Category Archives: WNBA Previews

2013 WNBA Playoff Previews: Western Conference First Round – Los Angeles Sparks vs. Phoenix Mercury

 

By the numbers (over entire regular season):

 

Los Angeles (24-10) vs Phoenix (19-15)

 

Points scored per 100 possessions: 102.73 (2nd in WNBA) – 99.6 (4th)

Points conceded per 100 possessions: 93.99 (2nd) – 100.4 (10th)

Rebound percentage: .494 (7th) – .486 (10th)

 

Season series between the teams: Tied 2-2

06/14 @Pho, Mercury won 97-81

07/14 @Pho, Sparks won 88-76

07/18 @LA, Mercury won 90-84

09/15 @LA, Sparks won 89-55

 

—–

 

Since back in the preseason, the 2-3 matchup in the Western Conference’s first-round looked appetising. With three teams expected to be real powers in the West, whichever two were forced to play each other were going to have a real fight on their hands. Then the Phoenix Mercury went and changed the script, in a variety of ways. Initially it was by failing to live up to expectations, producing a mediocre team despite the return of several important players and the addition of Brittney Griner. Then a midseason coaching change led to a new outlook and a new philosophy, and ultimately kept them in that same top-three they were always supposed to be a part of. Meanwhile, all the Los Angeles Sparks have done is produce their second consecutive 24-10 season, while exhibiting a variety of strengths and frailties along the way. Eventually, we’ve been left with a first-round playoff series that looks just as intriguing as it did back at the start of the year.

 

Phoenix are a strange team to figure out. Since Russ Pennell took over, they’ve gone 9-4 and exhibited a much greater willingness to actually put some effort and concentration into playing defense. They’ve still had breakdowns at times, and that record doesn’t show the cupcake schedule they’ve faced since Pennell arrived, but there’ve definitely been noticeable improvements. Although at times under Pennell they’ve struggled on the offensive end. He’s left much of the offense alone, with a tweak here or there, but they’ve had games where turnovers have piled up and the players looked like they barely knew each other. Now they’re in the postseason, they don’t have any more games against weak opposition, and they’re unlikely to get away with performances like that.

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2013 WNBA Playoff Previews: Eastern Conference First Round – Atlanta Dream vs. Washington Mystics

 

By the numbers (over entire regular season):

 

Atlanta (17-17) vs Washington (17-17)

 

Points scored per 100 possessions: 95.19 (9th in WNBA) – 95.96 (6th)

Points conceded per 100 possessions: 93.2 (1st) – 95.6 (6th)

Rebound percentage: .503 (4th) – .502 (6th)

 

Season series between the teams: Atlanta won 3-2

06/02 @Wash, Dream won 73-63

06/28 @Atl, Dream won 86-75

08/18 @Atl, Dream won 76-58

08/23 @Wash, Mystics won 74-64

08/28 @Atl, Mystics won 85-80

 

—–

 

These teams finished tied with .500 records in the Eastern Conference, but arrived there by very different routes. Washington were a ‘win two here, lose three there’ kind of team all season long. They’d fight out a few results, then lose their way for a while, then remember what they needed to do to win games again. Just to make it this far has to be considered a success for Mike Thibault and his squad, considering the disastrous couple of years under Trudi Lacey that preceded this season. Meanwhile, Atlanta started the year 10-1, and then dropped into something resembling freefall. For those of you who can do basic math, you’ll be able to calculate that they went 7-16 over the remainder of the season. Injuries hit them hard, and it was a struggle to overcome them enough to regain real form in the second half of the year – plus not everyone is back. Both these teams are somehow predictably unpredictable, which makes foretelling how their series is going to play out rather tricky.

 

Thibault has turned the Mystics into a solid team this year. You can see from the stats above that they’re pretty consistently mediocre – which isn’t a criticism. They’ve lifted themselves to being middle-of-the-pack at most aspects of the game. They play decent team defense, they can hit shots from outside, they can draw fouls on penetration – but they’re also prone to cold streaks, occasional breakdowns defensively, and becoming painfully static on offense. They work hard for each other, but you’re never quite sure where their offense is going to come from. Will Ivory Latta or Monique Currie get hot from the perimeter? Is this a random night where Kia Vaughn or Crystal Langhorne finds some rhythm inside? Will their young bench group lead to the offense disintegrating or energise the team and keep the starters on the bench? They’ve pieced things together this season from game to game, finding the hot hand wherever it is, and clawing out wins. Their depth and multiple potential scorers makes it hard to plan to stop them, because you can’t focus on a particular player or two, but it also means they don’t have a true go-to option. They’re reliant on someone stepping up on any given night.

 

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Priming for Opening Night in the WNBA: New Rules, a New Line, and Prediction Time

 

Yes, the long offseason is finally over, and tonight the real WNBA games begin with the Indiana Fever visiting the San Antonio Silver Stars. If you haven’t checked them out already, WNBAlien’s team-by-team previews are all available to give you an in-depth look at how the 12 squads are shaping up:

Atlanta Dream

Chicago Sky

Connecticut Sun

Indiana Fever

New York Liberty

Washington Mystics

Los Angeles Sparks

Minnesota Lynx

Phoenix Mercury

San Antonio Silver Stars

Seattle Storm

Tulsa Shock

 

So What’s New?

Well if you’ve ended up here, you’re probably well aware of the ultra-hyped new rookie class that’s entering the league. They’re obviously new. We’ve also had coaching changes in New York, Connecticut and Washington since the end of last season. But you can read all about that and the various roster changes in the individual previews. What has the WNBA altered for 2013 on a more basic level?

 

Every year the league tinkers with something minor like the replay rules, or the timeout logistics. This year the Competition Committee and the Board of Governors went a little further. The first change is evident even before the ball goes up – you’re going to have to take a step back to make three-pointers this season. A couple of years ago FIBA pushed their three-point line back – a move which was desperately necessary for the men’s game where the FIBA three-pointer had become a mid-range jumpshot. The women’s game didn’t particularly need a longer line, but FIBA likes their rules to be virtually universal, so the ladies had to get used to it as well. This left the WNBA with the shortest three-point line in the world game, which seemed a little silly for the strongest women’s league around (even if the WNBA distance was closer to where it ‘should’ be for optimum women’s basketball). So the WNBA have decided to fall into line, so to speak.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Tulsa Shock

 

PG: Skylar Diggins/Angel Goodrich

SG: Candice Wiggins/Riquna Williams

SF: Nicole Powell/Roneeka Hodges/Jennifer Lacy

PF: Glory Johnson/Tiffany Jackson-Jones/Kayla Pedersen

C: Elizabeth Cambage

 

Significant gains: Skylar Diggins, Elizabeth Cambage, Candice Wiggins, Tiffany Jackson-Jones, Nicole Powell.

Significant losses: Ivory Latta, Temeka Johnson (plus Amber Holt got cut).

 

Last year was a season of small but vital steps for the Tulsa Shock. They may have finished just 9-25, but that equalled their win total from the previous two years combined, and they pulled themselves off the bottom of the Western Conference (albeit assisted in that step by Phoenix’s capitulation). Nolan Richardson was long gone, and with Gary Kloppenburg taking over the team finally had some structure and a sense that they knew what they were doing. There were still bumps in the road, and the talent on the roster didn’t quite match up to most of the other teams, but they were finally headed in the right direction. After an offseason that’s produced a collection of new options, including a headlining rookie, their first meaningful free agent addition and a player they thought had quit on them yet again, they’re primed for another step. The question is how far are they ready to jump?

 

The Shock’s two leading scorers from last season – also their top two in assists – are both gone. And yet despite losing Ivory Latta and Temeka Johnson for nothing, Tulsa are probably happier about their backcourt situation than they’ve ever been before. Finishing third in the lottery meant disappointment at missing out on Brittney Griner, but it resulted in Notre Dame’s Skylar Diggins, who may be just what they needed. She’s a high-profile young woman, revels in the spotlight, and she’ll do everything she can to make people take notice of this franchise. She’s also a pretty darn good point guard, who can score herself and run a team. She may need a little time – it’s rare for anyone to be handed the keys to a pro team as a rookie and be an immediate success – but she should get there. At the very least, she’ll make sure more people know the Shock exist. Alongside her will be Candice Wiggins, technically acquired in a trade from Minnesota (it was essentially a free agent addition, consummated via trade). It’s going to be interesting to see what Wiggins is still capable of. In her first two years as a pro she was a fearless driver, getting to the rim and the free throw line with regularity. Then she suffered a torn meniscus in her knee and a ruptured achilles in quick succession. When she returned she was a completely different player, barely driving at all, and firing the vast majority of her shots from behind the three-point arc. It’s hard to know for sure whether that was purely because Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve asked her to become an outside threat, or if Wiggins simply doesn’t have that driving capacity any more. If she can rediscover that aspect of her game and vary it up more, she becomes a major weapon; if she’s just the backup guard we saw the last two years in Minnesota, she’s far less dangerous.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Seattle Storm

 

PG: Temeka Johnson

SG: Tanisha Wright/Noelle Quinn

SF: Shekinna Stricklen/Alysha Clark

PF: Tina Thompson/Tianna Hawkins/Cierra Bravard

C: Camille Little/Nakia Sanford

 

Significant gains: Temeka Johnson, Noelle Quinn, Tianna Hawkins.

Significant losses: Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird, Katie Smith, Ann Wauters (plus Ewelina Kobryn and Svetlana Abrosimova aren’t coming back either). Yeah, ouch.

 

Well if you thought those teams with just one All-Star missing were in trouble, welcome to Seattle. Star post and three-time league MVP Lauren Jackson is taking the season off to rest and finally try to fix all the pieces of her body that needed putting back together. That news was followed up with the announcement that point guard Sue Bird would be having surgery to remove a cyst from her knee, and would also miss the entire season. So the two rocks that this franchise has been founded on for over a decade are both out for the year. They’ve survived without Jackson before for long stretches, and even without Bird for a few games here or there, but a Storm team without either of them just isn’t going to be the same. Winning basketball games is going to be a lot more difficult, too.

 

Give some credit to Brian Agler and the Storm franchise though – this is far from a tank job from opening day. If that was the plan, they wouldn’t have gone out and signed two veteran perimeter options in Temeka Johnson and Noelle Quinn, who’ll join Tanisha Wright in the backcourt rotation. Johnson has the unenviable task of trying to replace Bird, but after a solid season last year in Tulsa she should do a reasonable job. She can run a team, she can hit from long range, and while her defense won’t excite anyone that’s no different from Bird. Quinn will take over the Katie Smith role from last season, playing anywhere required around the perimeter. She’s big for a wing, which Agler will like for defensive purposes, and she’ll make a few shots from outside. She’ll also probably be happy to have escaped Washington, so who knows, maybe that’ll give her a new lease of life. Wright will probably be asked to take on more responsibility with Bird and Jackson gone, and if she were healthy she would probably be capable of that. It feels like quite some time since we’ve seen Wright truly at 100%, featuring combo-guard skills that allowed Bird to play off the ball, and shutdown defense on the opposition’s best guard. If Wright’s in one piece, she’ll be one of the leaders of this team – but at some stage it may make sense to shut her down and let her rest next to Sue on the sidelines.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: San Antonio Silver Stars

 

PG: Danielle Robinson

SG: Becky Hammon/Jia Perkins/Shenise Johnson/Davellyn White

SF: Shameka Christon

PF: DeLisha Milton-Jones/Danielle Adams

C: Jayne Appel/Kayla Alexander

 

Significant gains: DeLisha Milton-Jones, maybe Alexander

Significant losses: Sophia Young (plus Tangela Smith and Tully Bevilaqua are gone as well, for what that’s worth).

 

It’s a familiar story here if you read yesterday’s preview for Connecticut. A successful team from last season returns nearly everybody – except for the star power forward. While playing in China, Sophia Young tore the ACL in her right knee, and is out for the season. The combination of Young and Becky Hammon has been the heart of this Silver Stars team for years now, and while they’ve added some useful pieces around their star pair, it leaves a big hole. Coping with Young’s absence is going to be a difficult proposition.

 

For years, this has been a poor rebounding team with limited post presence. Their rebounding actually improved last year – it went from truly abysmal to merely bad – but most of that jump came from Young’s own rededication to crashing the glass. Now they’re going to have to re-work their post rotation without their best player. DeLisha Milton-Jones was signed as a free agent and will help fill the hole. She’s a hard-nosed fighter who can still make the occasional play, and may enjoy seeing a few more touches of the ball than were available in LA, but she’s on the downside of her career. Danielle Adams will once again set some games alight with her soft touch from outside, but she still has the unfortunate combination of being undersized – height-wise – and oversized – width-wise. At center there’s Jayne Appel, who actually had a reasonable year last season when her role was clearly defined as rebounder, defender, and finisher if she was absolutely wide open under the rim with no one anywhere in the vicinity. If they’re going to score any points inside this season, Appel may have to at least try to look at the basket a little more. Finally there’s rookie Kayla Alexander from Syracuse, who’ll be given a chance to make a quick impact. That’s a desperately thin group of options in the paint. They might survive defensively, but it’s going to be a struggle to score any points near the rim.

 

But then, the Silver Stars have never exactly focussed on scoring inside, even when Young was available. They’re built around speed, motion and perimeter shooting, led by apparently ageless guard Becky Hammon. With her combination of seemingly impossible spinning finishes at the rim and long-range bombs, Hammon’s a threat the fill it up on any given night, and she’ll be one of the league leaders in assists as well. Her defense has always been something of an issue, but at this point that’s just part of the Becky package. The worry for San Antonio is that Hammon broke a finger on her shooting hand in training camp, and is now out for an unspecified period. Losing her on top of Young for any length of time would be a tough pill to swallow.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Phoenix Mercury

 

PG: Samantha Prahalis

SG: Diana Taurasi/Alexis Hornbuckle/Briana Gilbreath

SF: DeWanna Bonner/Penny Taylor/Charde Houston

PF: Candice Dupree/Lynetta Kizer

C: Brittney Griner/Krystal Thomas

 

Significant gains: Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, Penny Taylor, a healthier Candace Dupree, generally giving a crap about basketball games.

Significant losses: Probably threw away their list of injury excuses.

 

Does this bunch even need to be previewed? Since the minute Phoenix won the lottery, everyone’s been talking about the superteam that the Mercury could put out on the floor when they came together. This is what happens when an already talented team has a terrible year (due to injury, ‘tanking’, or a combination thereof) and ends up adding another superstar into the mix. It’s even better when the young phenom fits perfectly into a hole on your roster. The hype for this team has been enormous, but that’s hardly a surprise considering the players they have returning, and they might just manage to live up to it.

 

When healthy, the three pieces the Mercury are essentially ‘adding’ to last year’s squad are all superstars of the women’s game. Diana Taurasi is an elite perimeter scorer, who’s also a willing passer and creator for her teammates. She got plenty of rest last season, and even played a slightly more reserved role for her Russian team while they won everything in sight during the offseason. She should be back to full speed. Whatever the story with Taurasi, Penny Taylor was definitely injured last year. She’s still in the final stages of recovering from her ACL tear, and hasn’t actually played a game yet, either overseas or in the WNBA preseason. At 100%, she’s a tough, versatile small forward, capable of scoring from a variety of angles and making smart passes for her teammates. Hopefully she’ll be back to full speed at some point, but it’s a case of wait-and-see as to exactly what she’ll be able to offer.

 

And then there’s Brittney. An athletic specimen the likes of which the women’s game has never seen before, a 6-8 center who can still move smoothly, rebound, finish and block shots. She’s known for her dunking ability, and it probably won’t be long before she exhibits it in the WNBA, but there’s more to what she can do. On the Mercury, while they’ll benefit from her offensive skills in the halfcourt, her most important role will be at the center of their defense. Head coach Corey Gaines basically can’t coach D – we’ve got years of evidence of that. This team’s been terrible defensively for eons. But when you put a behemoth like Griner in the post it cures a lot of defensive ills. Even when she isn’t blocking shots, she’ll alter a lot of them, and simply make players less keen to drive into the paint. She’ll have to work on pick-and-roll defense (which is a far bigger part of the game in the pros than it is in college), and Gaines will need to establish defensive structures that never take her far from the rim, but that shouldn’t be hard. It’s a marvellous fit for the Mercury.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Minnesota Lynx

 

PG: Lindsay Whalen/Lindsey Moore

SG: Seimone Augustus/Monica Wright/Sugar Rodgers

SF: Maya Moore/Rachel Jarry

PF: Rebekkah Brunson/Amber Harris

C: Janel McCarville/Devereaux Peters

 

Significant gains: Janel McCarville, plus whoever works out from L. Moore, Jarry and Rodgers.

Significant losses: Taj McWilliams-Franklin, Candice Wiggins (and Erin Thorn’s gone too).

 

The 2012 WNBA Finals were a little bit of a rude awakening for the Minnesota Lynx. After a title the year before, and another dominant regular season (albeit with an occasional hiccup), the Indiana Fever crashed the party and outplayed the Lynx to take the title. But this is still a very talented team and losing the trophy they expected to retain should only leave them hungrier in 2013. They may just have to make a few minor tweaks to the juggernaut that rolled through the last two regular seasons.

 

The most obvious change this year is the departure of Taj McWilliams-Franklin. Mama Taj had to call it a day sometime, and she finally hung up her sneakers to join Bill Laimbeer on the sidelines in New York. Despite her advancing years, Taj was the anchor to the impressive Minnesota defense, always in the right place at the right time, and they’ll miss her. To plug the hole, Janel McCarville’s rights were acquired from the Liberty, and she returns to the WNBA for the first time since 2010. She’s a popular player in the area after forming a successful partnership with Lynx point guard Lindsay Whalen back in her college days in Minnesota, and she’ll slide straight into McWilliams-Franklin’s starting spot in the post. McCarville isn’t the same calibre of defender that Taj was, but she has a more varied offensive game with good vision and passing skills. The Lynx will be hoping that those talents offset the drop-off at the other end. McCarville’s also not had the best of times overseas in the last couple of years, but she’s only 30 so there should be some solid basketball left in her yet.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Los Angeles Sparks

On to the Western Conference, once again in alphabetical order. No favouritism shown at WNBAlien.

—–

 

PG: Lindsey Harding

SG: Kristi Toliver/A’dia Mathies

SF: Alana Beard/Jenna O’Hea/Marissa Coleman/Farhiya Abdi

PF: Nneka Ogwumike/Ebony Hoffman

C: Candace Parker/Jantel Lavender

 

Significant gains: Lindsey Harding, maybe Mathies and/or Abdi.

Significant losses: DeLisha Milton-Jones (and they cut Nicky Anosike by choice).

 

For a team that went 24-10, had its superstar finally last a full season, featured the runaway Rookie of the Year and had both a breakout star and an impressive comeback story in the backcourt – there was a hell of a lot of whining about the Los Angeles Sparks last year. Much of it prior to them being swept by Minnesota in the Western Conference Finals. After Sharnee Zoll tore her ACL prior to the season, they had to make do with Kristi Toliver and Alana Beard sharing the point guard duties – something neither is entirely comfortable with. The defense was a constant work in progress, flipping through multiple systems and often having to compensate for breakdowns from Toliver and Candace Parker. The bench was inconsistent at best, often dropping to the realms of awful. So fans found plenty to complain about. Yet they were in the battle for the Western Conference lead all year, and won a playoff series for the first time since the Lisa Leslie era. Imagine what they might do in Carol Ross’s second year at the helm, after adding yet another important piece to the puzzle?

 

The major addition is point guard Lindsey Harding, signed as a free agent from Atlanta. Despite joining her fourth franchise in seven WNBA seasons – good players don’t tend to move that much – Harding is a smart point who can run a team, solidly part of the second tier of point guards in the women’s game behind Sue Bird and Lindsay Whalen. She gives Ross a steady hand to steer the ship, another player who can penetrate and score a few points, and a useful perimeter defender. Her presence also takes Toliver and Beard off the ball, which is where both ideally want to be. On-ball pressure caused LA a lot of problems in the playoffs last year – especially for Toliver – which shouldn’t be as much of an issue this season. Now Toliver can concentrate on scoring, which is something she can be exceptionally good at, while Beard becomes a primary defender and secondary ballhandler. It’s a better fit.

 

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2013 WNBA Season Previews: Washington Mystics

 

PG: Ivory Latta

SG: Matee Ajavon/Tayler Hill

SF: Monique Currie

PF: Crystal Langhorne/Emma Meesseman

C: Kia Vaughn/Michelle Snow/Jessica Moore/(Quanitra Hollingsworth to arrive later)

(plus two of Gs Shay Peddy, Nadirah McKenith and Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, pending a final cut)

 

Significant gains: Ivory Latta, Kia Vaughn, Tayler Hill, Emma Meesseman (maybe), and Mike Thibault on the sidelines.

Significant losses: Trudi Lacey (well they ‘lost’ her and it was significant, right?), and over half the terrible roster from last year.

 

It was good news/bad news for the Mystics after last season’s excruciating crawl to 5-29 was finally over. The horrible news came quickly, when the lottery dropped them from the highest chance of landing Brittney Griner to #4 in what most saw as a three-player draft. But then Connecticut decided they’d had enough of solid seasons and consistently being pretty good under Mike Thibault, and gave him his walking papers. After two years of Trudi Lacey, resulting in a combined record of 11-57, Washington fans would’ve given their right arms for ‘solid’ or ‘pretty good’. So Thibault got the job, and a mild sense of optimism returned to the Mystics. The situation is similar to Tulsa’s last year – no one’s expecting miracles, and not even necessarily a playoff challenge. But they finally feel like someone competent’s in charge of the operation, and they’re moving in the right direction. It’s a positive step.

 

It’s hard to turn over an entire roster in one offseason – and not necessarily advisable, even when the team’s awful – but Thibault’s done what he could. He found an upgrade at point guard, signing Ivory Latta as a free agent to replace Jasmine Thomas (who was traded away). Latta will give them an extra scoring threat in the backcourt, and simply speed up the offense with her attacking mentality. The jump in the draft from the Thomas trade led to a subsequent trade with New York for Kia Vaughn, who deepens the post options. Then there was Tayler Hill, a guard taken with that 4th pick they ended up with in the lottery, who offers another backcourt scoring option and the potential to become a key piece. Finally, under the radar, 20 year-old Belgian post Emma Meesseman went as the 19th pick in the draft and could be a steal if she adapts to the WNBA and develops. She could have trouble with the physicality of the WNBA to begin with, but she’s skilled and long, with some range on her shot. And the Mystics have time to wait for her to grow.

 

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