Welcome back to WNBA Notes, your journey into trends and analysis around the WNBA. Today we’re looking at Angel Reese’s massive breakout and checking in with Jacy Sheldon and Stefanie Dolson. For reference, since this notebook comes out over the weekend, I define “this week” as the prior Sunday through last 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 our teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up (chart vaguely organized by rightmost column). If Washington is within two games of Las Vegas after the All-Star break, I’ll add the Aces to the chart. Until then, I’m not believing an A’ja Wilson-led team is at risk of missing the playoffs.
| Team: | Games back in lottery: | Games back of No. 8 seed: | Strength of schedule remaining (out of 12)1: | Likely finish: |
| Dallas | 0.5 | 4.5 | 2nd-strongest (12th-easiest) | No. 1 or No. 2 lottery odds |
| Los Angeles2 | ——— | 4 | 11 | No. 1 or No. 2 lottery odds |
| Chicago3 | 6 | 3 | 1 | No. 3 lottery odds |
| Connecticut4 | 17 | 7 | 4 | Worst lottery odds |
| Washington | 10 | ——— | 7 | No. 8 seed or No. 4 lottery odds |
| Golden State | 6 | ——— | 10 | Low playoff seed |
2. Seattle owns Los Angeles’ pick
3. Minnesota owns Chicago’s pick
4. Chicago owns the rights to Connecticut’s pick the Sun finish worse than the Mercury
Chicago Sky
Angel Reese has been at least a top-10 player in the WNBA over the past month. Over her past 11 games (which span exactly a month), the second-year pro is averaging 16.2 points, 13.5 rebounds, 4.7 assists, and 1.5 steals against 3.7 turnovers on 48.4/16.7/86.7 shooting. The high turnover numbers pop out, but her assist rate is about nine percentage points higher than her turnover; among players in similar secondary playmaking roles, that’s comparable to Brittney Sykes and Aari McDonald and better than Erica Wheeler.
Reese’s playmaking was her best skill relative to other bigs coming out of LSU, and as any good highlight reel can prove, still is.
For as impressive as the scoring has been, it has been completely upended. Always a better driver than a low-post player, Tyler Marsh has moved Reese’s entry points from the mid- and low post to the midrange and point of attack, putting more of the court in front of her and leveraging her downhill ability to open passes. This has been especially accentuated by increasing Rachel Banham’s minutes and using Elizabeth Williams more for off-ball screening, both of which have improved Chicago’s spacing. This makes Reese’s passes more visible, and opening those passes, in turn, gives her more room to drive and score without getting doubled or forced into tough finishes.
Some data on Reese being moved farther away from the basket, per Synergy:
- Through the first nine games of the season, Reese took seven shots out of what Synergy classifies as “spot-up” plays, which are effectively a player attacking off the catch from somewhere outside the post. She has taken 24 shots out of spot-ups during these past 11 games.
- Reese took nine shots as a pick-n-roll roller over the first nine games; she’s taken 13 over the past 11, despite losing Courtney Vandersloot.
- Reese had five isolations end in a shot over those first nine games; over the past 11, she’s taken 15.
- Reese’s post-up shots have gone down by about half an attempt per game.
Her Synergy shot charts from her first nine and last 11 games:
Marsh moving Reese toward the long midrange and point of attack mirrors how Becky Hammon moved A’ja Wilson’s entry points after taking the reins from Bill Laimbeer. Hammon’s assistant staff at the time included Tyler Marsh.
With the quality of Reese’s passing and how her defense projected to develop, she never needed to become a good scorer to be a high-quality starter, just a decent one. But if she can keep hitting anything close to 50% from the field the way she has been doing lately, that is secondary star-level offense all around.
Connecticut Sun
Quick check-in with Jacy Sheldon: she now ranks seventh in the WNBA in scoring efficiency and 10th in 3-point shooting. She is on pace to play just about 1,000 minutes and hit 50/40/90 … while finishing not coming close to the number of free-throws needed to qualify.
No one has ever missed out on the 50/40/90 club because of free-throws. In the Wubble, Sydney Wiese was three shots shy of Bueckers and 14 free-throws. The same year Elena Delle Donne became the founding (and still-sole) member of the club, her teammate Emma Meesseman hit the field goals and free-throws minimums but finished six threes short, somehow doing so in fewer than 600 minutes. Brandy Reed more-than-doubled the field goals and free-throws needed in 2000, but hit only 18 3-pointers.
Weise, Delle Donne, Meesseman and Reed are the only players to reach 50/40/90 over a full season, regardless of minimum qualifiers, per Sports Reference. Sheldon’s usage is actually down lately, now under 14% on the season. What an odd year for her.
Washington Mystics
Stefanie Dolson is currently experiencing the worst season-to-season regression in league history. Per Across The Timeline, no rotational player has ever seen their scoring efficiency drop as much from one year to the next as hers: Dolson had a 62.2% true-shooting last year, and is at just 38.1% this year. By Her Hoop Stats’ minimum qualifications for scoring efficiency leaderboards, that 24.1-percentage-point drop is enough to go from fourth leaguewide to dead last.
I usually have a positive note here but this time not really. The open 3-point shooting should regress positively toward her true talent level as a shooter, but her very visible difficulty in getting open enough to set up for those shots is not inspiring confidence in a huge bounce-back.
