WNBA Dissected: Special Kaylas (and Kailas) and more from 2021 Week 7
Kayla/Kailas take the spotlight, a wave of cuts examined, a Dream surprise highlighted and more from around the world of women's basketball this week
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1. What’s in a name?
Sometimes, when you're the sort of person who takes notes on WNBA games, you notice patterns emerging within those notes. Maybe you have an unnatural obsession with erroneous graphics, or you spot that LA has started 12 different people already this season. Or maybe, one week, you notice that the people that have drawn your attention all seem to have (almost) the same name. So on that tenuous basis, welcome to the Kayla (and Kaila) special!
First up, the only one of these players who was a first-round pick, or who's been handed a maximum contract in anticipation of them being a big piece to a championship puzzle - Kayla McBride. Minnesota gave her the full boat in the offseason, a three-year guaranteed deal at the maximum salary, in order to tempt her away from Las Vegas (and various other suitors). It seemed like a great fit at the time, a bonafide sniper to curl off screens and fire jumpers like Seimone Augustus and Maya Moore often used to for the Lynx, with Cheryl Reeve scheming to find her better looks than she'd been offered for the last year or two with the Aces. So far, it hasn't really worked.
A late arrival in camp due to overseas commitments, McBride practically walked off the plane and onto the court for the Lynx, and it doesn't feel like she's ever really stopped playing catch up. Some of her shots seem rushed rather than in the flow of the offense and she's shooting 37% from the field, her lowest percentage since the dark days of 2016 in San Antonio, a Stars team that went 7-27 with minimal talent around her. Playing off Sylvia Fowles - herself shooting a ridiculous 64% from the field - was meant to open things up for McBride from outside, but she's only at 34% from three-point range. That's basically league average, which still has value when it's being produced on high-volume, but not exactly what you pay a max salary for.
The hope is that McBride is still settling in with the Lynx, finding her place on a roster that's been unsettled by injuries and point-guard changes, and that Reeve is still working out how best to use her. Just last night McBride went off for 26 points against Phoenix in exactly the kind of performance Lynx fans have been waiting for. The fear has to be that what we’ve seen for most of this season is simply what she is. Some felt that she was sidelined in Las Vegas on a team that built around posts and was barely interested in shooting threes - McBride's most valuable skill. But Bill Laimbeer usually knows what he's doing. A lot of athletes peak at around 26 or 27 years of age, and McBride hit that a couple of years ago - when her shooting stats also reached their apex. Maybe she's on the downslope and this is pretty much what Minnesota is going to get, regardless of scheme - a decent outside shooter, a solid enough wing defender, but not a lot more. Minnesota will be hoping for more, and will probably need it if they truly hope to contend for a championship.
Over in Dallas, their Kayla is proving to be a very useful piece as they rebuild. Having spent several years proving she belonged in the WNBA after going undrafted, Kayla Thornton is the closest thing the Wings have to a veteran. She's always been the type of player who'd make regular appearances in my "Clark's Corner" segment, doing the dirty work necessary of role players to make teams run, while the stars did the glamorous stuff elsewhere on the floor. This season her versatility has been vital for Dallas. She began the season starting at the 4, filling in while the Wings waited for Satou Sabally to arrive, Charli Collier to adapt to the pro game a little, and Vickie Johnson to work out what the hell to do with her rotation. After briefly dropping to the bench, in recent weeks she's stepped back into the starting lineup, this time as the nominal 3 but almost always guarding the opposing point guard. This puts the player who is probably Dallas's best perimeter defender at the point of attack, and her switchability means they're less vulnerable to immediate ball-screens at the start of possessions. The Wings are 3-1 since she took on that role.
Thornton is also having her best offensive season by some distance, even if we can expect some regression to the mean over the remainder of the season. Hitting 52% from the field and 42% from three are way above her typical career numbers, which makes it easier to keep her on the floor to carry out her defensive responsibilities. She's not taking nearly as many threes as in recent years, picking her moments more carefully and only accepting cleaner looks. It's resulted in 25 minutes per game on a team packed with youngsters looking for minutes, because she's playing such an important role. When you've got lots of kids on the roster, you need a hard-working vet to show them how to behave, and even though she's only 28 Thornton is performing that job. The two-year extension she signed in the offseason for $107,040/$109,716 is starting to look like a bargain for the Wings.
Finally, over to Connecticut. Before anyone complains, I'm aware that Kaila is not the same as Kayla, but work with me here. Kaila Charles is in the midst of an interesting season in Connecticut. After a promising rookie year in the bubble, it looked like her star was fading with the Sun early in the year. DiJonai Carrington was the new flavor of the month and Charles was starting to lose both playing time and attention to the new rookie backup. However, since mid-June and some effective minutes in a blowout loss to Seattle, Charles has moved back to the fore as an important piece for Connecticut. She started several games while Jonquel Jones was overseas, scoring in double-digits five times in their last six games, and is firmly back in front of Carrington in the rotation as the Sun's primary backup wing.
The impressive part of all of this is that Charles stayed ready. When a young player starts losing minutes, especially to other youngsters, it's easy to become discouraged or start pouting. The likely end result of that would be even fewer minutes and poorer performance, followed by being waived. The players who stick are the ones who take it as a challenge, work harder, and step up when an opportunity presents itself. Charles did that, and the Sun are going to need her over the rest of the season. They’re riding high in the standings, but still have a thin, top-heavy roster. There are minutes for backups who are ready to go, and recent performances suggest Charles is on that list. Like a good Kayla/Kaila should be.
2. Pain in Spain
EuroBasket Women 2021 finished up on Sunday with Serbia beating France 63-54 in the final, remarkably France's fifth consecutive loss in the final of EuroBasket Women tournaments (two to Serbia, three to Spain) dating back to 2013. Sonja Vasić, who WNBA fans may remember as Sonja Petrović, was named MVP - which is a nice way for the Serbian legend to kick-off her retirement tour, having announced that she's done after Tokyo.
EuroBasket Women also acts as the pre-qualifier for European teams for the 2022 World Cup qualifying tournaments, and that's where the big shock of the final weekend came. Spain has been one of the powerhouses of international basketball over the last decade, and will be considered one of the favourites for the silver medal in Tokyo. As co-hosts of EuroBasket Women, they would've been expecting to win the tournament, or at least come close. Instead, after a shocking loss to Belarus in their opening game led to a second-place finish in the group stage and a more difficult draw in the knockout phase, the Spanish fell to Serbia 71-64 in an overtime classic in the quarter-finals, and then 78-74 to Russia in the classification game that followed (both games on home soil in Valencia). That left Spain out of the top-six, and unless they surprise everyone and win gold in Tokyo for an automatic spot, out of the World Cup in 2022.
Belgium, Belarus, Russia and Bosnia & Herzegovina join Serbia and France as the six European teams who'll play in the qualifiers for the World Cup, which take place in February next year (where 12 of the 16 participants will advance to September’s tournament in Australia). Jonquel Jones's dominance helped carry Bosnia higher than they've ever been before, and she'll be hoping to take them the rest of the way to their first major global tournament. The Women's AmeriCup was also played recently, with a team of collegians winning the gold relatively comfortably for the USA. Puerto Rico, Canada and Brazil will also join the European teams, World Cup hosts Australia and the currently unknown African and Asian teams in the qualifying tournaments.
3. No Guarantees of Anything
This Wednesday was officially the midpoint of the WNBA season - day 48 of a 95-day schedule (the Olympic break doesn't count) - which in the WNBA has more than a nominal meaning. If you're on a roster at the midpoint, your contract becomes guaranteed ('protected', in WNBA-speak), for the remainder of the season. Because teams sometimes want to have some flexibility at the end of their roster and avoid those guarantees, this means that we often see cuts two days before we hit midseason, giving players the necessary 48 hours to clear waivers. This year was something of a bloodbath.
The most shocking move actually came a day before the wave of cuts around the league, with Indiana waiving 2020 No. 3 pick Lauren Cox barely 14 months after selecting her with their lottery pick. Cox has not been good in her limited WNBA appearances, looking slow and immobile compared to the prospect that once excited people at Baylor, but she's also barely 23 years old and has suffered through injury and illness since being drafted. The Fever have obviously seen more of her than any of the rest of us via practice and training sessions, and will have a greater understanding of how healthy she's ever likely to be, but it's still remarkable to give up on someone you chose to be part of your core a year ago. After late starts due to Covid-19 last year and a knee injury this year, then barely being used even once declared healthy and available, the rest of us haven't seen much of her on the floor during WNBA games to judge her ability at this level.
It's not like the Fever are going anywhere anyway. As I wrote about last week, this is a very bad team whose only threat this season is to some of the all-time league records for futility. Often I would applaud a general manager being willing to admit a mistake and move on from it without being concerned about the embarrassment, but it's hard to see what the logic is here. The Fever replaced Cox by re-signing 2021 third-round pick Chelsey Perry, a player who's been available and unsigned since mid-May when the Fever cut her. So there doesn’t appear to have been a big move coming. They even added Perry before the midpoint, immediately guaranteeing her contract for the rest of the season and cutting another chunk out of their remaining cap space. It's growing increasingly difficult to defend the Indiana front office.
Elsewhere, Washington cut Kiara Leslie, Megan Gustafson and Stella Johnson. Gustafson was a roster hardship and Johnson had barely played, so neither of them was a shock, but Leslie was at least a small surprise. They carried her on their roster for a full year after drafting her despite being injured and unable to play, so she's only actually played 28 games of WNBA basketball in the three seasons since she was drafted. But Mystics head coach and general manager Mike Thibault was brutally honest in his assessment of her:
Not what you normally hear from team personnel in regards to roster moves, but very similar to how I'd have described her time in Washington. The move made sense.
Other teams made moves on the fringes as well, with Los Angeles waiving Bria Holmes and releasing Kristine Anigwe and Karlie Samuelson. They then signed Cox, before bringing back Holmes and Samuelson via hardship exceptions. The immediate interest in signing Cox for the rest of the year only makes you wonder more about the thinking in Indiana, who gave up on her for no return. Seattle cut rookie third-string point guard Kiana Williams, who's barely seen the floor from behind Sue Bird, Jordin Canada and Epiphanny Prince in the rotation. In a similar move, Las Vegas waived backup Joyner Holmes, opening up a spot that is apparently going to be filled by Kiah Stokes - herself waived by New York only yesterday.
Finally, Minnesota cut Rachel Banham, something of a surprise due to how beloved she is in the area, although it makes sense based on both performance and for contract-juggling. Banham was scheduled to make $103,000, a meaningful step up from the veteran minimum of $70,040. She's also been surpassed on the Lynx roster by hardship signing Layshia Clarendon, whose skill set fills a much more necessary role through her ball-handling and distribution abilities. Banham may well be brought back on a cheaper Rest of Season contract or on 7-day deals, and she probably won't be the only one. This process often sees teams re-signing the same players that they just released, only to 7-day contracts that allow them to move on more cheaply if they see a better option or need a different type of player. This whole process can't be much fun for the players, but it's the harsh reality of trying to stick on a WNBA roster. The teams have to do what makes the most sense for them, and the players are just trying to prove that they belong. All the players that were still on a roster as of Wednesday can relax a little more now.
4. Lineup Minutiae
Keeping this short this week, given that the entire section above is about roster moves and machinations. Just thought I'd mention that Los Angeles have played 15 games so far this season, and started a remarkable 12 different players at least once.
They're not even close to the record from the awful 2010 Tulsa Shock (see below), but 12 different starters less than halfway through the season is a hell of a start. Derek Fisher has had some injury issues in LA, but he's also clearly been searching for some answers by playing around with his lineups. Sometimes you just end up rearranging deckchairs before the iceberg hits.
By the way, if you're ever having a WNBA trivia night with some real die-hards, try asking them to name the 16 that started for that 2010 Shock team. Good luck.
5. Clark's Corner
It was hard to pick out just one clip, but I couldn't avoid talking about her any longer - Crystal Bradford has just been a whole lot of fun in Atlanta. After being drafted 7th overall in 2015 - right behind Dearica Hamby and ahead of the likes of Kiah Stokes, Isabelle Harrison and Natasha Cloud - Bradford barely lasted half a season before being cut by LA and hadn't been seen in the WNBA since. She kept playing overseas and the Fever gave her a look in camp a couple of years ago, but it wasn't until she rather surprisingly made the Dream roster this year that WNBA fans got a second look. And what an impression she's made. She brings constant energy and an attack mentality, a clear belief in her own ability, and Mike Petersen has essentially been forced into making room for her in his rotation.
Initially Bradford was filling in as a 4 while Cheyenne Parker was out, and her speed and mobility make her a tough matchup for a lot of bigs at that spot. With Parker back, more of her minutes have had to come as a true perimeter player at the 3, but she's proven effective there as well. Earlier this week she was the primary defender on Betnijah Laney for most of a win over New York, forcing Laney into a 7-19 shooting effort while Bradford scored 14 points of her own, including 4-6 from three. Petersen's beginning to realize what the stats have been saying for most of the season - that Bradford has to play. She has the best on-court net rating of anyone on the team and has the 9th-best PER in the entire league. While her boundless self-belief does occasionally lead to some bad shots, it's so far been clearly outweighed by the positive impact of both her efficient shooting and activity on the floor.
Yes, that’s a step-back three followed by some solid defense, then a missed transition three, offensive board, ridiculous up-and-under move, and a theatrical bow. Even Courtney Williams was impressed.
Like Clark, Bradford had to go away from the WNBA and work hard to improve, then return as a better player to make her mark. 15 games into her WNBA comeback season, it looks like she's back to stay.
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