Welcome back to WNBA Notes, your journey into trends and analysis around the league. In this edition, we’re looking at Saniya Rivers already being an incredible defender, NaLyssa Smith‘s contributions to a disappointing season in Dallas and a subtle change to Lexie Hull‘s shooting form.
For reference, since this notebook comes out over the weekend, I define “this week” as the prior Sunday through Saturday night.
Tankathon check-in
To be clear, no one in the WNBA is currently tanking on purpose (at least, the players aren’t). That being said, let’s see where the teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up. The Las Vegas Aces are technically the No. 8 seed right now, but I don’t believe an A’ja Wilson-led team is at risk of missing the playoffs at this point in the season.
The chart is vaguely organized by the rightmost column.
| Team | Games back in lottery | Games back of No. 8 seed | Strength of schedule remaining (out of 13)1 | Likely finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas Wings | — | 3 | 6th-strongest (eighth-easiest) | Top lottery odds |
| Chicago Sky2 | 5 | 2 | 5 | No. 2 or No. 3 lottery odds |
| Golden State Valkyries | 2.5 | -1 | 10 | Bottom-two playoff seed or No. 3 lottery odds |
| Connecticut Sun3 | 18.5 | 3.5 | 4 | Worst lottery odds |
| Los Angeles Sparks4 | — | 2 | 9 | No. 8 seed or No. 4 lottery odds |
| Washington Mystics | 7.5 | 0.5 | 13 | No. 8 seed or No. 4 lottery odds |
2. Minnesota owns Chicago’s pick.
3. Chicago owns the rights to Connecticut’s pick if the Sun finish worse than the Phoenix Mercury.
4. Seattle owns Los Angeles’ pick.
Connecticut Sun
The gold standard for wing defenders as prospects in WNBA history is threefold: Alana Beard, Gabby Williams and Saniya Rivers. In college, all three were elite at the point of attack, were disruptive on the drive, could shut down assignments off the ball, and could still provide impactful help above the break and in the paint.
Beard and Williams were both standouts in the WNBA from the get-go. Beard finished fourth in Defensive Player of the Year voting her rookie season, and Williams earned one (ill-advised) vote in hers.
Rivers is right there with them. Through her first 11 games, she has already played like an All-Defensive team selection.
In her first game, Rivers played against the Las Vegas and guarded Jackie Young and Chelsea Gray. She picked the pockets of both while blanketing the former off the ball and blocking the latter. She started in her second career game as the primary defender on Minnesota Lynx guard Courtney Williams, who shot 0-for-11 from the field. She held up well against both Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark. She guarded all three of the Atlanta Dream’s backcourt starters in the Sun’s shocking win on June 6.
Rivers is already one of the best backcourt isolation and point-of-attack defenders in the league. While she’s still been a positive in help, it hasn’t been to quite the same extent. That’s natural, though: It takes time for almost every prospect to adjust to playing help at the W level. Even Beard and Williams took a couple years to get there.
If Rivers can hit enough shots to stick on the court — which is not remotely a given yet — we’re already looking at a perennial All-Defensive player. That’s an honor that should start this year.
Dallas Wings
When we last discussed what’s going wrong in Dallas, we discussed Teaira McCowan’s severe regression in execution and effort. Now to briefly turn our attention to NaLyssa Smith.
At the WNBA level, Smith has never been a good defender. She graded out as the second-worst defender in the league her rookie season, per Positive Residual, and her sophomore campaign was only slightly better.
There has been little appreciable progress since. Smith holds up better in the post than she used to, but that’s not saying much. Her execution of help assignments is sporadic at best, and even when she provides help, more often than not she overhelps off her assignment and forces Dallas into rotation. Her feel for managing space and cutting off angles in drop is the worst of any big or wing on the roster, and in hedge, she neither disrupts the ball-handler nor recovers efficiently to the roller.
To top that off, Smith is getting to the rim less and missing more shots in the paint than she did the past couple years in Indiana. Even with the Fever, her scoring prowess came only below the free-throw line. With her turning more layups into paint middies, she has not been a positive contributor at either end. And she’s started 11 games for the Wings.
Indiana Fever
When we last looked at Lexie Hull’s shooting mechanics two years ago, she was releasing the ball a little late for reasons that were hard to tell. She would go on to shoot only 21.7% from three that season. Now it’s 2025, and Hull has made 65 of her last 125 3-pointers, or 52.0%.
It’s hard to say exactly what happened. Certainly some of this was natural regression to the mean, given that she’d always been a superb shooter on open jumpers. Perhaps some of it was the yips, or maybe she was trying a new shot form. What is clear is that her shot has changed — but maybe not in a completely new way.
Hull had two 3-point shooting forms at Stanford: one where she dragged her right leg in as she transferred her weight, and one where she had more of a one-motion power transfer. She attempted far more of the former than the latter in college. The first two clips below are the leg drag, and the last two are the smoother shot.
Now, Hull still has both forms, but she takes far more of the one-motion form, and she is much smoother with it. That means not only a more consistent, but also a quicker, release, so she is less affected by defensive pressure and closeouts. The results seem to speak for themselves.
The first clip below is still the leg drag, but the last few are the smoother one-motion shot.
“Becoming Caitlin Clark” is out now!
Howard Megdal’s newest book is here! “Becoming Caitlin Clark: The Unknown Origin Story of a Modern Basketball Superstar” captures both the historic nature of Clark’s rise and the critical context over the previous century that helped make it possible, including interviews with Clark, Lisa Bluder (who also wrote the foreword), C. Vivian Stringer, Jan Jensen, Molly Kazmer and many others.
