Jonquel and Sabrina’s Year-Two Chemistry has the Liberty Rolling » Winsidr

Sabrina Ionescu dances on the perimeter, juking with a live dribble as Jonquel Jones screens and rescreens an active Kelsey Plum, with A’ja Wilson—the two-time Defensive Player of the Year—lurking a step inside the three-point arc, mirroring Ionescu’s movements. Jones’ second screen is a slip, but Plum is clipped enough to give Ionescu a step, and she’s left chasing, forcing Wilson to pick up the Liberty guard’s drive. Ionescu doesn’t hesitate, but instead drives right, passing through the paint to the other side of the rim before picking up her dribble. She waits a beat, undeterred by Wilson’s 6’8” wingspan, allowing Jones to cut towards the rim. Ionescu lobs a pass over the top of Wilson, over the top of the fronting Plum. Jones tips the ball to herself and corrals it, even as Wilson comes back to help with her initial assignment. In one fluid motion, Jones puts her body between ball and defender, absorbing Wilson’s contact as she scoops the layup high off the glass and through for an and-one. 

The make would give the Liberty a late-second-quarter 43-41 lead in a game they’d later pull away to win in dominant fashion, thanks in large part to the offensive performances of both Jones (a season-high 34 points) and Ionescu (a season-high 12 assists). 

At the WNBA’s intermission—a long-awaited Olympics break after the nonstop grind of the season’s first half—the New York Liberty (21-4) sit atop the standings. Per Basketball Reference, which calculates team scoring per 100 possessions, the Liberty are pacing the league with the best offensive rating (110.0) which, coupled with the fourth-highest defensive rating (98.4), gives them the highest net rating in the W (+11.6). This is a slight improvement over the performance of last year’s star-heavy squad (111.8/101.0/+10.8), which finished second to Las Vegas. 

The Sab/JJ PNR

One of many reasons for the Liberty’s sustained success has been the thriving two-man game between Jones and Ionescu.

“Yeah, it’s come to fruition,” Jones said of her expanded use in the pick-and-roll. “We’ve been doing it a lot more, and I feel like we’ve been really successful at it. It’s definitely one of the ways that we use to exploit people.”

Jones hit the break leading the league in true shooting percentage (65.6 percent), and her year-two chemistry with Ionescu has been a major reason why. Ionescu has assisted Jones 62 times this season; the rest of the team has combined to assist Jones just 59 times. In all of 2023, Ionescu found Jones with only 36 helpers.

After last night’s Liberty win over the Sparks, I asked Sabrina Ionescu about her growing connection with Jonquel Jones. She’s assisted to JJ 46 times this year, while the rest of the team has combined for just 39 dimes. (Also, Sab *totaled* just 36 JJ assists in 2023.) pic.twitter.com/rfwPJKM6nd

— Myles (@MylesEhrlich) June 21, 2024

When comparing New York’s sets between 2023 and 2024, not much has changed in terms of the movement. Instead, it’s how Coach Sandy Brondello has chosen to deploy her MVP frontcourt, inverting the pairing alongside Ionescu and slotting in Jones over Breanna Stewart.

“It’s just like last year, when I put Stewie more in the action,” Brondello said. “Now, because of the switching when JJ is more in the action, they all get a piece of the pie. And it’s twofold: they had to get used to JJ; it takes time. How she wants passes, where she wants passes. But she’s gotten better at catching the ones down low. Usually that’s not a great thing for her, or out of movement. But Sabrina just finds her: she has really good poise on when to pass, and it’s fun, with Stewie as well, but particularly with JJ.”

In terms of Jones’ success in the pick-and-roll, her year-over-year stats show staggering improvement. Her timing on slips, combined with Ionescu’s ability to zip passes through small pockets, has tortured defenses around the league. To highlight how long I’ve seen Jones’ potential as a roller in the two-man action, I went back and found this quote from her introductory presser with the Liberty on January 20, 2023, where I asked about playing alongside creators like Ionescu and Marine Johannès.

“I think it’s amazing,” Jones said at the time. “Everyone’s gonna eat off us being able to thrive in the pick-and-roll. Defenses have to respect them, and it’ll be mutually beneficial…I’m excited.”

Jonquel Jones’ Efficiency as a Roller from 2022 through mid-2024 (stats from Synergy)

That quote has proven to be especially prescient, especially in the context of this data. With this ultra-efficient play a staple of the team’s offense, it’s no surprise that, according to Basketball Reference, New York’s effective field goal percentage jumps from .493 to .538 with Jones on the floor, with the team’s assist percentage 7.4 percent higher (75.5 vs 68.1) in her on/off splits. Jones herself is a big part of that, averaging a career-high with 3.52 assists per game, nearly double her career average of 1.82, per Across the Timeline.

JJ’s Ability to Create

“When I roll, there’s a lot of attention,” Jones said. “And so, whether it’s me and a short roll or me opening up things for my teammates, it kind of creates a gravitational force. It brings everybody in and we’re able to play off it, just understanding that from watching a lot of film and knowing that we can pick defenses apart by doing it.”

Jones, with her combination of touch, timing, and creativity, gets her teammates involved in an array of actions: finding cutters, making reads off the short roll, identifying openings off double-teams, swinging the ball in rotation, utilizing dribble handoffs to open shooters, running the break, executing post-entry feeds against mismatches. There’s a range to these passes, as shown in this collection of plays, though nothing compares to watching Brondello shimmy as she mimics Jones’ behind-the-back dimes.

“She makes these flipping behind-the-back—” Brondello said at one practice, trailing off for a moment as she faux-juked in the middle of a reporter scrum before offering up a shrug. “And I’m like, ‘Okay, let’s do it,’ because it works.”

“JJ’s not just a back-to-the-basket post player because she’s able to make decisions on the fly in the short roll,” Ionescu said, one of five players to average six-plus assists in the WNBA at this point in the 2024 campaign. “For me, it’s been easy because I don’t have to wait to get the ball to her, when her feet are set and her back set to the basket like the traditional five. I can dump it off and let her make her move, let her make her read. [JJ has] the ability to finish like a guard: same hand, same foot, spin move, behind-the-back, whatever—[she has] all these guard-like skills. So, it’s been really easy for me to be able to just feed her.”

Ionescu’s Three-Level Prowess

A major reason Ionescu has been able to befuddle defenses is because of the work she put in this offseason to drive downhill. A testament to her work ethic, Ionescu has made concrete efforts to improve specific parts of her game and has found results each passing year. Ahead of the 2023 season, her emphasis was on strengthening her legs after suffering injuries early in her career, and she went on to sink more three-pointers than any other player in WNBA history, with several huge moments in overtime wins when everyone else’s energy looked to be flagging. She knocked down an absurd 44.8 percent of her looks on just south of eight attempts a night from the perimeter.

This year, the focus was on getting into the paint and scoring. Over at Nets Daily, Lucas Kaplan highlighted something that sounds simple: Ionescu’s ability to handle ball pressure has improved because she’s gotten so much better at keeping a live dribble. While she’s regressed to just above a league-average shooter from above the break so far this season, her ability to keep defenses honest as a three-level scorer has opened up more for both her and her teammates. 

It’s also worth noting, during Courtney Vandersloot’s lengthy absence, Brondello made the decision to put the ball into the young guard’s hands more frequently than in 2023. Because of that, the quality of three-point looks hasn’t been as good as it was a season prior, mainly because Ionescu’s generating offense, rather than being the beneficiary of other table-setters. Still, her own shot creation has led to a more balanced shot chart: after being significantly below league average anywhere inside the arc in 2023, she grades out as a plus finisher in those same areas thus far in 2024.

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