WNBA Dissected: Magbegor making moves, international growth, intriguing numbers, and more from 2022 Week 6
A Storm phenom, European flair, interesting stats, rule loopholes and more from around the world of the WNBA this week
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Ezi Does It
On a team featuring a legend's farewell tour, maybe the favourite for league MVP, and another flat-out star who'll likely be All-WNBA again, one of the highlights this season has been a 22-year-old center who wasn't even supposed to be starting. She’s been exciting everybody with things like this:
That's Ezi Magbegor for less than two minutes of the opening quarter against Dallas on Sunday, with three athletic and superbly timed blocks. The first is as the on-ball defender against Satou Sabally, a player Dallas specifically design sets for to get her lined up one-on-one against posts on the perimeter. Magbegor maybe jumps out a little too hard to challenge the potential three, but she does it because she knows she can recover. Sabally thinks that jump has given her room for the drive, before Magbegor swiftly disabuses her of that notion. The other two are as a help defender, knowing when to come off her own assignment and protect the rim when her teammates have been beaten. Acts of mobility and timing like this are why she's currently leading the league in blocks per game by a significant margin.
That's not all she's doing, either. When I got my first up-close look at Magbegor, back in 2018 at the FIBA Women's World Cup in Tenerife, she had just turned 19 and was incredibly unpolished. But you could already see the exceptional raw materials. She could catch whatever was thrown at her, and the athleticism to move around the floor and contort herself for finishes at the rim was already there. That's why Seattle took her in the first round in 2019, despite knowing they might have to wait a little while for the pick to pay off. Now it is.
Those are her buckets from the same Dallas game. Only four, but they illustrate her development. There's the three-point range she's worked on to make her a modern-basketball threat from all over the floor; a quick post, calling for the ball before spinning into a short turnaround that she makes through contact; and a slashing cut through the lane when she slips an off-ball screen, finishing before her defender has any chance to stop her. She's come on in leaps and bounds, and despite the three-year $480,000 contract the Storm gave Mercedes Russell in the offseason, Russell doesn't look like getting her starting spot back any time soon.
Magbegor is part of why that Russell contract was a little risky for Seattle. They knew they had a kid on their roster who might be ready to fill Russell's spot, so committing a lot of money to the veteran might end up being an unnecessary opportunity cost. When Russell suffered a non-basketball injury during the offseason (which we still, amazingly, know nothing about), Magbegor stepped into her spot and hasn't missed a beat. The only player on Seattle's roster with a better on-court net rating this year is Breanna Stewart. To some extent Magbegor is helped there because she's played a lot with the other starters - Noelle Quinn likes to play bench-heavy lineups rather than mixing reserves in like many other coaches - but it's working. In the 214 minutes Magbegor's played with Stewart this season the Storm have a net rating of 17.7, a figure that would lead the league by a mile this year if they were a team (and threaten some of the early Houston Comets squads for best-ever).
Of course, if some of Storm-fans' worst fears come to fruition and Stewart leaves at the end of this season for pastures new, Magbegor and Russell could end up in the frontcourt together, rather than competing for time. Then we'd really get a chance to see just how good Ezi can be, without the help of a generational superstar alongside her. Based on how she's stepped up this season, it might not be a good idea to bet against her.
Foreign Flourishes
You've probably seen this by now, but it's certainly worth watching again:
This was pretty as well:
You know what both those passers, Magbegor, and a host of other players who've enlivened the WNBA this year have in common? They're all from countries beyond the United States.
It's been wonderful to see the small steps towards reaching beyond the US to deepen rosters this season. After a few years where the league had become increasingly American - partly, understandably, due to Covid - this year the WNBA is becoming more cosmopolitan again. Han Xu and Li Yueru both managed to make it over from China and are showing what they can do. Johannès arrived once her French season was finished and her international teammate Iliana Rupert will soon be joining the Aces, despite France's participation in September's World Cup, which would often have been an excuse not to come in previous years. Machida's added some spice in Washington, Julie Allemand is back in the league with the Sky, and there are Aussies peppered across a variety of teams. Awak Kuier is showing signs of genuine development in Dallas. We've even seen unexpected names like Nikolina Milić, Anneli Maley and Tina Krajišnik given a shot on WNBA rosters, and while Krajišnik was gone before she could show much, the other two have had impressive stretches.
This has to be a future target for the WNBA, and a part of increasing salaries and benefits across the league. The NBA has made itself the target for players around the globe, the pinnacle that players are trying to reach. If the WNBA wants to be the best it can possibly be, it needs to attract players from everywhere. This is also how you make expansion viable without weakening the product. Look harder and go further for talent, and you don't necessarily have to end up with a significant drop-off when you add more players. We've even seen veteran American 'rookies' like Rebekah Gardner and Yvonne Anderson this year (Anderson is now Serbian, but you know what I mean), illustrating the talent that's playing beyond the WNBA if you pay attention.
There are very good female basketball players outside the WNBA. Let's make sure we're identifying and attracting them into the league.
Stats Life
As promised last week, stats for each team that are looking interesting now that we have a reasonable amount of data to work with. The first half of the league was in last week's article, so on to Part Two.
Las Vegas
Yes, for anyone paying attention, Vegas should've been covered last week. Blame the fact that the Sparks get abbreviated to LAS while the Aces become LVA, which flips their alphabetical order.
The Aces have obviously been one of the most discussed teams around the league this year, exciting everyone with their more open brand of basketball under Becky Hammon. Given that, some of their most intriguing stats are where they don't fit that narrative. Despite the uptick in threes from previous years under Bill Laimbeer, they're not actually shooting an inordinate amount from outside, sitting fifth in the league at 31.7% in three-point rate. What Hammon has done there is take them from way off the bottom of the scale in 12th up to a regular amount for a modern basketball team. It feels like they're taking even more because they're competing with Connecticut for the league lead in three-point percentage - lots of them are going in.
One stat they've retained from the Laimbeer era is opponent three-point shooting. It's a stat that is usually hard to maintain over a long period, but the Aces consistently held their opponents to a low percentage from outside in recent years, and they're doing it again this season at a league-low of 30.0%. Given their opponents also have the second-highest three-point attempt rate, it becomes a significant advantage. In combination, they're making huge gains from beyond the arc this year.
Minnesota
It's not been a pretty season for the Lynx, who sit 11th in net rating and are significantly closer to challenging Indiana for last than they are to anyone above them. While there have been problems everywhere, the particularly worrying part has been how poor their defense has been. Even when last year's Defensive Player of the Year Sylvia Fowles was healthy they weren't stopping anyone, and the numbers say their production was similar at both ends of the floor whether Fowles was on the floor or not. Surprisingly, the only Lynx player who has played over 100 minutes this season and the team has a significantly improved defensive rating over their average when she’s on-court is Rachel Banham. Cheryl Reeve did not start the season expecting to put Banham in for defensive purposes.
It's hard to find too many positives for Minnesota amongst the stats. They'd probably suggest a little more Banham and Bridget Carleton, and they've been decent with Damiris Dantas on the floor since she returned, but that's about it. They basically say the Lynx need to play better, but you didn't need numbers to figure that out.
New York
The stat to pick out here is easy. Since I wrote about Sabrina Ionescu failing to play like a star and how that was dooming New York's 2022 season, she's been outstanding. She's 48-87 across six games (55.2%), including 19-43 from outside (44.2%). She's been perfect at the free-throw line on 29 attempts, added 6.8 rebounds and 6.5 assists, had a triple-double in their game on Sunday and led the team to a 4-2 record when they started the year floundering.
It hasn't all been about Ionescu - Natasha Howard has stepped up, Han Xu has emerged, and the team in general has started to settle under Sandy Brondello. They also hit a decidedly friendly part of their schedule. But their star's started to look like a star, and that's a huge step towards where they want to go.
Phoenix
Fans of the player Mercury supporters and broadcasters won't stop calling 'The Goat' may not like what the on/off-court numbers say about Phoenix so far this season. It's a relatively small sample size but in the 144 minutes Diana Taurasi has been on the bench (or in the locker room after being ejected), the Mercury have a net rating of 12.7. In the 461 minutes she's played it's -10.4. So, worse than the Fever or Lynx when she's played; just ahead of the Sun and Aces when she hasn't. Yikes.
The likes of Tina Charles (-8.0) and Diamond DeShields (-6.4) don't have great on-court ratings either, reflecting that they've often been beaten as a group, but it's only Taurasi whose off-court number sky-rockets beyond any of her teammates. As you might expect, most of the difference comes on the defensive end. Their offense gets a little worse without Taurasi, but defensively they're a staggering 24.7 points per 100 possessions better when Taurasi sits. Double yikes.
Seattle
You're not getting extras here. Go read the Ezi Magbegor section above. There are your telling stats.
Washington
I already started to wax lyrical about her, so let's just carry it on here:
Remember the talk when Washington traded down from No. 1 in this year's draft to No. 3? Yes, the Mystics said they were happy with any of the top three (which is looking like very smart scouting, so far), but they also said that their team was so deep that they didn't need to go looking for a star. That even a lottery pick might have to come in and wait a while to crack their main rotation. Well, Shakira Austin had no interest in waiting. Injuries and absences opened up some small holes for her to play initially, but Austin took a sledgehammer and smashed those holes wide open. Now she's the starting center even when everyone is healthy, and veterans like Elizabeth Williams, Myisha Hines-Allen and Tianna Hawkins are having to wait their turns to find minutes behind her.
The advanced numbers love her too. Washington's net rating with her on the court is a frankly absurd 19.2, streets ahead of anyone else on the roster (and 28.6 ahead of the -9.4 they've managed in the minutes when she sits). She's a rookie, on a team with deep talent, and her numbers jump off the page. The sky's the limit for her, and I only wish that Shakira (the singer) had more English-language hits for me to make puns from for the rest of her career.
WNBA Minutiae Alert!
If you follow me on Twitter - and frankly, why wouldn't you? - then you may be aware that occasionally I explain awkward or complicated WNBA rules. We also have a CBA FAQ which I help with (although my colleague Jacob Mox deserves most of the credit), but many people these days prefer their learning to come in nicely digestible tweet-sized chunks. Anyway, I thought I'd use this space to explain one upcoming rule quirk with a little more space.
The midpoint of the season is approaching, this year hitting on June 25 (day 51 of a 101-day regular season). The key effect of that day in WNBA rules terms is that non-guaranteed contracts become guaranteed for the year. For example, Yvonne Anderson was recently waived by Connecticut, and now costs them $0 going forward. She's on their 2022 salary cap for $23,350 - the amount she was paid by them while she was on the roster. If she was waived after the midpoint of the season, she gets her whole salary for the year ($60,471 for a minimum-salary player like Anderson), and that whole figure hits the cap. Even if she was waived on Day 52.
Due to this guarantee rule, teams often waive players from the end of their roster just before the midpoint of the season, then start using 7-day contracts (which become legal after the midpoint) to fill those spots. This is where we get into the particular piece of minutiae I wanted to talk about. There's a rule that says a team cannot re-sign a player they've released for at least ten days after cutting them. This even applies to players released from hardship contracts who you might want to sign to the main roster (you can re-sign them immediately if it's another hardship, just not if you want the second deal to be a regular contract). However, due to that common move of releasing players around the midpoint, there's an exception to the 10-day rule if the player is terminated in the week leading up to that date. The player can be re-signed immediately, without having to wait the ten days.
Ten days can be a lot of time in the WNBA with how they cram games into the schedule, so avoiding the waiting period can be important. Minnesota pulled this trick last season to shift Layshia Clarendon to their main roster without the wait. Given how many hardship contracts have been in use this year, multiple teams could make use of this loophole in 2022. The most obvious and likely candidate is in New York, where a hardship player has started their last six games and the team has gone 4-2, after starting the season 1-7 with other lineups. Crystal Dangerfield is surely destined for the main roster, with Lorela Cubaj looking the most likely cut, unless they find another trade like the one that sent AD to Atlanta to create room for Marine Johannès.
So don't be shocked if Dangerfield gets released just before June 25. And for more of this nonsense, follow me on Twitter.
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Great stuff, as always. And when it comes to on/off stats, check out Rhyne Howard's numbers.