July 21, 2024
Sunday Notes, Week 9.5: Arike Ogunbowale again downs Team USA, Jordan Horston for MIP, Marina Mabrey on the move
By Em Adler
Our weekly look around the WNBA looks at the first major in-season trade in nearly a decade and more.
![Arike-Ogunbowale-Mark-Rebilas-USA-Today Arike Ogunbowale and Team WNBA teammates celebrate her hitting a 3-pointer in the 2024 All-Star Game](https://i0.wp.com/www.thenexthoops.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Arike-Ogunbowale-Mark-Rebilas-USA-Today.webp?fit=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
Welcome back to Sunday Notes, your weekly journey into trends and analysis around the WNBA. Today we’re looking at the consequences of the league’s first major in-season trade in nearly a decade, a quirky leaderboard of international stars, my Most Improved frontrunner and more. For reference, since this notebook comes out on Sundays, I define “this week” as the prior Sunday through Saturday night.
Continue reading with a subscription to The Next
Get unlimited access to women’s basketball coverage and help support our hardworking staff of writers, editors, and photographers by subscribing today.
Already a member?
Login
Get 24/7 soccer coverage with The Equalizer
The Next is partnering with The Equalizer to bring more women’s sports stories to your inbox. Subscribers to The Next receive 50% off their subscription to The Equalizer for 24/7 coverage of women’s soccer.
Tankathon Check-in
To be clear, no one in the WNBA is currently tanking on purpose (at least, the players aren’t). That being said, let’s see where our teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up (chart vaguely organized by rightmost column):
Team: | Games back in lottery¹: | Games back of No. 8 seed: | Strength of schedule remaining (out of 12)²: | Likely finish: |
Washington | 3 | 4.5 | 9th-strongest (fourth-easiest) | Top-two lottery odds |
Los Angeles | 1.5 | 4 | 4 | Top-two lottery odds |
Atlanta3 | 4.5 | 3 | 12 | Bottom-two lottery odds |
Dallas | 6 | 4.5 | 2 | Bottom-two lottery odds |
Chicago4 | 6.5 | ——— | 10 | No. 8 seed |
Indiana | 1.5 | ——— | 11 | No. 7 seed |
2. Per Massey
3. Washington owns Atlanta’s pick
4. Dallas owns the rights to swap picks with Chicago
Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?
Subscribe now to our sister publication The IX and receive our independent women’s sports newsletter six days a week. Learn more about your favorite athletes and teams around the world competing in soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers.
Readers of The Next now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.
Chicago Sky/Connecticut Sun
Some thoughts on the trade from Wednesday that sent Marina Mabrey from Chicago to Connecticut:
- We accepted some time ago that Mabrey’s contract was an above-market rate deal for a player of her caliber. So from Connecticut’s perspective, this trade basically can be broken down into two parts: matching negative-value salary first, and then compensating Chicago for having received the better player in the deal. In Moriah Jefferson and Rachel Banham, the Sun exchange two players contributing below the level of the average player at their salary. From there, it’s essentially picking up Mabrey at marginal cost for both a pick swap that drops Connecticut back from the late first to the late second round and a mid-to-late first in 2026. That’s pretty good value.
- Mabrey is going from a starting lineup in which she’s arguably the best backcourt defender to a rotation in which she’s the worst defender overall. She also goes from being the second-best shot-creator to the No. 3 or 4 option. Both of these should bode very well for what she’ll be contributing in Uncasville.
- For spacing reasons, I do not think Tyasha Harris should be the one heading to the bench.
- The Sky would do well to start Banham in the space vacated for Mabrey, for spacing reasons.
- Chicago is in all likelihood going to be worse out of the Olympic break than it was before. But even with this major hit to the quality of the Sky’s rotation, they are not going to be easy to chase down in the playoff race. Atlanta is three games back and has a slightly easier schedule but lost by eight and nine points the two times these teams played in July. Dallas is expected to get Satou Sabally back out of the break, but it’s 4.5 games back and has the second-toughest remaining schedule. This may come down to the wire.
- The Sun are now the first team in league history to carry four players each making at least $200,000 that season. Which will set up …
- A mildly interesting winter ahead for Connecticut. Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner and Brionna Jones are all unrestricted free agents, and with Marina Mabrey’s 2025 salary now on the books, the franchise could bring back all three stars on deals approaching the supermax and fill out the rest of their open roster spots at salaries not much higher than the veteran minimum. In this hypothetical, the Harris extension and Olivia Nelson-Ododa’s rookie-scale fourth-year team option allow Connecticut to fill out its starting lineup and Sixth Player slots with good contributors, even with the two hundred thousandaire quartet.
- This is the first significant in-season trade since Sylvia Fowles to Minnesota in 2015, right?
- This is the first time since her rookie year that Mabrey is going to be on a team that finishes with a record over .500.
The Next, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom
The Next: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.
Dallas Wings
Most points against Team USA, last 12 years:
T-1. Chennedy Carter, 34 points (Texas AM&, 2019 college exhibitions)
T-1. Arike Ogunbowale, 34 points (Team WNBA, 2024 All-Star Game)
T-3. T- Anete Šteinberga, 30 points (Latvia, 2018 World Cup group stage)
T-3. Sabrina Ionescu, 30 points (Oregon, 2019 college exhibitions)
5. Arike Ogunbowale, 26 points (Team WNBA, 2021 All-Star Game)
6. Satou Sabally, 25 points (Oregon, 2019 college exhibitions)
7. Ana Dabović, 24 points (Serbia, 2014 World Cup group stage)
8. Emma Meesseman, 23 points (Belgium, 2018 World Cup semifinals)
T-9. Alba Torrens, 20 points (Spain, 2016 Summer Olympics preliminary round)
T-9. Han Xu, 20 points (China, 2018 World Cup group stage)
The group of players who scored in the upper teens includes current and former W players Erin Phillips, Li Yueru, Julie Vanloo, Sandrine Gruda, Ruthy Hebard, DiJonai Carrington and Kiana Williams.
Add Locked On Women’s Basketball to your daily routine
Here at The Next, in addition to the 24/7/365 written content our staff provides, we also host the daily Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast. Join us Monday through Saturday each week as we discuss all things WNBA, collegiate basketball, basketball history and much more. Listen wherever you find podcasts or watch on YouTube.
Los Angeles Sparks
What has been the most meaningless 3-pointer of the 2024 season? I would give the winning bid to Azurá Stevens’ buzzer-beater against the Storm this week:
I would also give the runner-up to Los Angeles, when Stephanie Talbot hit this one three weeks ago against Washington:
If I had a nickel for every time a Spark forward hit a meaningless buzzer-beating 3-pointer to end a close loss this month, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Order ‘Rare Gems’ and save 30%
Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The Next and The IX, released his next book on May 7, 2024. This deeply reported story follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.
If you enjoy his coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.
Seattle Storm
Jordan Horston put on a clinic in off-ball movement on Sunday. She scored 16 points on 8-of-11 shooting with three assists against the Dream, creating offense against the likes of Haley Jones and Aerial Powers, but it was her cutting which particularly fueled her production.
When Horston entered the draft out of Tennessee in 2023, the scout on her offense was that she had a good feel for offensive space and vision on the ball and was a solid finisher and decent jump-shooter, as long as she wasn’t paired with a paint-bound center. The projection was that her ability as a second-side pick-and-roll playmaker and cutter could be just good enough to keep her excellent defense on the court.
Horston has already blown that offensive projection out of the water thanks to her off-ball activity. After a rookie season in which she and the Storm were not always sure whether to use her as a cutter, spacer or screener, she has made real progress in honing her wide-ranging skill set to consistently create offense without the ball. Her combination of visual processing and timing make her a scorer that defenses need to constantly account for. And after offseason shoulder surgery, her inside jumper has developed1 to the point where she is a true triple threat.
This progress comes in addition to a defensive game which has already more than lived up to its billing. Horston graded out as a role 7 defender as a prospect, but her versatility and defensive playmaking were already elite as a rookie — she ended up ranking second in steal rate and 25th in block rate in 2023, per Her Hoop Stats — but as I noted at the time, some around the league were pumping their brakes a bit given that much of that was coming from being in the wrong place at the right time.
This season, Horston has significantly cleaned up those rotation issues and gambles, improving her defense both on and off the ball. That was noticeable this week on several occasions.
Horston ranks 13th in the WNBA defensive wins above replacement, per Positive Residual, and is tied for 21st in overall WAR. In a year where few players have taken notable steps forward in their game, Horston should be a viable midseason candidate for Most Improved Player.
Your business can reach over 3 million women’s sports fans every single month!
Here at The Next and The IX, our audience is a collection of the smartest, most passionate women’s sports fans in the world. If your business has a mission to serve these fans, reach out to our team at editors@thenexthoops.com to discuss ways to work together.
- Horston is shooting 43.9% on non-layup 2-point attempts, per Synergy, up from what was a decent 37.8% as a senior in Knoxville ↩︎
Written by Em Adler
Em Adler (she/they) covers the WNBA at large and college basketball for The Next, with a focus on player development and the game behind the game.