For those of us here in America who love the sport, professional women’s basketball can be a joy to watch. For the participant athletes on the floor, though? In a word… it sucks!
Okay, that’s two words, plus it may be a tad too presumptuous a declaration. Still, from the outside looking in, choosing to make a significant part of one’s living as a WNBA player is to be constantly on defense.
Defending the veracity of one’s own athletic gifts to folks unworthy of any right to be judgmental, defending the value of the league and one’s fellow teammates and competitors, while bracing for constant sea changes in host cities, venues, practice facilities and/or ownership regimes. Around the clock, around the calendar. “De-fense!”
Lump all that with the average player, annually, just trying to outlast a thin roster cut line, to guarantee an oft-meager base salary that must be supplemented by income elsewhere, often outside the States, during the “offseasons”.
Trusting people in other global locales to uphold their alluring contract offers can be a sketchy proposition, too. Second-year Atlanta Dream forward Monique Billings, talking to Bleacher Report while playing in China during the “offseason,” cited one pro friend, “who played in some country in Europe three years ago,” and never got paid.
A few years ago, Angel McCoughtry’s star-laden team in Turkey tore up her contract in mid-season, for the “violation” of publicly celebrating an engagement to her fiancée back in America. Getting injured across the oceans, at any point, or taking trips home to attend to family emergencies, only imperils these tenuous contract agreements even further.
By the time North American players swim upstream through all the muck, all the red tape, all the cultural clashes, all the visa issues, just to share the floor at the tipoff of another WNBA season, you can almost hear a collective sigh of relief.
Speaking of collective, though, how much being a WNBA player “sucks”, in 2019 and years beyond, will be a constant bone of contention during and following this season, which concludes the terms of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The players’ union opted out of extending the CBA last fall. Through the media and the players themselves, we can expect to get an earful about conditions – from revenue shares and scheduling issues, to free agency restraints and the lack of charter flights – that need not be so spartan for an American professional league enjoying its third decade of existence.
24-7-365 hooping and hustling, for a living, takes its toll on bodies and spirits alike. For the Seattle Storm, Breanna Stewart put together one of the greatest championship-plus-MVP runs ever in 2018. Her reward was $57,000 base salary, plus a few thousands in extra compensation for her many singular and team-related achievements.
All of that, plus endorsement deals, might be enough to finance Stewie’s travel and lodging in the “offseason”. Not for vacation, but to play for international league clubs that are willing to pay anywhere from three to 15 times the average W player’s salary. Sadly, her American pay likely won’t be enough for the reigning WNBA MVP to cover rehab expenses for the Achilles she tore, playing in the FIBA Euroleague Final Four for Russia’s Dynamo Kursk last month. Now, she’ll miss the WNBA season, too.
We have surpassed a point where it is hard to discern the salary that is “primary” from the ones which are “supplemental.” McCoughtry, a relatively handsomely paid veteran at $115,000, took the 2017 WNBA season off to give her body, worn from global plus Olympic travel, a well-deserved respite.
Yet she lost more than just the chance to help lead the Dream, 2018’s regular season leader in the Eastern Conference (a franchise record 23-11), in their run toward the WNBA Finals when she suffered an ACL tear in a game last August. Angel lost opportunities to secure the heftier bags of overseas cash she earns in Russia (coincidentally, with Stewart’s Kursk squad) and Lebanon. She also lost the chance to join Stewie and claim gold for Team USA at the 2018 FIBA Women’s World Cup.
Whether McCoughtry can recuperate to play some, if any, of this year’s WNBA season remains up in the air. But economically, it would be rational if she chooses to sit another whole year out, saving her energies for more sizeable paydays elsewhere.
So, the WNBA season tips off soon, and there is no Stewart available. There won’t be any of Angel for awhile, if at all. No Maya Moore, the ATL-raised perennial champion who is spending this year connecting with family while doing ministry work.
There will be, maybe, a half-season of Diana Taurasi, who elected for surgery to alleviate back pain, just weeks ago, and hopes to return in July. Maybe some play later this season from Skylar Diggins-Smith, whose return to the floor after giving birth has no definitive timeline. Probably no Sue Bird, the venerable guard who announced arthroscopic surgery that will sideline her indefinitely just days ago.
Add in Candace Parker, who will miss several weeks due to a preseason hamstring injury, and Rebekkah Brunson, who remains unsigned as a free agent after suffering a concussion late last season, and that’s eight 2018 All-Stars, including a whopping six out of 10 All-Star starters, that won’t be on the floor as the 2019 season gets underway this weekend.
Make that nine, and seven, if Elena Delle Donne’s knee (same one she injured in last year’s semifinal versus Atlanta) keeps her on the sideline to start 2019. Australian Liz Cambage nearly refused to return to the WNBA – again – until she was traded to Las Vegas last week. And Chelsea Gray is arriving fresh from a full season across the Atlantic, having played in the Turkish League finals just last week.
The good news for Dream fans is that there is hardly a team better prepared to go into a season absent an All-Star than Atlanta. All-WNBA First Team and All-Defensive Second Team member Tiffany Hayes (career-highs 17.2 PPG and 2.7 APG) was a worthy 2018 All-Star guard in all but name. The hardware for Nicki Collen and Chris Sienko, respectively, for Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year in their first seasons at the helm here were well-deserved.
Sienko and Collen bring back as many as 8 players, not including McCoughtry, that secured an Eastern Conference championship banner and a first-round bye, stole back a playoff game on the road to earn a winner-take-all Game 5 at home, and fell just a few minutes and five points short of a trip to the WNBA Finals. Hayes and the Dream are, in a word, steel-tested. Oops, I did it again. Did the hyphen save me this time?
Even with all the absences and ailments, this 2019 edition of the WNBA remains, at its core, a Big Girl’s League. Sylvia Fowles (the only 2018 All-Star starter who both played preseason games and is certain to start in the season opener), Brittney Griner, Jonquel Jones, Natasha Howard and Tina Charles haven’t gone anywhere. After threatening not to return to the States, Cambage finally got her wish to be traded out of Dallas, and now she is in Las Vegas, lending her ear to Bill Laimbeer.
If she can stay healthy, Delle Donne would share the inside track to winning MVP with Cambage this year, and she has Emma Meesseman back after her single-season departure to help the WNBA Finalists load up in Washington. Nneka Ogwumike remains in L.A., and now, she has her sister, Chiney, and first-round pick Kalani Brown to team with, to say nothing of the legendary Parker.
It's a good thing Atlanta still has Elizabeth Williams and Jessica Breland as backstops in the frontcourt. The starting duo turned Dream games into their own personal block party last season, averaging 1.9 (Breland, 3rd in WNBA), and 1.8 (Williams, 4th in WNBA) swats per game. J-Bree (7.9 RPG, 7th in WNBA) was among just six WNBA players to average at least one block and one steal.
Extending from the style of play preferred by Collen’s coaching predecessor, Michael Cooper, Atlanta wants the wings to be active as help rebounders, and the scrappy swing players Hayes and Brittney Sykes (top-ten among WNBA non-bigs in RPG) are up to that task.
As a result, Dream opponents do snag a decent share of offensive rebounds (27.3 opponent O-Reb%, t-3rd in WNBA), but glass-crashing extra-chances are about the only way they have been able to keep up on the scoreboard. Only L.A. pushed foes to a higher turnover rate than Atlanta (18.3 opponent TO%, 2nd-highest in WNBA).
When Dream opponents were able to get shots off in possessions without turning it over, they were likely to either miss them outright, or suffer the shot-blocking wrath of Williams and Breland. Contributing to a league-low 46.8 eFG% were opponents’ 46.2 2FG% and 32.1 3FG% (each 2nd-lowest in WNBA).
Atlanta’s opponents compounded their own misery in 2018 by leaving points on the table at the free throw line (WNBA-low 77.9 opponent FT%). In the recently released GM survey, seven of the 11 other GMs (Sienko can’t vote for his own team) declared the Dream as the league’s best defensive unit entering 2019.
Last season, Atlanta continued to run teams ragged while pushing the second-highest full-court tempo in the league (81.9 possessions per-40). That was in keeping with a style that has been in place under several coaching regimes, going way back to when Angel was an emerging star.
Despite the mainstays, Collen and her staff continue to recalibrate the roster. Improved shooting (46.8 eFG% and 51.4 TS%, each 2nd-lowest in WNBA) was an offseason priority, and Atlanta was unable to make as big a free agent splash as they did with last year’s addition of veteran guard Renee Montgomery (37.1 3FG%, 3rd-best in WNBA among six players hitting at least two 3FGs per game).
Yet they are hoping for improved interior accuracy from Breland and Williams from the jump, while making strategic additions in hopes of better efficiency from both the field (46.5 2FG% and 31.8 3FG%, each 3rd-worst in WNBA) and the charity stripe (WNBA-worst 74.6 FT%, despite Montgomery’s 6th-best in WNBA 88.1 FT%).
Improved form, footwork and shot selection among teammates, theoretically, will alleviate Williams from having to thrive on the offensive glass, in turn keeping the pivot available to pick up more of the defensive rebounding share from Breland (4th in WNBA for D-Reb%). E-Dub’s wondrous turnaround in finishing plays, in and around the post (67.7 eFG% in final 17 games; 38.1 eFG% in first 17) was as commensurate with Atlanta’s surge up 2018’s standings as any other in-season development.
Getting Williams playing at a near-All-WNBA level on both ends of the court from the outset, a problem in recent seasons, will greatly help Atlanta during a home-friendly but otherwise arduous start to the 2019 season. Breland also made strides offensively during the Dream’s romp through August, averaging double-digits in scoring (12.1 PPG on 60.6 FG%), and it’s hoped that will carry forward into 2019.
Breland was unable to stretch her jump-shooting far beyond the paint in 2018, but while that would be a welcome development this year, it’s hoped that she will have more help spreading the floor. The Dream acquired second-year center Marie Gulich from Phoenix with a draft-night trade, then shipped a second-round pick to Las Vegas to bring in third-year combo forward Nia Coffey.
Doghoused in the back half of last season by Laimbeer following an ankle injury, Coffey has only had a chance to show glimpses of her potential, a situation that is likely to change as she becomes a key cog to alleviate Sykes and Breland as a reserve.
Coffey scored 18 points (2-for-4 3FGs) in a preseason win at New York. The 6-foot-5 Gulich also plied her wares (1-for-2 3FGs) in that game, a small signal that Collen intends to rely on her bigs to pick-and-pop from beyond the three-point line with greater frequency.
In 2018, August proved to be a torrid month for backcourt contributors as well. Alex Bentley struggled to get acclimated following her midseason acquisition from Connecticut, where she previously played under Collen and Sienko. But she settled in and came alive in six of her final eight regular season appearances (41-for-77 FGs in those six games, incl. 15-for-31 3FGs), then reached double-figure scoring tallies in all five of Atlanta’s WNBA semifinal contests against Washington.
Having Bentley, Coffey, Billings, veteran Haley Peters and Gulich together offers tantalizing potential for a cohesive second unit, something Atlanta is unaccustomed to in its own WNBA history. Completing the group of reserves is 2019 second-round draftee Maite Cazorla. The Spaniard guard still found ways to shine under the aura of Sabrina Ionescu at Oregon, hitting 41.2 percent of her three-point attempts with the Ducks, including a huge triple to help seal a trip to last month’s Final Four.
As this season wears on, the strength of Atlanta as a legitimate title contender, ultimately, is inextricably tied to Hayes’ continued improvement under Coach Nicki. A plurality of GMs picked Tip as “the most dangerous (WNBA player) in the open floor,” and she would likely have received an outright majority of votes had some not voted for McCoughtry or Sykes (the latter also voted, in a tie with ATLien Diamond DeShields of Chicago, as the league’s “most athletic” player).
The Dream’s starting shooting guard, however, shot barely above her career average on threes in 2018 (32.1 3FG%), a figure that slumped from 37.2 percent in 2017 and bolstered greatly by her post-snub torching of the nets during one game at Minnesota (6-for-11 3FGs) back in August.
Rebounds, hustle plays, clutch shooting, an uncanny ability to draw fouls and, now, stifling perimeter defense are all in the veteran guard’s bag. But Hayes adding a more consistent perimeter jumper, in the rhythm of Atlanta’s passing offense, positively changes the complexion of this entire team as well as any new addition possibly could.
While seemingly the entire league is in a state of flux on a variety of fronts, the Dream do get to return to their NBA-designed confines, State Farm Arena, after a two-season absence, with an award-winning coach-GM tag team in place to guide the core of a team that was on the cusp of the 2018 WNBA Finals.
Although many of these players are under contract for next year, with contentious CBA negotiations plus the Olympic Games around the corner, there’s not much certainty that there’ll be a 2020 WNBA championship, or even a season, in which the Dream could contend. Accordingly, the window to aim for the big prize is closing for Atlanta’s veteran talents.
Building around what has been working while improving what has not, Atlanta is hoping such stability will grant them a “leg up” on their daily competition, even as they have a star with a “leg down” waiting in the wings. If both “legs” prove to be strong by season’s end, this team could really be kicking at just the right time. And that wouldn’t suck at all. Word!
Let’s Go Dream!
~lw3
