Taking Stock at 2025 All-Star Break

[Doctor MJ]

Dallas Wings

11th in Standings (12th at ASB)
11th in SRS
8th in ORtg
9th in DRtg

Top 5 MPG players: Paige, Arike, Carrington, Li, Siegrist
Top 5 MP players: Arike, Paige, Hines-Allen, James, Carrington
Top 5 WS players: Paige, Li, Quinerly, Arike, Geiselsoder
Top 5 Raw +/- players: Jones, Charles, Harris, Li, Berger

So, to some degree, there's really no need for any real analysis. This was a team that handed the reins to Arike Ogunbawale as a rookie, and continued to build under the theory of her as the franchise player for her first 6 years, and while progressed seemed to being made up through 2023 when the team had a positive record & SRS and won a round in the playoffs, the bottom dropped out in 2024 leading to the worst season out of any of the franchise's Dallas year.

Had the Wings not lucked into winning the lottery, it would have been interesting to learn what the Wings' plan was, because other than Paige Bueckers, there really wasn't anyone in the 2025 draft to hand the reins over to. It thus seems likely that the Wings would have continued trying to build around Arike if not for getting Paige, but now that they've got Paige, the path forward seems relatively straight forward:

Build around Paige, don't worry about growing pains, pay attention to players who work well with Paige. I think we have to expect continued massive roster turnover for a while, and first and foremost this will probably mean moving on from Arike.

Whether Arike moves on or not, it seems clear her career is standing at a crossroads. Next year she'll be a 29-year-old player who has spent her entire development from youth as an alpha scorer, but who in the WNBA was never able to do this with the kind of efficiency needed to actually be good. Maybe some team will pay her with the expectation of her being an instant alpha, but frankly I'd say it's time for her to expect to make some changes. I'm skeptical she can actually play totally different and be more effective than playing the only way she's ever played, so my thoughts would be to either look to become a 6th woman microwave off the bench in the W, or she goes to a league whose competition is more like college ball, where she had great success as an alpha star.

Before we leave the pre-Paige period of the Wings, I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention their prior second star, Satou Sabally, who got the greater accolades in 2023 than Arike when the Wings actually had some success, and is now over in Phoenix having some more team success. While lucking into Paige I think makes the Wings content with where they are, I can't help but wonder what might have happened if they'd really turned the keys over to Sabally (and taken them away from Arike) years ago.

Back to the future, Paige is 23 and not only the best player on the team, but she's at least 2 years younger than anyone else on the Wings roster getting 20 MPG or more. Time will tell whether Paige becomes a WNBA superstar, but I expect that going into next season, the Wings will focus everything in their roster building around her. Good chance the team still isn't good, but we'll all be watching optimistically.

[Doctor MJ]

Connecticut Sun

Last in Standings
Last in SRS
Last in ORtg
Last in DRtg

Top 5 MPG players: Mabrey, Charles, Rivers, Lacan, Sheldon
Top 5 MP players: Charles, Rivers, Sheldon, Hartley, Nelson-Ododa
Top 5 WS players: Nelson-Odoa, Sheldon (only 2 positive WS players)
Top 5 Raw +/- players: Marshall, Toure, Lacan (only 3 positive +/- players)

It goes without saying that this Sun team is awful, but the scale of the awfulness is really something. I'll note the weirdness of a team this bad having any positive +/- players, and of course this is basically just a trio of players who haven't played much.

If we look at the bottom end of the league +/- leaders, we see that the worst 4 in the league are Charles, Sheldon, Hartley & Nelson-Ododa, and that Mabrey & Hartley come at 7th & 8th respectively. (Angel Reese & Kia Nurse of the Sky claim the 5th & 6th worse numbers in the league.)

When a team is as bad as the Sun are after being great in the previous years, it screams "they had to blow it up", and from a future-looking perspective, that's clearly the way to look at them. They're going to get a high draft pick next year, and we would presume that there will be a youth movement going forward.

Thing is, what's happening right now isn't a youth movement. They brought back the 36-year-old Tina Charles to operate as their star, and the other star-like player is Marina Mabrey who they brought in last year to help them compete and who is 28. While it's possible that the Sun went into the season looking to "tank", and in which case a god-awful record is part of the plan, I think this is unlikely, in part because with JuJu Watkins' injury, next year doesn't even seem like it has a clear cut future WNBA superstar. (Shout out to my Bruin Lauren Betts, but in all honesty, I'd say JuJu was better and young last year.)

There is one other thing on my mind that's going to lead me to dwell on the negative, and that's the fact that Charles has now managed to play through her age 36 season as a primary WNBA scorer, while being someone who as a rule puts up terrible TS%, and while scoring with an approach (interior post) which in general overrates how impactful box score data actually is.

Before I dwell on this, I feel I should say that the WNBA media is just remarkably by cheerleader-y compared to the NBA. Google Charles and you'll basically just see stuff talking about her as an all-time greater. If you did hard enough you'll see fans talk about her individualistic game and her tendency to burn bridges, but even there, you won't find articles talking about Charles as perhaps the most overrated basketball player in modern American basketball history, yet, I'd say this pretty clearly what she is.

Now "overrated" is a holistic negative judgment that isn't necessarily helpful for discussion, so let me clear:

The specific problem is that post volume scoring isn't as good of an offensive scheme as people a) used to think in the NBA or b) people seem to still think in the WNBA. This is the pace & space revolution in a nutshell - better to build your offense around players who don't need to rely on a predictable pass that defenses can prepare against.

Thing is, one of the reasons I'd argue that the WNBA was slower to recognize this, is that really up through the end of the career of Sylvia Fowles, she could still get to volume scoring totals efficiently, whereas this seemed to stop being a possibility in the NBA. I would emphasize that all of the impact data surrounding Fowles is considerably less impressive than people would assume for the reasons I've given above, and that it's not a coincidence in my assessment that Fowles' retirement resulted not in the Lynx having to rebuild, but instead more of a re-launch fully committing to Napheesa Collier as the franchise player... but the fact remains that if you were going to insist on building your offense around a post volume scorer, Fowles was probably the best case scenario with her career 63.6% TS.

And then you've got Charles with her her career 50.4% TS, and honestly it just all screams to me "Never build your offense around Charles".

Now as with Arike as I described in the previous post, when we look back at Charles' college career we see a much more positive story. While I think she got overrated relative to her teammate Maya Moore (something she has in common with all of Moore's teammates, as well as all other women basketball players of the modern era), it makes sense that Charles stood out a major draft prospect given her college effectiveness, and in a relatively soft draft, makes sense she'd go #1, and thus be treated like an instant franchise player in the W.

I'm not going to say it's a given that some other player from that 2010 draft was literally better than Charles (role player Alysha Clark?), but I would say that building your team's offense around Charles proved to be fool's gold.

Yet here we are, 15 years later, and Charles is literally back where she started (Connecticut Sun), so it cries out a question of how is it the W never figured this out?

Here, I think we have to zero in on 2012 where Charles' team went 25-9 and Charles won MVP. Should she have won MVP? No way, she wasn't the most valuable player on her own team (Kara Lawson). But she was the hyped "future superstar" on the team, and so when the team she got placed on did well - and we should note they were 16-18 the year they got the #1 pick and drafted her so this wasn't actually ever a bad team - Charles was the one everyone at the time was looking to celebrate.

From that point on, I'd say that Charles being both a college POY and a WNBA MVP (where both awards should have gone to Moore with Charles not close), meant she was seen as a proven WNBA superstar, and franchises from there on out seemed to acquire her thinking "Well, if we get Charles, at least we've got that volume scoring role set".

But it's amazing that this is how it worked given that in the year following 2012, the team dropped to 10-24. In fact, in a set of 3-year RAPM studies that were released a while back (I shared in the board thread talking about RAPM), Charles' numbers for the 3-year sample where her MVP season is the middle season, Charles actually has a net negative RAPM.

And while I don't want to talk as if Charles has just been a major net negative the whole time - I mean, she's a powerful 6'4" rebounder - it appears that she will retire with both a negative career +/-, and a negative career On-Off, and both of these are things I don't think we've ever seen in the Play-by-Play era ('96-97 onward).

This then to say, I'm afraid I see the fact that Charles has been able to have a long WNBA career as a venerated superstar scorer as a sign of rather glaring incompetence among WNBA front offices. I'm not aware of anything like this In the NBA during the era, and certainly not in the 2010s-20s by which time the NBA was in full blown analytics mode.

I'll end by mea culpa, apologizing for focusing on the negative and specifically authoring such a "hate" letter to Charles while the WNBA media keeps it positive, but man, I can't help but see the faith in Charles on-court as a massive sign that WNBA basketball decision makers were not taking inspiration from the NBA in a timely manner - and since this is still happening in 2025, at least some of the WNBA still hasn't gotten with the times.

But, if anyone wants to push back, it would be quite worth while to identify anything in my post that goes too far.

[BlacJacMac]

I just want to thank you for this thread. I wish I had more to add, but you've done such outstanding, comprehensive work, that all I can do is read and learn.

Thank you.

[Doctor MJ]

I just want to thank you for this thread. I wish I had more to add, but you've done such outstanding, comprehensive work, that all I can do is read and learn.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your kind words BlacJacMac! They don't just make me feel good, they make me more confident that others are interested in these thoughts - I sometimes think no one is really interested in this stuff but me.

To you and anyone else, feel free to ask questions. I make no claims of having any kind magical authority on basketball truth and could very well be wrong, but if there's something that wasn't well communicated before, or you're just curious about something, please don't hold back.

Cheers,
Doc

[Green Chile]

I just want to thank you for this thread. I wish I had more to add, but you've done such outstanding, comprehensive work, that all I can do is read and learn.

Thank you.

Indeed

[cupcakesnake]

Seattle Storm

1. Gabby Williams is here all year.
2. No more Jewell Loyd.

There have been a lot of high-volume low efficiency guards, that can wow with some tough shot making, but have always made me wonder if they're helping. Jewell Lloyd is the poster child of that for me. This season I'm feeling some confirmation of my bias, as the Storm surges and the Aces droop.

I watched the Storm a lot last year, even getting to see them live in Indianapolis against CC. It always looked like Lloyd operated outside the Storm's offense. To be fair, the whole team was a bit Nneka's turn-Skylar's turn-Jewell's turn, but when the other 2 were doing their thing, it still felt more connected to other stuff: Skylar running PnR with Nneka or Ezi, Nneka putting pressure on the rim and collapsing things a bit.

Then came along Gabby Williams, and the Storm finally made sense. She was the high-iq connective passer they badly needed on offense, and the monster perimeter defender they didn't realize they needed. At this point though, Jewell became downright annoying, because the offense was finally working, but she'd stall out possessions to go into her bag and jack contested 3s.

Gabby is simply one of the smartest players in the league. Despite a relative lack of scoring pressure, there's almost no one I trust more to make a decision with the ball in her hands, or off the ball as a screener and cutter.

[Doctor MJ]

Seattle Storm

1. Gabby Williams is here all year.
2. No more Jewell Loyd.

There have been a lot of high-volume low efficiency guards, that can wow with some tough shot making, but have always made me wonder if they're helping. Jewell Lloyd is the poster child of that for me. This season I'm feeling some confirmation of my bias, as the Storm surges and the Aces droop.

I watched the Storm a lot last year, even getting to see them live in Indianapolis against CC. It always looked like Lloyd operated outside the Storm's offense. To be fair, the whole team was a bit Nneka's turn-Skylar's turn-Jewell's turn, but when the other 2 were doing their thing, it still felt more connected to other stuff: Skylar running PnR with Nneka or Ezi, Nneka putting pressure on the rim and collapsing things a bit.

Then came along Gabby Williams, and the Storm finally made sense. She was the high-iq connective passer they badly needed on offense, and the monster perimeter defender they didn't realize they needed. At this point though, Jewell became downright annoying, because the offense was finally working, but she'd stall out possessions to go into her bag and jack contested 3s.

Gabby is simply one of the smartest players in the league. Despite a relative lack of scoring pressure, there's almost no one I trust more to make a decision with the ball in her hands, or off the ball as a screener and cutter.

Great insights cupcake!

Something I'll say just generally is that I think the WNBA still isn't operating with the kind of analytic prowess of the NBA, and this means that there are players who once they get anointed to stardom, seem to continue being perceived like that from there on out.

I have a spreadsheet that has the player with the worst raw +/- in any given year for the PBP era of both the NBA & WNBA.

In the NBA, something I talk about is the fact that young players with potential tend to get major run on awful teams, not with the expectation that they are helping the team right now, but with the philosophy that if this player is going to get good a high primacy NBA play, well, he better get some actual experience trying to do just that.

As such, it's entirely plausible that young players in the NBA tend to operate at a "below replacement" level, but those who never figure out how to get better basically get disappeared leaving fans to say, "Why did he peak as a rookie?". Typically he didn't peak as a rookie in reality in terms of his capabilities, that's just when franchise optimism for him peak.

So, from '96-97 to present, the mean age of the worst raw +/- player in the NBA is 23, the median 22, and the mode 20. It's worth noting that in 8 of the 29 years we saw a future all-star with this unglamorous crown, with rookie Kevin Durant being the biggest name of the bunch, and Shareef-Abdur Rahim being a 2-time "winner".

I should also note that 2 of the 29 were former all-stars who never would be again, Antoine Walker & Roy Hibbert. Walker being a clear cut case of a player with bad habits who was allowed to act as a star for too long, while Hibbert was a guy who really seemed to get figured out by the NBA.

(I'll also say that in addition to Shareef, Miles Bridges has two of these crowns, including last year at age 26, making him the oldest to "win" this since Hibbert in 2016, and making us shake our heads at Charlotte.)

What about in the W? Well:

1. Mean age 28, median age 28, mode 27.
2. A majority of the "winners" (15 of 28) were WNBA all-stars at some time in their career.
3. But only 5 of those were future WNBA all-stars.
4. While 6 of those were past WNBA all-stars.
5. And 4 of those were either current or past & future WNBA all-stars, with Dearica Hamby last year being an all-star while having the worst raw +/- in the entire league, and also getting her second of these crowns. The other 3? Candice Dupree, and Tina Charles twice.
6. Tina Charles is currently in the lead for this year, and if she continues, she'll be the only 3-time winner of this in either league. She's also the only WNBA MVP represented on the leaderboard, and had the worst +/- in the league most notably in 2013, the year after she won MVP.

This then to say, in the W, this stuff isn't about young prospects getting run, it's actually more about bad teams who, when they aren't sure what else to do, decide to latch on to established names.

All of this focus on the negative is a bit squicky as I don't want to be "that guy", particularly when taking about women's sports, but I really do think it's an important sign of decision making, and I also think we have to note that much of the actual GMing/coaching work that has led to this in the W came from men who were put in charge of running women's teams. Charles, in all 3 of the years in question was on teams with male GMs, so I'd say that what's going on is much less about "men knowing better than women", and more about people (oftentimes men) getting WNBA executive positions who just aren't qualified for them relative to NBA norms. (Though let me acknowledge the trainwreck franchises of the NBA like the Kings/Suns/Pelicans/Hornets, who at times are absolutely doing more damage per year to their franchise than any WNBA roster, they just tend to do it in a different way.)

[Doctor MJ]

Ah one other related thought:

In recent years it's been pointed out that it's not that uncommon for even 1st round picks to get cut with the general takeaway being "The WNBA is just too good relative to college because it has so few teams."

As I always want to make clear: The best of the WNBA have always been great and there's no reason at all to think any new rookie is going to come in and be a tier ahead of everyone else like we saw in the early NBA.

But I don't think the quality of the W at the top explains this tendency for W teams to be more attached to their older veterans than NBA teams are, because if that were the case, we should see veteran +/- being an even greater relative to rookies than we see in the NBA, and instead what we're seeing is that the worst teams in the W are often not young.

I would say this over-attachment to veterans is something that also speaks to lack of analytic savvy, along with the tendency of all coaches to over-rely on "safe" veterans over developing young players, and a lack of confidence among WNBA GMs that makes them choose a path they perceive as "safer".

One of the things that's been so exciting to me about the W in the 2020s is that it seems like we're starting to get an influx of more cutting edge thought which I think is presently best represented by the expansion Golden State Valkeries who stole their GM (Nyanin) from the Liberty and their coach (Nakase) from the Aces. If the early 2020s arms race between the Aces & Liberty represent the new cutting edge, then seeing an expansion team aggressively pursue brain theft from those organizations is the type of thing that indicates that a new era of team-building competence is coming.

[Green Chile]

Interesting stuff.

A couple factors that I wonder might influence this (lack of analytics and over reliance vets that score, but don't influence winning as much as the common fan would think).

-Growing league needing to sell tickets.
-Also combined with short-sighted owners that don't see the long-term value. Analytics and proper team-building requires a patient owner, and the W has had few of those.
-And as you say, not always hiring the best and brightest coaches and GM's.

In that scenario, it makes sense to get behind an established player that will score, and maybe be a fan attraction.

A couple examples to the contrary, I think are the Lynx and Sun.
Lynx have had stable ownership and landed a great coach a long time ago.

Sun are pretty interesting. They have a history of successful teams without real star/volume shooter power.
Which makes sense when the owners got in cheap, and didn't need to sell a bunch of tickets.
They viewed the basketball as an attraction to draw more people to the casino. It was a sound business decision that they didn't need to invest much into (until now, if they don't sell).
I'm assuming they didn't mettle too much with what Curt was building. It's essentially a side business.

-International players
Interesting that this started with a discussion involving Gabby.
I could be wrong, but it seems like the NBA got more analytical as the international presence increased.
I could be wrong, but it feels like the Spurs stamped in this era with 3 international stars (even if we don't generally think of Timmy as international, he was at least an unassuming superstar that helped the cause of winning far more than he was a traditional "star)

For the W, we're just now seeing great international players commit to the W in a meaningful way because the money seems like it's finally on the way.
The international invasion, I'd think, would keep influencing the W towards a more analytical approach, as I think it did with the NBA too (again, could be wrong on that, but it's the way I remember it).

[Doctor MJ]

Interesting stuff.

A couple factors that I wonder might influence this (lack of analytics and over reliance vets that score, but don't influence winning as much as the common fan would think).

-Growing league needing to sell tickets.
-Also combined with short-sighted owners that don't see the long-term value. Analytics and proper team-building requires a patient owner, and the W has had few of those.
-And as you say, not always hiring the best and brightest coaches and GM's.

In that scenario, it makes sense to get behind an established player that will score, and maybe be a fan attraction.

A couple examples to the contrary, I think are the Lynx and Sun.
Lynx have had stable ownership and landed a great coach a long time ago.

Sun are pretty interesting. They have a history of successful teams without real star/volume shooter power.
Which makes sense when the owners got in cheap, and didn't need to sell a bunch of tickets.
They viewed the basketball as an attraction to draw more people to the casino. It was a sound business decision that they didn't need to invest much into (until now, if they don't sell).
I'm assuming they didn't mettle too much with what Curt was building. It's essentially a side business.

-International players
Interesting that this started with a discussion involving Gabby.
I could be wrong, but it seems like the NBA got more analytical as the international presence increased.
I could be wrong, but it feels like the Spurs stamped in this era with 3 international stars (even if we don't generally think of Timmy as international, he was at least an unassuming superstar that helped the cause of winning far more than he was a traditional "star)

For the W, we're just now seeing great international players commit to the W in a meaningful way because the money seems like it's finally on the way.
The international invasion, I'd think, would keep influencing the W towards a more analytical approach, as I think it did with the NBA too (again, could be wrong on that, but it's the way I remember it).

Good thoughts GC!

I agree with you that a desperation for attendance has probably encouraged teams to acquire names if they aren't sure what else to do.

I'm glad you brought up contrary example.

The Lynx have been the class of the WNBA for the past 15 years, with Cheryl Reeve as the boss of that. Now, the Lynx thrashed around quite a bit for their first decade, and they were owned by Timberwolves' owner Taylor who we know doesn't know what he's doing, so beyond a certain level, I'd attribute the success of the Lynx relative to the struggles of the Wolves as essentially being dumb luck. But none of that changes the fact that Reeve is now I think pretty clearly, the GOAT WNBA coach and GOAT WNBA non-player employee.

I do think it's important to note that Reeve is a Popovich-like figure who hasn't necessarily been a bleeding edge innovator so much as a capable scout who takes all ideas and figures out something that makes sense based on the players she's decided to build around.

Reeve's Lynx were actually less 3-point oriented than the average WNBA team (which was well below NBA teams) all the way up through 2023. Was she right before? In my opinion, no, I think she was literally behind the times relative to NBA strategy that hole duration, she just didn't get burned from 2011-18 because she had such talent on her roster that it made up the difference and led to her getting 4 titles in that span...but as with Pop, I'd say it's a mistake to argue that winning titles half the time in a particular span doesn't mean that they couldn't have won every single title if they'd used a wiser scheme.

Post 2018, with the retirement of the true outlier talent on the team (Maya Moore), Reeve continued forward for another 4 seasons with post scorer Sylvia Fowles as the franchise cornerstone. I remember when I got my head back around the W during the pandemic going back and listening to podcasts from 2018 where I heard so much excitement about new Lynx talent getting a chance to step up to continue their dynasty around "MVP" Sylvia Fowles, but what was becoming clear by the time I heard these takes is that the Lynx dynasty ended with Moore's retirement despite getting an absolute dream a new franchise player in the 2019 draft (Napheesa Collier) who had so much in common with Moore.

But once Fowles retired (and Phee came back from maternity), Reeve then went about creating a team that spaced the floor around Phee in earnest - which followed the trend of what the Aces & Liberty had already done - and boom, the Lynx became the best-fitting team in the whole league.

I credit Reeve quite a bit for being able to do this with such competence once she committed to it, but the fact that Reeve didn't do this earlier I would say speaks to her being skeptical of the new trends coming out of the NBA, and not wanting to change until she actually had to re-boot the team from a losing record.

All this to say, Reeve is the GOAT, and I have more confidence in her overall than any of the other WNBA coaches to execute on her vision and help players grow, but she too has grown in the 2020s after the Ace/Lib dominance.

With the Sun, well makes sense to bring them up as a team with quite solid performance for a long time before this season. Time will tell whether them falling off a cliff this year is a blip, or whether the Sun have a serious strategy for climbing back into contention with the post-Curt GM. But I just have to say that I don't think a record like this is what they thought they were getting when they acquired Charles to pair with Mabrey. They knew they were taking a step back sure, but their methods screamed "we're going to stay respectable", and that's not what they got to this point.

Re: connection between international and analytics. Great connection to make. I'd say that generally what's happened is that analytics have given NBA teams the confidence to try strategies from outside of the NBA, rather than continuing to just copy other NBA teams. The innovation that came out of Europe wasn't formally driven by analytics, nor the NBA adoption based on European statistics, but the more adept the NBA became with the analytics - which was a gradual process even after D'Antoni's Suns - the easier it was to point to successes that came from trying something new.

Of course, there's an aspect that we might call "analytics" that is arguably more important for scouting than anything else:

Access to lots of video.

While it's not the same as actually seeing the two players you're considering actually go against each other head-to-head, it's just become a lot easier for international players to get seen by NBA/WNBA teams now, and I'd say that has a lot to do with why teams got better about scouting outside of college ball.

The fact that Olajuwon was the best player in the world mid-90s, but that the international game didn't really take over the NBA until the 2020s is something that has actually meant the process went slower than many of us expected... but of course Olajuwon had to play a college career just like the Americans for these American NBA execs to give him the opportunities he did, and even after the epic success of Dirk (born 15 years later) without college, predictable success for international prospects continues to be spottier than NBA teams would like today with guys born 20-25 years after Dirk.

[hermes]

what is going on with the sparks? it always seemed they had more talent on paper than their record would indicate. now they've won five in a row and pulled themselves out of the lottery-tier and into the fighting for a playoff spot tier

did something click?

[Doctor MJ]

what is going on with the sparks? it always seemed they had more talent on paper than their record would indicate. now they've won five in a row and pulled themselves out of the lottery-tier and into the fighting for a playoff spot tier

did something click?

It's early, but I'll note that with EuroBasket this year we're getting players missing time and then joining rosters midyear. The Sparks added 2 of the 3 key players on the Belgian team that just won EuroBasket in Julie Allemond & Julie Vanloo, at roughly the same time they got Rae Burrell back. None of those players are the glamour stars of the Sparks, and so it's possible we're talking noise.

Among the glamour girls, sophomore Rickea Jackson started off super-slow to start the season, but seems to be rounding into form now. Personally, I've been skeptical about the ability for Plum & Jackson (as well as Hamby to some degree) to really thrive together in higher primacy roles, but maybe they just needed to learn to play together.