
As I said at the time and reiterated this week, it's slightly absurd that New York traded for a former WNBA MVP and got Kayla Thornton 'thrown in' as part of the deal. Not only is Thornton very good at a lot of things and being paid a very reasonable $109,716, but she's the perfect fit on a team full of star scorers that need role players to do the dirty work. She'll play all-out for every second she's on the floor, defend effectively at basically any position, and inevitably chip in with a crucial bucket or deflection exactly when you need it. She's a coach's dream, and precisely the kind of player who'll end up playing twice as many minutes as you expected because the coach just wants her on the floor.
This is an incredibly basic play but still has an impact that will never show up in the boxscore:
Thornton runs the floor hard, makes a cut without any expectation of receiving the ball, but drags a defender with her that leaves Sabrina Ionescu wide open in the space left behind to nail a three. Yes, you can see Courtney Vandersloot waving her through, so it's also an illustration of Sloot's understanding of space and floor manipulation, but it doesn't happen without Thornton's work-rate and similar understanding. New York have accumulated a wildly talented roster, but it's also stacked with very smart basketball players. Thornton is one of them, and when you combine it with her effort you have someone who's going to make a positive impact every night.
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Always look forward to your articles! The close out rule IS inconsistently applied, plus it impacts the flow of the game. I’m a Lynx fan and am completely confused by Cheryl’s rotation & use of players. Powers will have a great stretch, then sit for the rest of the game. Banham cannot play the point. Find a lineup that works and use it. Diamond, once healthy, should play more minutes. She’s your future.
Really good stuff Richard