WNBA Dissected 2023 Week 6: Aces assault the record books, Mercury drop the axe, and more
As we near midseason, we look at how good the Aces are, how much of a mess the Mercury are in, and more from around the WNBA this week
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Too Good?
I hate how quickly we have to jump to conclusions in this league, or at least how fast we rush to analysis. No one sensible is picking an MVP after 10 games in the NBA, or using five games as a meaningful set for statistical breakdowns, or announcing all-star starters after we've barely been playing a month. However, at some point, you have to accept that a streak has gone on long enough to be worth paying attention to. So just how good are the 2023 Las Vegas Aces?
First off, obviously, really freaking good. Their current net rating of 19.2 would be comfortably the best in league history if they kept it up for a full season. No one's broken 15 for a full year since the 2000 Houston Comets. As my colleague Adam Vachon pointed out recently, their improvement in net rating from last season - when they won everything - would be among the 10 greatest jumps from one season to the next in league history. That's absurd.
Retaining their entire core from last year and adding only two exceptional team players in Candace Parker and Alysha Clark means that they have so much in-built offensive chemistry that they've been able to focus more on the defensive side of the ball. Using offensive/defensive rating, their offense has gone from No. 3 all-time last year to No. 1, but their defense has jumped from No. 278 to No. 59 in league history (rankings are skewed by the way the game has evolved in the last 27 years). On a less universal level, last year they were middle-of-the-pack in the league; this year they trail only the Mystics on the defensive side of the ball.
Go further into the numbers and it just gets increasingly ridiculous. They're shooting 56% from 2-point range and are flirting with 50% overall from the field (both would be all-time league highs). They've blown teams out too often for us to have any meaningful stats on crunchtime minutes, but we all know what Chelsea Gray can do when necessary.
If we're going to break it down to individual players, they only get scarier. A'ja Wilson, with two MVP awards already under her belt, has statistically been even better this year than ever before. Her counting stats are strikingly similar to last year, but with a very slight uptick in efficiency. Jackie Young has been so good that Wilson might not even be considered the MVP frontrunner on her own team. Flirting with 60% from the field and 50% from three as a perimeter player is ridiculous - and unsustainable? Probably? But that's precisely what Young has been doing. The transformation into an all-court offensive weapon that won her the Most Improved Player award last year has only continued, and at this point you don't expect her to miss. Kelsey Plum had a 'slow' start to the season by her own exceptional standards and compared to those around her, but 15-for-31 from 3-point range in her last five games indicates an upswing that'll likely take her back towards her career numbers. Chelsea Gray's third in the league in assists and threatening to become the first 50/40/90 player not named Delle Donne in league history (on meaningful volume in each category). Their worst starter is a two-time MVP.
Some of these numbers will probably come back down to earth, at least a little. They have three games against Washington and four against New York still to come on the schedule, and the injury bug could always bite them at some point. This still isn't a particularly deep team, even with Parker and Clark added to the group. But they've opened the season with a glaring statement of intent. Title-holding teams don't often do that. Usually, there's a little bit of a let-down after reaching the mountaintop and either needing a rest or relaxing and expecting it to be easy the next year. The Aces doubled down and apparently wanted to show they could be even better. If I'm on any other contending team in the league - even a 'superteam' - I'm at least a little bit scared.
Hot seat overheats in Phoenix
We had our first coaching casualty of the season this week in Phoenix, where Vanessa Nygaard was fired with the Mercury sitting at 2-10 and rock bottom in the standings. Given that it was slightly surprising she was still in the job at the start of the season, it wasn't really much of a shock to finally see her removed.
Nygaard obviously had a very difficult task on her hands since taking on the job before last season. She had to handle the situation with Brittney Griner being detained in Russia, a virtually unprecedented issue for any basketball coach, never mind one in their first-ever professional head coaching role. That both removed a key player from the roster and placed a level of stress on the team that would've been hard for anyone to deal with. The team were then inevitably fairly poor, and infighting increased the issues with star players appearing to fall out, and Tina Charles eventually departing. Obviously juggling personalities was a big part of her job, and one she didn't appear to handle very well, but a lot of people probably would've struggled with that task.
Somewhat surprisingly retained for 2023 and with Griner back in the fold, expectations may have been unfairly high for this season. Griner has been good, but, after nearly a year in Russian prisons, could never be expected to be at the absolute peak of her powers (or to stay healthy through 40 games). Diana Taurasi, for all the achievements throughout her exceptional career, is in the process of illustrating that Father Time remains undefeated. Skylar Diggins-Smith - the Mercury's best player in recent seasons - hasn't played a game this year due to her pregnancy, and there haven't been any indications that she'll be returning imminently. The rest of the roster is frankly fairly ordinary. Maybe 2-10 is a little worse than might've been expected, but not by all that much. Unless Griner came back and blew everyone away, and Diggins-Smith walked through the door fully recovered and singing a rousing chorus of Give Peace a Chance, Nygaard was behind the 8-ball from opening day.
All of that said, she didn't always help herself. There was the ridiculous situation where Nygaard said the All-Star Game wouldn't be an All-Star Game without Taurasi, leading Diggins-Smith to tweet a clown emoji that appeared to be directed at her head coach. The fractures amongst the players last year never seemed to be handled very well. Perhaps she was simply the wrong hire in the first place, bringing in an inexperienced coach to deal with strong veteran personalities like Taurasi, Charles and Diggins-Smith. On the court they were never particularly inspired but also not quite as chaotic and disorganised as we've seen with some teams over the years. Sophie Cunningham and Shey Peddy excelled under her last season. But this year they've never found the right mix. Although I question whether another coach would've done much better.
It'll be interesting to see where Nygaard goes from here. There will probably be assistant jobs available to her if she wants to work her way back to another chance, or college and high school offers if she wants to go that route. I don't think this will define her as a 'bad WNBA coach'. Plenty of people have failed at their first opportunity - including her predecessor in Phoenix, Sandy Brondello, now doing plenty of winning in New York. Meanwhile, for the Mercury, it's hard to see too much changing under a different leader. Nikki Blue has been named the interim head coach until the end of the season, but we've certainly seen those situations change quickly if the team keeps heading south with their interim leader. They do still own their 2024 first-round pick, so maybe they're already hoping for lottery luck and to make one last push in Taurasi's age-42 season. New Mercury (and Phoenix Suns) owner Mat Ishbia has already shown his willingness to spend money on the Suns, so if he's happy to spend big on Nygaard's replacement then who knows who might be on the list for the full-time gig. Teresa Weatherspoon seems on the conservative end of the possibilities. Sue Bird? Mike D'Antoni? Dawn Staley? There could still be plenty of entertainment to come from Phoenix, but it might be a while before the primary focus is back on the floor.
One More Thing
Last week, I wrote about a variety of rules and approaches where FIBA and the WNBA could benefit from paying attention to each other. I forgot a few, and one of the benefits of writing a weekly column is that I can come back and fill in the holes. The primary one I want to mention is that FIBA refs blow their whistles when someone is visibly hurt. If someone's on the ground, or even just evidently struggling to recover from a heavy collision, they'll stop the game. In the NBA and WNBA, we constantly see teams desperately trying to foul to stop the game or forced to take a timeout after playing 4-on-5 for several seconds, while a player is left on the ground in pain. One day, someone is going to be seriously hurt and the additional seconds it takes to get them treatment are going to be sadly important. Or someone on the ground is going to be caught up underneath another player, and either be hurt more seriously themselves or add another injury to the mix. The situation should be fixed before a serious incident like that instigates the change.
The primary argument I've seen against this move is that players would fake injuries to bring the game to a halt when it would be to their advantage. The easy answer to this is to credit referees with having a modicum of common sense. Let them use some judgement about whether they need to stop the game, and whether it would be significantly damaging to the other team to stop play at that moment. Also, FIBA's rules already have an element that dissuades players from that tactic. If an official stops the game for a player who's injured or in clear distress, that player must be substituted. So if you don't want to come out of the game for at least one play, you better not fake an injury.
Ultimately, this all comes down to player safety, which should be paramount. Yes, we all take these games pretty seriously, but everyone coming out of them at the end in one piece has to be the priority. So just let refs stop the game when necessary. They already use their whistles plenty anyway, so a couple more stoppages won't make much difference. And once again, we already have a brand of basketball showing that a different rule works fine and would fix the issue. Steal it.
More Move Explanations
First the easy one, because we've basically seen it already. Last week, Phoenix pretty much did what we saw Los Angeles do a little while ago with Karlie Samuelson. The Mercury flipped their designated pregnancy replacement player from Kadi Sissoko to Evina Westbrook, then waived Westbrook and signed Jennie Simms in her place, which now makes Simms the designated pregnancy replacement for Skylar Diggins-Smith.
On to the tricky one. Dallas finally started to make moves to fill their bench with players Latricia Trammell might actually use, rather than youngsters who she clearly has no faith in. Jasmine Dickey and Ashley Joens were both waived yesterday, clearing space to re-sign veteran guard Odyssey Sims, who'll give them another option alongside Veronica Burton and Crystal Dangerfield as a lead ballhandler. The Wings simultaneously released Kalani Brown, who's had a very successful stretch with the team on a hardship contract related to Diamond DeShields and Lou Lopez Sénéchal being out for extended periods of time.
Exactly why the Wings released Brown is murky. As far as I understand the rules (which do change without notice and on league whims at times), Dallas didn't need to release Brown in order to make the other moves. The hardship could've persisted while the Dickey, Joens and Sims moves were made. As I made clear yesterday, if Dallas wanted to shift Brown to the main roster, by rule they would have to wait at least 10 days. Having since done the maths on their cap situation, the Wings wouldn't have room to re-sign Brown on a regular contract until July 17 anyway (unless they made another cut). However, reports surfaced that they're hoping to re-sign Brown via a new hardship exception instead.
The awkward maths here is because hardship signings count on the cap. So bringing Brown back on a hardship cuts into Dallas's cap space and pushes the date on which she could be signed to the main roster even further into the future. There's also the possibility that she sees greener pastures elsewhere. Brown has played well enough in Dallas for other teams to take notice. She knows as well as anyone that the Wings have a very similar player in Teaira McCowan who's under contract for a lot of money for the next three years and isn't going anywhere. Brown became an unrestricted free agent the moment Dallas released her, and while players usually want to stay with the team where they broke through, she could listen to other offers. The most popular suggestion I've heard is Connecticut, where Brionna Jones's injury has been confirmed as a torn Achilles. The problem is that the Sun are virtually at the salary cap, and Brown would command at least the pro-rated veteran minimum salary. Cutting someone like Leigha Brown or Liz Dixon wouldn't create enough room to immediately sign Kalani Brown. There are a lot of similar situations around the league, especially at teams that are anything close to being contenders. The desperate lack of cap space makes moves of any kind potentially complicated.
Eventually, the Wings will probably find a way to shift Brown to their main roster, and it's probably where she wants to be. She may have to sit at home for a week or two at some point until the numbers make it possible, but that's the most likely scenario. But it's always fun to speculate on the unlikely ones.
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, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
I'm shocked, shocked that adding a former DPOY helped the Aces defense