Sunday Notes, Week 9: Skylar Diggins-Smith, Aari McDonald star; Wings fall further in standings

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):

At this point, Dallas is far enough back in the standings that I feel comfortable calling them a longshot to make the playoffs, even after Satou Sabally comes back.

Chicago Sky

Angel Reese has been very good this season, but a +19.1 net on-off is a bit extreme for someone who ranks slightly below average offensively, per Synergy. The answer includes some poor 3-point luck when she’s on the bench, per PBP Stats, a severe drop-off in frontcourt play outside of Reese now that Elizabeth Williams is injured, and a baffling inability to rebound when Reese sits.

To that last point, per WNBA Advanced Stats, the Sky have a 42.6% rebounding rate when Reese sits. Across a full season, that would rank worst in WNBA history, per Her Hoop Stats. The rotation regulars who spend the highest amount of their minutes without Reese have been Isabelle Harrison, Dana Evans and Diamond DeShields. And that makes sense: with Harrison now pressed into service as Chicago’s backup center, all three are poor rebounders for their position. With starting guards Lindsay Allen and Chennedy Carter already unimpactful on the boards, the Sky basically substitute into progressively worse-rebounding lineups every time a starter hits the bench, and are historically catastrophic in that aspect when both Reese and Kamilla Cardoso sit.

Most of the rest of the team’s performance, at least statistically, is either largely unchanged or marginally better with Reese off the court. Her rebounding is just that important to Chicago.

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Las Vegas Aces

Since 2008, just one MVP was awarded to a player whose team finished lower than second in the standings, including ties (Elena Delle Donne, 2015). The Aces currently sit fourth in the WNBA, two games out of the apparently crucial second place, with the toughest remaining strength of schedule, per Massey. Just some food for thought as A’ja Wilson on Friday became the first player in league history to put up 25 points with three 3-pointers, 15 rebounds and five blocks in a single game, per Across The Timeline.

Los Angeles Sparks

You’d be forgiven for not having paid close attention to the Sparks lately, but if you haven’t, then you’ve missed growth from some key players. Among them: Aari McDonald, whose energy, impact and leadership our Cameron Ruby wrote about this past week.

Over her last 14 games, McDonald is averaging 12.1 points on 57.4% true-shooting, 5.0 assists with an assist-to-turnover ratio over 2.0, and 1.2 steals. It’s easily her best stretch as a scorer since mid-2022, per Sports Reference, and the best she has ever been as a playmaker. The game seems to be really slowing down for her in her fourth year, as it often does for point guards in the W. She’s better at hitting pocket passes in the pick-n-roll, more comfortable changing speeds off the dribble to get downhill and has done a good job picking her spots to score, which is no easy feat on a team without many other impact scorers.

The aim of a rebuilding season is not only to improve draft position and focus on longer-term players, but to find quality players where other teams may not be looking for them. With Atlanta having soured on McDonald last year, Los Angeles found an opportunity to put her in a better position to succeed, and in the process discovered someone who could contribute good minutes to a future contender.

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Seattle Storm

Skylar Diggins-Smith had a rough start to this season. After five games, she was shooting 30.3% from the field and under 10% from three while committing over 4.5 turnovers a game.

After a particularly tough game against New York during that opening stretch, head coach Noelle Quinn said, “There needs to be respect about the fact that [Diggins-Smith]’s had two children and hasn’t played in 20 months. So she’s not where she will be, in game four of the season. But at the end of the day, who she is is a competitive athlete. She wants to win. She wants to be better for us. And so there’s grace in that. She’s not gonna come overnight and be who she was 20 months ago, and we have to respect that and honor that.”

It took less than a week after that for Diggins-Smith to get back into form. Since May 25, a span of 18 games, she has averaged 14.3 points on 55.1% true-shooting, 6.9 assists with a 2.6 assist-to-turnover ratio, and 1.4 steals. Though that scoring average would be her lowest since 2016, her efficiency is right in line with her career numbers, and those playmaking figures would mark career-highs. She’s also sixth in the league in pWAR.

“I’m a multi-hyphenate — in this league, most of us are; we’re not just monoliths or just basketball players and that’s it,” Diggins-Smith told The Next, about how the Storm have supported her return. “It definitely is a system here [in Seattle] that believes in that — even with the charter system, being able to travel with my children and the team being open to that so my family can come on the trip. Obviously, [my] first year navigating two kids, so it’s been a lot. I’m earning my stripes right now with my husband. So just with all the nuances of this season, just having resources in place to make sure that I can be the best that I can be on the court and off the floor.”

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