WNBA Dissected: A rising rookie, terrible twos, Sun still shining, and more from 2022 Week 3
From the sublime to the ridiculous, we're back again to offer a smorgasbord of everything from around the WNBA this week
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A Dream Start
For even the most excitable Rhyne Howard optimists, the opening weeks of the season have gone remarkably well. The Dream are above .500, Howard is shooting over 40% from three on very high volume, and she's top-10 in the league in scoring while looking like a star in the making. Given the last couple of rookie classes, it's been thoroughly refreshing to see some new kids show up and offer unbridled promise.
The most obvious successful element for Howard has been her three-point shooting, which was consistently good in college (37-38% for all four years) but has been even better for Atlanta. The four below all came in the opening quarter of a game against Washington last week.
She's got a quick, effortless release and the ball's been dropping - sometimes it's as simple as that. Only the first of those four has any real complexity to it, with a long baseline cut and two screens to stop the traffic that might try to follow her. For the others we're talking little flare screens from Nia Coffey and Naz Hillmon to give her an inch or two of space away from Kennedy Burke, and the release does the rest.
In pure scoring terms, she will probably need to vary things up a little more. She's shot a lot of threes (seven per game, third-most in the league), and a little more off-the-bounce attack or even an occasional post-up will help open the floor and make her more difficult to defend. Those skills require development to become consistently effective at the pro level, but if she learns to use her size and length more effectively then teams won't be able to get away with using little guards to chase her around. She's far too talented to just become the rich man's version of Shekinna Stricklen as a scorer.
The rest of her game beyond the scoring is already well developed, as we saw from the way she stuffed the stat sheet at Kentucky. She's a willing passer, and the steals and athletic blocks are there. This isn't stuff you usually see from rookies when they walk into the WNBA, but it's part of what made her an exciting prospect. She was never just a scorer. There's an all-court game there that you can build a team around. Atlanta hasn't had a piece this exciting since the last time they used the No. 1 pick on an athletic wing who liked to score and steal the ball, back in 2009. Angel McCoughtry turned out pretty well, and Howard's made a very nice start.
Use the whole court, Courtney
Look at these two plays, please. The same two players are involved in both.
That's long-established, much-loved, hyper-athletic guard Courtney Williams turning a one-on-one break into a slightly off-balance, 18-foot pull-up jumper, when faced with only a retreating Emily Engstler on defense. When rookie combo-forward Engstler saw only Williams in front of her, she attacked the rim and got an easy layup. In the seventh game of her professional career.
Some of us have been bleating about this stuff with Williams for so long that it almost feels monotonous to mention it again. But. She. Takes. So. Many. Bad. Shots. It's a near-endless stream of long twos, often contested, often leaning in one direction or the other. There's nothing wrong with a mid-range game, and there's huge value in having someone who can create a decent look on their own and hit a reasonable percentage of them. However, it's not supposed to be the overwhelming majority of a player's offense. Not in these days of analytics where we all know that threes and layups are the most productive types of scoring.
Last year in Atlanta, Williams took a staggering 282 two-point shots from 16-21 feet. No other player in the league took more than 114, and that was Kelsey Mitchell, who also put up over 200 threes. Next on the list was Jackie Young, and we've already seen this season how her game has been transformed by stepping behind the arc and shooting threes with confidence and accuracy. Williams converted those long-range twos at an above league average clip, which is part of why she's so fun to watch and has continued to be used by multiple head coaches. But that doesn't make them great shots. She's not that far above average (39% for her vs 37% for the league last season - both Mitchell and Young were significantly more accurate), and sometimes there are much better shots available. For example, Williams herself made 38% of her threes last season, even canning several of them off the dribble. She could keep moving the ball for a better shot elsewhere (she actually is a good passer when allowing herself to look for that option). She could attack the damn rim for once, like she should've done in that clip above against Engstler.
That's always been the other problem with Williams's offense. Not only does she take a limited number of threes, but she avoids contact like the plague and therefore virtually never gets fouled. Among players who took at least eight shots per game, she has three of the 'top' 10 seasons in WNBA history in lowest free throw rate. She's in there at No. 13 as well if you keep going down. With our slightly more complex variant of calculating free throw rate at Her Hoop Stats, she has the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 7th-worst seasons in league history. Most of the players who make those lists are gunners, players who do nothing but fire away from the perimeter. That's why Williams is so frustrating. She's a wonderfully gifted basketball player and athlete. She should be able to fly to the rim on a regular basis, or rise over people for threes. She just needs to play a little smarter. We're not talking full-on Morey-ball, but when you're head-to-head with Emily Engstler, go by her for crying out loud.
Age is just a number
This person turns 40 in a couple of weeks. It's absurd.
Taurasi leaves Jackie Young - one of the best perimeter defenders in the league - in her dust by rejecting the screen, goes behind her back to snake past Kiah Stokes, then finds the perfect dump-off pass to Brianna Turner to avoid having to force up a layup between Stokes and Theresa Plaisance. Absolutely outrageous, and frankly ridiculous for someone who's nearly as old as me. Long may it continue.
The Sun Still Rising?
The first serious injury of the WNBA regular season happened this week, with Connecticut's starting point guard Jasmine Thomas ruled out for the season with a torn ACL. It's a real shame for Thomas and the Sun, who finally had all their frontcourt pieces available in the same season and were clearly targeting a run at a title. The positive angle is that they're fairly well situated to handle the loss. Natisha Hiedeman has been one of the better backup point guards in the league in recent years, and some of us were already wondering whether she'd be poached away to run someone else's team in the upcoming offseason. It'll be a downgrade from Thomas's leadership on the floor and defensive ability, but Hiedeman's a better shooter and fully capable of running the offense. They'll also need Yvonne Anderson and/or Nia Clouden to step up in Hiedeman's previous backup role, but even that's not as taxing as it would be on many other teams, with players like Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Courtney Williams there to help out with ballhandling and creating offense.
Alyssa Thomas and Bonner are central to why I was already going to talk about the Sun this week, even before the news of Jasmine Thomas's injury. It's the first year that Curt Miller has had all four of Bonner, Alyssa Thomas, Jonquel Jones and Brionna Jones available simultaneously, and it's led to some delightful variety and fluidity to the possible lineups. The regular starters have been Bonner, Thomas and Jonquel Jones, with Brionna Jones coming off the bench, but we've seen Bonner and Thomas sliding all over the place. They've been the 4/5 pairing in small lineups. They've been the 2/3 pair on the wing with the Joneses playing inside in big lineups. On Wednesday night with Jasmine Thomas gone, we even saw Alyssa Thomas play a little point guard in what - according to the Sun commentators - Miller calls his 'Monster' lineup, with Bonner and Williams on the wings and the Joneses inside.
All of this just gives Miller so many options. The Sun can play a whole host of different ways and attack you with size or speed. They can match up with opponents however they want to play, or go in the other direction and force those opponents to try to handle the mismatches. A lot of the talk in the early weeks of the season has been around the Las Vegas Aces and how different they are under Becky Hammon. The Sun have been less of a story because they've been doing a lot of what's making them successful for years. They've just been more complete this year, and it's made them even scarier. The question now is whether they can maintain the same levels without their leader and starting point guard.
Lineup Minutiae
Outside of continuing to wait for backup point guard Julie Allemand, the Chicago Sky finally have their roster together, even including rookie Chinese post Li Yueru. The arrival of Kahleah Copper meant head coach James Wade had a decision to make, and it was Azurá Stevens who was sacrificed from the starting lineup to make room. In the two games Copper has played so far, the big lineup featuring Stevens, Emma Meesseman and Candace Parker all together has virtually disappeared. Hopefully this is temporary, while Wade figures out his options. Copper and Rebekah Gardner need minutes on the wing, and the big lineup won't be perfect for all opponents, but it showed how effective it could be in their opening run of games. It should be part of Wade's arsenal going forwards, not thrown to the wayside now that he has his more natural wing players available.
Are Vickie Johnson and the Dallas Wings finally starting to work things out? Johnson has settled on a starting lineup for their last six games, with Marina Mabrey being handed the starting point guard spot and Kayla Thornton and Isabelle Harrison paired inside. There's even been a relatively consistent rotation through the rest of games, with the limited variation you'd expect depending on who's playing well on a given night. Going all the way down the bench to often use 11 players is still a little questionable, but the largely consistent roles feel like they're helping players to know what's going on and what's required of them. And they're 5-2 as a result. The question is whether Johnson can keep this up, while smoothly integrating Satou Sabally into the rotation (and possibly the starting lineup). The Wings were surely also hoping for more from offseason acquisition Teaira McCowan, but Johnson would have to find more minutes for her to see exactly what they have. For now, consistency and continuity are good, and games they'd have blown in the past like Tuesday's tight contest in Connecticut are turning into wins.
On Tuesday night in Washington, the Mystics had their whole roster healthy and available for the first time in years (Mike Thibault himself was a late scratch, but the players were all there). As you'd expect, Natasha Cloud, Ariel Atkins, Alysha Clark and Elena Delle Donne all started. The interesting element was that the fifth starter wasn't veteran post Elizabeth Williams, or high-priced and well-established forward Myisha Hines-Allen. Instead, it was rookie big Shakira Austin, keeping her spot after starting their previous two games when the Mystics had more restricted options. Maybe it was somewhat matchup-specific, but it's a sign of how quickly Austin has gained the coaching staff's trust in Washington. She's already a big part of their rotation, scoring efficiently when given the chance, and not making many freshman mistakes on defense. Howard isn't the only rookie worth being excited about.
Long Past Time for Action
No Clark's Corner this week, because more important things than basketball are at the forefront of everyone's minds. This is eloquent and passionate from Natasha Cloud. Hopefully America sees action from people with the power to create change.
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