Sunday Notes, Week 12: Kamilla Cardoso has arrived

For reference, since this notebook comes out on Sundays, I define “this week” as the prior Sunday through Saturday night.

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Tankathon check-in

To be clear, no one in the WNBA is currently tanking on purpose (at least, the players aren’t). That said, let’s see where the teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up. (The chart is vaguely organized by the rightmost column.)

Team	Games back in lottery	Games back of No. 8 seed	Strength of schedule remaining (out of 12)1	Likely finish
Los Angeles Sparks	———	4	Sixth-strongest (seventh-easiest)	Top lottery odds
Washington Mystics	3.5	2.5	9	Second-best lottery odds
Dallas Wings	7	2	7	No. 8 seed or bottom-two lottery odds
Chicago Sky2	5	———	3	Bottom-two lottery odds
Atlanta Dream3	5	1	11	No. 8 seed or bottom-two lottery odds
Indiana Fever	4.5	-4.5	12	No. 6 or 7 seed

Dallas moved up three games on Chicago for the No. 8 seed from last week while Atlanta stayed where it was. Meanwhile, Indiana put four more games between itself and the Sky! The Fever will probably be removed from the check-in next week.

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Chicago Sky

In our pre-draft scouting report on Cardoso, we noted how her interior defense rests on her ability to solve movement problems, a skill that was as much cognitive as it was physical. The upshot was that it would likely translate to the professional level. Her use of angles in space, superb timing and halfcourt processing even from somewhat atypical physical approaches create defensive impact that projected to be more durable as the athleticism of her opponents improved in the WNBA, as opposed to collegiate rim protectors who rely solely on length and marginal athleticism.

That movement problem-solving is increasingly showing up in her rookie season with Chicago. Against Las Vegas last week, she had a difficult matchup given not only the existence of former WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson but also the difficulty of defending a stretch five in the Aces’ starting lineup while protecting against rim-pressure guards. Cardoso did an impressive job handling that assignment, though.

The first thing that can pop with Cardoso is her burst and lateral quickness, both very good for a 6’7 center. But her hip flexibility and overall dexterity really make her defense shine.

The understanding of angles and timing that allows her to solve as many movement problems as she does can be subtler but is no less impressive. Note how efficiently she makes up ground recovering from playing at the level here despite looking a step behind the play when the pass is thrown.

The trio of Cardoso, Angel Reese and Chennedy Carter is a prima facie core that cannot be built around, but Cardoso is flashing high-level play already.

Dallas Wings

I bet you thought this section was going to be about Dallas’ big wins this week. But nope, this is about Tulsa Shock legend Karima Christmas-Kelly.

I’ve been doing a lot of retrospective college scouting lately for our WNBA Retrospect podcast series, which is focusing this season on undervalued prospects. This means that my scouting notes now include very detailed breakdowns of Monica Maxwell, Victoria Dunlap, Natalie Novosel, Sasha Goodlett, A’dia Mathies, etc. And I’m not sure I have encountered a bigger difference between a prospect’s reasonable projection and their actual WNBA peak than Christmas-Kelly.

Christmas-Kelly was drafted No. 23 overall in 2011, a very reasonable spot at the time but a wild steal in hindsight given the quality (or lack thereof) higher in the draft. She ended up being a quality role player at a position of need in her W peak, but that was entirely unpredictable from her time at Duke.

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Christmas-Kelly shot 28.3% on 198 threes and 68.3% on 398 free throws in college, similar numbers to her first two to three professional seasons. Then she had a five-year peak of 10 points, 4.7 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 1.1 steals on 53.3% true shooting, 34.2% from three and 80.1% from the line. That’s a peak future value of 50, or an average regular.

To my eyes, as a Blue Devil, her future value was a very clear 45 (good bench player) if you were to tell me that she had a solid outside jumper. But both statistically and mechanically, there was zero indication that would be the case.

She also radically improved her assist-to-turnover numbers in the WNBA despite spending her peak on mediocre Tulsa/Dallas teams and having played alongside Chelsea Gray and Jasmine Thomas her senior season in Durham. I can at least chalk up that improvement to her being stuck in a bad and overtaxing offensive system in college, but that shooting improvement was wild.

Anyway, here are some WNBA highlights of her, because if I don’t share these here, then I have no idea what I’m keeping them for.

Washington Mystics

Brittney Sykes has shot 34.2% from three in 49 games as a Mystic. The longest previous streak she’d had shooting at least 34.0% from deep was a 32-game streak back in 2017 for the Atlanta Dream, per Sports Reference. Sykes took 3.1 3-pointers per game in that Atlanta streak. She is taking nearly four per game in Washington.

To put in perspective why this matters: If Sykes can consistently hit a productive rate of 3-pointers, given her historic defensive prowess both on the ball and in a ridiculous variety of help assignments, she would be a roughly top-45 player in league history, at least based on her peak, in my opinion. That would be — again, in my opinion — comparable to the peaks of the likes of Mwadi Mabika, Emma Meesseman, Alysha Clark and Jasmine Thomas.

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Related reading from 2023: ‘Now look what I can do’: How Brittney Sykes has realized her potential with Washington Mystics

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And yes, I do have a spreadsheet carefully ranking everyone in league history I’ve watched who played onto a second contract and through their peak, because I am a dork.