A Question I Have About Each WNBA Team’s Second Half

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First things first, the answer to the most important question facing the WNBA at large is yes, of course the owners should pay the players what they owe them. As far as the rest of today’s newsletter goes, it’s fairly self-explanatory. The Eastern Conference leads the way mostly because the Western Conference went first last week.

Atlanta had a solid first half-season under Karl Smesko, but it hasn’t quite been hitting 3-pointers with the frequency most expected under the watch of a coach whose FGCU teams famously poured it in from deep. The Dream are 10th in the league in 3-point percentage (32.3%) while ranking third in 3-point attempts per game (28.8) and fourth in 3-point rate (37.3% of scoring attempts). Atlanta’s 3-point attempts have decreased as the season’s gone on, falling from 31.2 per game over the first 11 games (when Atlanta was 8-3) to 26.5 per game over the last 11 (when it was 3-6) with a corresponding decrease of about 1.7 makes per game. It seemed Atlanta was better off getting up as many 3-pointers as it could and forcing opponents to keep up, even though they haven’t gone in at a very high rate at any point this season (32.6% over the first 11 games vs. 32.0% over the last 11).

I’m sure this is a stunning question given I’ve never once said Angel Reese is playing like an MVP candidate before. Kidding aside, it’s the obvious question after seeing Reese average 16.4 points, 12.8 rebounds and 4.4 assists per game while hitting 50.3% from the field over her last 14 games. She had at least 15 points and 10 boards in the last eight of those games, tying A’ja Wilson for WNBA record. The Sky were quite a bit better over the last three weeks of the first half than they had been previously, going 4-5 after a 3-10 start. While it’s almost certainly too late for them to get back into the playoff race, it’s definitely not too late for a team like the Sky and a player like Reese has been of late to spoil someone else’s season.

I wanna start by noting that Connecticut would have to go 0-22 the rest of the way to post the worst winning percentage in a season in WNBA history (the 2011 Tulsa Shock went 3-31, .088), so it’s all but guaranteed the Sun won’t have the worst season ever by win-loss record. That said, with the season having ballooned to 44 games, Connecticut would need to go 10-12 in the second half to avoid losing a league-record 33 games. Only six of 22 remaining games come against other teams currently outside of the playoff race — three against Chicago, two against Los Angeles and one against Dallas — so the Sun figure to be playing highly motivated opponents more often than not the rest of the way.

While I was writing on last night, it was reported that it’s unlikely I’ll see Clark in person tomorrow night in Brooklyn and that she’ll be undergoing further testing this week. We’ve only seen a couple glimpses of Clark at her best this season — including her first return from injury when she torched my Liberty for over 200 feet of 3-pointers. Even with Clark mired in a historic shooting slump, the difference between having her on the floor and not is the difference between a Fever record that would be fourth-best in the league for the season (8-5, .615) and one that would be ninth (4-6, .500). Clark’s long-term health is the priority, but the Fever’s short-term prospects hinge on when she can return to the floor, for how long, and with what percentage of her powers.

The reigning WNBA champions are 6-6 since starting the season 9-0, with their losses all coming since Jones initially sprained her ankle on June 5 at Washington. Last year’s WNBA Finals MVP finished only one game since then (a comeback win against Atlanta on June 17) and missed eight games after aggravating her injury on June 19 against Phoenix, but she will be back in the lineup tomorrow. The Liberty were off to a dominant start prior to Jones’ injury, posting seven straight offensive ratings of at least 103.8 while holding all seven opponents to ratings under 100 and posting net ratings of at least +20 points per 100 possessions in five of seven games. They had only two double-digit wins and one rating of +20 points per 100 possessions or better over the last dozen games, but the most dominant performance in that span was the last time they took the floor.

This would be the question for any team looking to make a playoff push while starting two rookies. A pair of deserving All-Stars, Citron and Iriafen have already played a whole lot of basketball dating back to last November. Citron has played 54 games and over 1,800 minutes since the start of her final season at Notre Dame while Iriafen has played 57 games and just under 1,650 minutes since the start of her senior season at USC. If they keep it up at their current pace, they’ll both be pushing 80 games and well past 2,000 minutes by the time the regular season ends. It’d only make them human if they eventually ran into the proverbial “rookie wall” at some point along the way.