WNBA Dissected: Liberty woes, whistles we don't need, Hammon in the zone, and more from 2022 Week 4
Another trip around the world of the WNBA, looking at items of interest that have cropped up this week
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Everything Can Change
I've put off writing this, I promise I have. You never want to put too much stock in early-season WNBA games, when players are missing, teams are still trying to learn each other or fit together, and we're all working with very small sample sizes. However, the 2022 New York Liberty have been dreadful. Before Wednesday night’s games, by net rating, this year's Liberty were the second-worst WNBA team of all time. Worse than any of the Tulsa Shock teams, the 6-26 expansion Seattle Storm (pre-Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird), or the ultra-tanky Phoenix Mercury from 2012 that 'earned' Brittney Griner. Worse even than the Liberty squad from two years ago in the bubble that went 2-20. The only team keeping them off the bottom of the list was the immortal 1998 Washington Mystics that went 3-27 and always shows up in these lists. You never, ever want to be in an article where the 1998 Mystics get a mention.
The biggest problems have come on offense, where the Liberty have been comfortably the worst team in the league. Statistically, it's hard to pick out one area where they're failing, because it's essentially all bad. The turnovers, often unforced, have been brutal and near-constant - but also in very similar numbers to the refreshing and now 6-3 Atlanta Dream, so not fatal on their own. The team field-goal percentage is dreadful at 39%, but just above them at 40% are the Seattle Storm, who are 5-3 and comfortably in the playoff mix. Their rebounding percentage was last in the league as well (before last night’s win over a tired Indiana Fever helped out), but only just below the 5-6 LA Sparks, who've begun to drag themselves out of their own ugly start. It's being bad at all of this stuff simultaneously that's dooming the Liberty.
The eye-test has been just as bad. They've not moved the ball well, and when they've tried too many passes have been forced into spaces that just aren't there, hence the ugly turnovers. For a team that lived and died by the three-point shot under former coach Walt Hopkins they've dropped off dramatically from outside, shooting a league-worst 30.5% from deep this year after a 36.2% clip last season. Some of this can be put down to a small sample that might normalize, or players acclimating to a new system, but that's a lot of points being left on the table.
Of course, you can't be this bad without failings at the other end of the floor as well. The numbers say they're middle-of-the-pack bad on defense rather than falling off the end of the list like they are on offense, but it's still not been pretty. They're conceding the most free throws per field goal attempt of any team, and the addition of Stefanie Dolson - which was supposed to solidify the team in the paint and signaled a shift to a more conventional lineup after Hopkins's smallball system - hasn't worked. They've prevented points at the rim better than in recent years - actually leading the league in opponent field goal percentage inside 5-feet - but opponents have more than made up for it with foul shots, threes and second-chance points. Plugging one hole doesn't help if cracks just start appearing elsewhere.
If you go back to the preseason podcast I recorded with Gabe Ibrahim, we discussed the Liberty for a while and then agreed that none of it really mattered without one thing. They needed Sabrina Ionescu to take a leap. She was drafted in 2020 with the expectation of being their star, the focal point to take the franchise forward, albeit once they got her some help. After essentially losing her rookie season to injury, then an up-and-down 2021 which was also affected by ailments, hopes were high that 2022 might be a break-out year. We haven't really seen it. There have been a couple of games (early contests against Connecticut and Indiana) where her shooting was rolling and she lit opponents up, but far more frequently it's been easy to forget that she's even on the floor. The quickness doesn't seem to be there to dart past opponents off the dribble, and she hasn't been able to hit enough shots to punish defenders who go under screens or leave her with moments of space on pick-and-rolls. It's far too early to give up on Ionescu becoming a star - look at guards like Jackie Young and Kelsey Plum who are flourishing this year after significant early-career struggles - but it puts a big dent in the Liberty's 2022 hopes if Ionescu's not there yet. The pieces elsewhere aren't good enough without her.
That's one of the key questions that's starting to float around the Liberty after their ugly start. How good should this team even be expected to be? Natasha Howard has been one of their few bright spots in recent games after early shooting woes, but has always been at her best in a supporting role rather than as a featured scorer. Betnijah Laney broke out a couple of years ago in Atlanta to earn her big contract with the Liberty, then had an explosive start in New York before her season tailed off badly while playing through injury. If she could get healthy and stay that way, it would be a big help for New York (although news on that front announced yesterday was not good). However, she's another player who would be in a supporting role on a good team, or at most one of multiple key pieces. Sami Whitcomb has been a great shooter over the years, and has become a better ballhandler and distributor in New York, but hasn't been able to find the net this year. Shooters don't usually fall off a cliff, but it wouldn't be wildly shocking if the eight games so far are a sign of decline rather than a freak outlier as she nears 34 years old. Without Ionescu escalating to superstar level, too many of these players are being asked to step up to an echelon above their natural level.
All of that said, there's still hope. They've had absences and injuries which have hurt, with Rebecca Allen arriving late and Laney's knee issues (plus role players like Jocelyn Willoughby and DiDi Richards also being out). Sandy Brondello coming in as head coach was a big change from Hopkins and it takes time to understand what she wants. Han Xu has only recently broken into the rotation and has shown how useful she can be offensively if they can figure out how to use her size and touch while compensating for her issues against strength and physicality. And surely Brondello can find ways to put Ionescu into better positions to make an impact on games. She coached Diana Taurasi-led teams for eight years in Phoenix. Ionescu may be a way off from being Taurasi but she's of a similar archetype, with great passing vision and the potential to go off from deep at any moment. You can't just have her bring the ball up the floor, dump it off, then stand on the wing watching for possession after possession. Bring her back into the play, create space with movement and off-ball actions, generally liven the team up and try to help your young potential star flourish. Otherwise this could easily become another lost season for the Liberty, and both Brondello and general manager Jonathan Kolb might be worrying about their job security.
Violating violations
I'm so tired of this, and this, and this, and this (there are multiple clips, from a variety of games).
Can we stop punishing teams for winning on a possession, please? These are all situations where the defense did their job, and the opposition threw something up or turned the ball over as the shot-clock expired. Then the officials brought the game to a halt for the 24-second violation rather than just allowing the defending team to break the other way. This is so easy to fix. Just tell the referees to wait a couple of seconds, and if the defense is about to gain possession, allow play to go on. It doesn't even need a rule change, per se. Just some guidance. The game will flow better, and earned advantage will be rewarded.
I also think we should end the live-ball timeout which allows teams to escape from difficult situations by just yelling for a timeout - another situation where the defense isn’t adequately rewarded for its success - but that's a change which would likely meet with a lot more resistance. No one should be objecting to 24-second violations not needing to stop the game.
We're also going to talk sometime soon about those idiotic charge calls where players are just making their way down the floor and a defender steps in front of them and falls over to buy a call. Stop rewarding that nonsense.
Draft Pick Roulette
I am a Miami Dolphins fan. This isn't particularly useful information - god knows it hasn't been anything to brag about for 30+ years - but it is relevant to the WNBA in one particular way. In recent years, the Dolphins have consistently owned some other franchise's first-round pick during the preceding season, due to earlier trades. It's meant that whether the Dolphins were good, bad or indifferent (oh so many seasons of indifference), every week of games was more interesting because I was also rooting against another team. Every loss for that other team meant the pick owned by the Dolphins was improving, adding interest and possibilities for the future.
So I love that several 2023 first-round picks have already been shuffled around the WNBA. It removes the incentive for a team to lose themselves - because they aren't improving a pick they own with each loss - and just makes things more fun when Team X has the potential to gain something from Team Y losing a game on the other side of the country.
The 2023 WNBA draft has one big prize in South Carolina's Aliyah Boston, but could also include the likes of Paige Bueckers and Cameron Brink if they chose to enter early. Minnesota won't be expecting much from the Las Vegas pick that they own, but the other moving picks are at least in the mix to get interesting. Chicago owns Phoenix's pick from the three-way DeShields/Hartley/Allemand trade; Dallas owns Chicago's via that deal and then the Teaira McCowan trade; Indiana has Dallas's pick from that same McCowan deal; and Washington has the right to swap their first-rounder with Los Angeles's as part of their No. 1-for-No. 3 deal with Atlanta.
In total, that's five 2023 first-rounders that are no longer owned by their original team, and at least three of those have some potential to end up in the lottery. It can be hard to keep track of (which is why we have Across the Timeline), but it adds an extra level of interest during the season. And it's even more fun when you don't have to sit through a raft of mediocre NFL games while you're waiting.
In the Zone
Arguably the brightest element of the WNBA season so far has been the wildly entertaining Las Vegas Aces, who've unleashed some of their unrealised potential under new head coach Becky Hammon (and they were pretty damn good already). We will be talking more about them in the coming weeks, but for the time being I wanted to talk about one small part of their system - the zone defense.
We don't see a huge amount of zone in the WNBA. Teams tend to use it when things are going wrong, as a desperation move when their man-to-man can't hold up on a given night. Sometimes it works, because its rare implementation also means that teams don’t practice zone-busting offense as much. Bill Laimbeer occasionally used a zone in Vegas, but we've seen an increase of both junk defenses and standard 2-3 zone under Hammon as a regular part of their defensive armory.
You can see there that it isn't complicated. You probably played this in school. Cover your area, stretch out to defend the perimeter when necessary, and fill the gaps. The only difference at WNBA level is that the bigs have to pay a little attention to avoiding defensive three-second violations, but officials call that so rarely that it's not a major issue. The crucial element with Vegas's zone is that it actually looks like they practice it. Over the years, most WNBA teams go to their zone so infrequently that it often looks messy and disconnected, so while it might upset the opposition's rhythm briefly it's just as likely to give up a wide-open three or an easy layup. The Aces' zone is coherent, and their communication keeps it effective. Hammon may be new, but the core of this team has been together for multiple seasons, which always helps the chemistry. The athleticism of their players helps as well, allowing them to move quickly around their areas to avoid the regular pitfalls of leaving gaps between the players in a zone defense.
In some ways, necessity has been the mother of invention here. The Aces aren't deep, especially with Riquna Williams out, as Hammon doesn't appear to trust Sydney Colson, Aisha Sheppard or Kierstan Bell to play meaningful minutes. That's led to some awkward lineups, such as A'ja Wilson, Kiah Stokes and Theresa Plaisance all playing together. With that much size on the floor a zone makes a lot of sense, rather than asking any of the bigs to chase a wing around. Conversely, Vegas's starting lineup is relatively small having moved Wilson to center, so at times they can also use the zone to compensate for a lack of size, with easier double-teams and help defense. On a basic level you also move less when you play zone, so it’s less tiring, which helps with a short rotation.
Man-to-man is still their primary option - we haven't seen an NBA or WNBA team use zone as their first choice defense for decades - but it's interesting to see a head coach coming into the league from the NBA go to more zone than we see from long-term WNBA stalwarts. It's hardly a new concept, but eventually everything old comes back around and is new again. Everything's working for Hammon so far, new and old.
Lineup Minutiae
Oh, Dallas. I think the Wings have appeared in this section more than any other team in recent years. Vickie Johnson still has 11 players that she wants to use (at least occasionally), and still isn't entirely sure how they all fit together. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Washington, for example, makes use of their entire roster as well, and often mixes and matches lineups searching for the right group on a given night. But there feels like there's more coherence with the Mystics. Dallas switched up their posts on Tuesday night, not only making the move to start Satou Sabally which might've been expected, but also pushing Teaira McCowan into the starting lineup alongside her. You could understand the thought process. They were playing against the Sparks, and a key part of the reason you acquire someone like McCowan is to match up with the league's giants, like LA's Liz Cambage. But it didn't really work. LA attacked her early and often, and scored a boatload of points in the paint (albeit many of them during minutes when McCowan sat as well). The Wings only got going in the second half when Isabelle Harrison started scoring inside, and it's her pairing with Kayla Thornton that has worked for Dallas in the paint this year. They do need to see what they can get from McCowan, and Sabally is a potential star, but this rotation is back to being very much a work in progress.
Moriah Jefferson is hurt in Minnesota, which sadly won't be a surprise to anyone who's followed Jefferson's pro career. It's led to more hardship signings for the Lynx, with Elissa Cunane and Kamiah Smalls being added. So keep your eye on how Minnesota survives with some combination of Rachel Banham, Evina Westbrook and Smalls running the point. The on/off numbers say their offense has been significantly worse with Jefferson on the bench since she arrived, while their defense has been wildly better when she's sat. We'll see if those hold up over complete games.
Clark's Corner
They're not great yet, but this year the Indiana Fever have at least elevated their play to 'fun to watch', which is a significant step in the right direction. Considering a perfect year for them would be meaningful progress before drafting Boston, Bueckers or Brink, things are going just about perfectly. One of their bright spots has been rookie forward Emily Engstler, not that that's really been a surprise:
Apparently Dunn agreed with me, and felt she had to go as high as No. 4 to make sure Engstler went to Indiana. That energy and hard-working attitude has accompanied her to Indiana, as you'd expect. She's fouling a little too much, and hopefully the scoring will become more efficient as she gains experience in the pros, but the exuberance and impact of her game has translated.
She had a great game against LA last week, where even though Nneka Ogwumike put up 30 points on 12-for-18 from the field as the opposing power forward, Engstler was the one who finished with the positive +/-. There were steals and blocks, and solid physical defense on Ogwumike. We're also starting to see more minutes in Indiana with Engstler and NaLyssa Smith both on the floor, even though both appear to be seen as primarily power forwards. The Fever need to figure out how well they work together to see if that's a practical pairing in future, even if it's only against certain lineups.
Regardless, even if she ends up playing most of her time as Smith's backup, Engstler's livening things up in Indiana.
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