RealGM

Could have been worse, we could have gotten the #1 pick and lost it in a pick swap to DAL. Are there other players besides Paige in the draft?

https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/42451504/dallas-wings-win-wnba-draft-lottery-no-1-overall-pick

sco wrote:Could have been worse, we could have gotten the #1 pick and lost it in a pick swap to DAL. Are there other players besides Paige in the draft?

https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/42451504/dallas-wings-win-wnba-draft-lottery-no-1-overall-pick

This draft isn’t nearly as heavy on top talent as last year’s draft was. But that’s not a knock on this draft since last year’s draft was a complete anomaly. With that said, there’s good talent to be had 1-5. So the Sky should get a good player.

I wonder if it was their own odds that they won with or did the Sky actually win and the pick swap was automatically applied.

the sky gm came out after the lottery and was pretty explicit about the type of player they'd be targeting with the pick:

“The top priority is going to be shooting,” general manager Jeff Pagliocca said. “I’ll always look at positional size. If we can find a point guard that’s over 6 feet tall, that would be great. If we’re looking at a wing, it could be 6-foot-1 to 6-foot-3 in a perfect world.”

makes sense given the team needs — shooting is sorely lacking on the roster. however...there's not really anyone who's currently projected to go at the top of the draft who really matches that description!

the highest-ranked prospect who could plausibly be available at 3 and would fill a need for the sky is notre dame pg olivia miles, who is a stat-stuffing offensive initiator. she's also a 5'10" guard who historically hasn't been a good shooter, so that's at odds with what the team is supposedly prioritizing. (there's also a chance that the sparks end up taking miles before the sky even pick).

most of the other players commonly projected to be in the mix at the top of the draft are bigs who can't shoot and would be redundant with cardoso/reese.

as far as i can tell, the best matches in this class for the player type the sky is targeting are:

+ sonia citron, 6'1" guard from notre dame who was a career 37% shooter coming into the season but doesn't really seem to have the profile of a top-3 pick
+ azzi fudd, a 5'11" guard from uconn who's a career 38.6% shooter but has missed significant time with injury after a strong freshman year (and is yet to play so far this season). seems like a higher-ceiling player than citron but who knows where she's really at after such a long layoff
+ ajsa sivka, a 6'4" forward playing in europe. supposedly very skilled for her size, but it's hard to find a ton of intel on international women's prospects, and i'm not really clear what her contract situation is/when she'd be able to come over to the wnba/whether she's a realistic target with a top 3 pick. seems like the most intriguing option of this group, but there's a ton of mystery box aspect to her.

the only other 6'+ shooter of note i could dig up was gianna kneepkens from utah, who is a ridiculous 43% career shooter but i have not seen her mentioned anywhere other than as a bottom-of-the-second round prospect in the tankathon mock draft

there's also been a healthy amount of speculation that the sky could be trading the pick, which makes sense given the lack of shooting at the top of the draft and the lack of experience on the roster, but i don't really have any idea who they could plausibly get in return

Unlike the NBA, we still have a full season of college basketball to play out too. It is quite possible that someone emerges between now and the draft that we would find incredibly intriguing. I would hazard a guess most drafts look a lot different when predicting what they look like prior to the season being played compared to after it playing out.

Unless she jumps to #2 the best player would be Olivia Miles. A 5'10" PG at Notre Dame currently averaging 18 points, 8 rebounds, 6.8 assists. Also 9-19 from 3 but is under 30% for her career. Plays good defense.

Plan A is Angel convinces Flaujae to declare.

Also a sneaky WNBA thing is that drafts are generally bad/shallow. Top picks don't make it through their rookie deal with a lot more regularity than in the NBA.