It’s time for another episode of the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast. In this episode, host and The Next’s New York Liberty beat writer Jackie Powell is joined by The Next’s Indiana Fever beat reporter, Tony East. Jackie and Tony discuss Athletes Unlimited (AU), the offseason league that uses a unique, player-based leaderboard while mixing and matching team rosters from week to week.
They break down how a team like Indiana will benefit from having three players competing in AU this offseason, as well as the mutual benefit between AU and the WNBA in general. Tony also gives his thoughts on Indiana’s offseason so far, and the team’s outlook going into this season.
Tony on why it makes sense for Indiana to have so many players competing in AU:
Getting in reps, including together [as they are in the week-one rosters] … is extremely valuable. They’ve only had one season together, it’s not like they have this significant chemistry built up. It’s really hard to be a fresh, new team when you draft seven new players in one year. And now they’ve added … free agents this summer as well. Building more together is extremely important for this team.
Tony on what should be different for Indiana compared to last season:
You look at last year’s team and it not feeling as cohesive, there’s a lot that went into that. Between drafting a ton of new players, and changing coaches and the system … that made more sense with the veteran team that they were trying to have succeed in [2021]. So this year, they have removed the interim tag from [General Manager Lin] Dunn, Dunn has hired the coach that she wanted, and they have a lot more time with all these players together to set up a new system.
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