Welcome back to WNBA Notes, your journey into trends and analysis around the WNBA. Today we’re looking at the troubled roster construction in Phoenix and Washington, a fun few minutes in Minnesota on Thursday, and Kaila Charles’ jumper form over time. 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). A team led by Alyssa Thomas is probably not going to be in the lottery, but it is where it is, and it’s hard to say which of the non-Toronto teams tied for the seventh seed or higher look poised to drop out.
| Team: | Games back in lottery: | Games back of No. 8 seed: | Strength of schedule remaining (out of 15)1: | Likely finish: |
| Connecticut | ——— | 4 | 2nd-strongest (14th-easiest) | No. 1 lottery odds |
| Washington | 8.5 | 0.5 | 7 | No. 2 lottery odds |
| Toronto | 3 | ——— | 4 | Middling lottery odds |
| Seattle | 13 | 3 | 1 | Bottom-half lottery odds |
| Los Angeles | 13 | 1 | 5 | Bottom-half lottery odds |
| Chicago2 | 2 | 1 | 9 | Bottom-half lottery odds |
| Phoenix | 18 | 2 | 13 | Low playoff seed or worst lottery odds |
2. Washington owns the rights to the better of its own and Chicago’s pick
Golden State
Kaila Charles shot 10-for-45 from three at Maryland. Here’s what her 3-point jumper looked like at the time:
Charles shot 11-for-35 on catch-and-shoot threes across her first four WNBA seasons. Here’s what her 3-point jumper looked like:
Similar to Maryland — the aggressive dip with the hands and the midair release both the most glaring issues — but there’s an even more exaggerated cocking of the hands and she’s jumping forward to use her legs more. Still not pretty, but as the numbers bear out, it’s clearly a better kinetic chain.
Charles shot 11-for-35 on catch-and-shoot threes across Dallas and Golden State in 2025. Here’s what her 3-point jumper looked like:
Much cleaner actions, with a dip much closer to normal and clean power transfer from her legs despite the still-distinctly two-motion shot.
Charles has shot 9-for-25 on catch-and-shoot threes this year, though her form has been a bit inconsistent depending on her hands — sometimes it looks like the Dallas clip above, sometimes it looks like this:
And that is an incredibly compact release with virtually no dip.
“Every team that I had, I’ve had a specific coach that I worked with, and worked on my shooting form, my shooting range. I work with my brother at home — he’s a trainer,” Charles told The IX Basketball before the Valkyries’ May 21 game against New York.
“Just like kind of watching film and seeing why I’m not making the shots, and I think the biggest thing was my legs — not [over]shooting with my arms — getting lower, and then having higher arc, I think was the biggest thing with me [was] keeping my hands straight. And so just watching film and seeing the difference of when I make a shot versus when I miss, ‘Why is it short? Why is it long?’ And then, over time, fine-tuning.”
Some players are more willing to tinker with their form than others; Jackie Young famously adjusted her load-up and release with Tyler Marsh after 2021, raising her game from a quality rotation piece to a top-three wing peak of all time, and more marginally, players like Olivia Miles and JJ Quinerly have cleaned up their mechanics to improve as well. But there are plenty of players who are less receptive to such changes, instead preferring to lean on the skills that got them to the pros in the first place. Others may try changes that don’t stick under the pressure of 5-on-5 games.
For as outstanding as Young and Miles’ adjustments made them, the Charles and Quinerly tier may be just as interesting. From a roster-building and player development perspective, being able to identify the players a mechanical tweak or overhaul away from solid, if unspectacular, shooting is a major advantage in finding a competitive edge. From a player training perspective, having the willingness to adjust and finding the coaches and trainers who know what to look for can be the difference between fighting for training camp deals and being a long-term rotation piece.
“Once you work on it, you put the reps in, you build the confidence,” said Charles. “And so, coming [to Golden State], they poured nothing but confidence in me, and they’re like, ‘whenever you’re open, shoot it, we want to do that.’ And so, having that mentality has definitely helped me work on my shot.”
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Los Angeles
It’s almost impressive to have the worst defense in league history statistically while starting Nneka Ogwumike and Ariel Atkins. That is something that I, apparently naively, thought would be impossible — but here they are, exceeding expectations.
Minnesota
There are a lot more interesting innovations in basketball than there are long-lasting changes. Russell Westbrook played 13 games at center for the 2019-20 Rockets, and it was very fun, but created no wake. The 2024 Sun played extreme microball and based an offense around the short roll for a few months to great success, but it inspired no copycats. The 2023 Lynx tried Tiffany Mitchell at point guard, the 2023-24 Spurs played Jeremy Sochan at point guard and the 2023-24 Dream ran Haley Jones at the backup point, all to similar levels of success.
It’s hard to tell in the moment which innovations will actually stick — the jury’s still out on the Heat and Grizzlies’ “no pick-n-rolls” approach, for instance — so the fun part is just appreciating variety in the moment. Which is what made the Valkyries and Lynx game on Thursday particularly fun.
For a 4.5-minute stretch across the third and fourth quarters, the two 5s on the court were Golden State’s 6’2 combo forward Janelle Salaün and Minnesota’s 6’1 combo forward Nia Coffey. That’s Salaün, who spent her rookie season in 2025 splitting time between the 3 and the 4 and is not known for her help defense, and Coffey, whom several coaches have played at guard. And it was fun — tons of space, wings flying around the court to make rotations, Kaila Charles and Anastasiia Olairi Kosu playing secondary rim protection, and a lot of switching.
This probably won’t lead to a long-lasting shift away from backup center depth and toward using springy forwards as backup 5s instead, although the dearth of center talent in the youth pipeline may make it a more attractive proposal in a few years. But either way, who cares? For now, it’s fun and it’s different.
Phoenix
You don’t need me to tell you that the Mercury are struggling. The six-straight losses followed by a dogfight just to beat the lowly Storm make that abundantly clear.
Others have dove into the stats to look at what’s changed since last year, most notably PHNX’s Stephen Pridgeon-Garner, who two weeks ago broke down how it starts on the defensive end. Much of that holds true despite Monique Akoa Makani’s return, most notably the lack of defensive activity at the point of attack and of physicality defending off the ball.
The defensive shot chart hasn’t changed much since last year: Phoenix is allowing a similarly low level of attempts at the rim compared to last season and giving up slightly more threes but contesting them much more often. The issue is the process of opponents getting into jumpers, because they’re doing a ton more damage on those. Some of that is likely to be variance — teams are making nearly half their open 3-pointers against the Mercury — but the lack of physicality shows in the inability to disrupt ball-handlers from comfortably getting to their spots without going into rotation. The result is opponents shooting 45.6% on pull-up twos and 32.5% on pull-up threes in the halfcourt, worst and fourth-worst in the league, respectively, per Synergy.
These are the table stakes. But how does Phoenix defend more aggressively?
I’m not sure how much improvement is available at the moment. Jovana Nogić got benched because she couldn’t disrupt opposing guards at the point of attack, and Noemie Brochant is longer but not strong at ball-pressure. Kahleah Copper is fine in that regard, though it’s never been her strongest suit, but DeWanna Bonner doesn’t have the quickness to do so anymore. All of them need to get more physical off the ball. Coordinating better ball-pressure across the unit may not be possible under the All-Star break, and possibly getting Sami Whitcomb back in July should help with that.
Offensively, the Mercury’s issues are a bit more straightforward: the defensive issues have dropped their transition frequency from second leaguewide in 2025 to eighth this season, per Synergy, and the inability of Copper to hit any sort of jump shot and Bonner to hit a three accounts for most of the gap between last year’s scoring efficiency and now.
So what happens first? Do the shooters get more physical on defense or do the physical defenders shoot better?
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Washington
Who on this roster are the Mystics prioritizing?
It should be a fairly straightforward question, since most rosters are deliberately constructed toward some stylistic aim and non-contending teams with young talent generally try to put their future stars in positions to develop and succeed. The latter would be more important for Washington, a team whose lone short-term aspiration is “JuJu Watkins.”
But this roster isn’t set up to prioritize anyone. Sonia Citron is the lone shot-creator in the backcourt, overtasking her with creation against set defenses. Shakira Austin is asked to be the primary rim protector alongside one advantage-creating driver (at most) who can leverage her stellar off-ball movement. Kiki Iriafen is filling gaps exceptionally, but is usually getting crowded by help defenders off the catch because of the lack of shooting threats. Lauren Betts hasn’t been playing well enough to earn more minutes, but even when she has played, there aren’t enough cutters to take advantage of her playmaking and too many double big lineups that exacerbate her issues in tight spaces. Georgia Amoore is too passive to shoot in most situations, but pairing her with one shooter (at most) and no off-ball activity means her unique attacking style generates no advantages.
Connecticut has arrived in a similar position of lacking skill sets that complement many of their younger players. But it’s mostly gotten there by taking the best player available in the draft when applicable (taking Saniya Rivers and Aneesah Morrow, taking Nell Angloma), taking swings on complementary players when there wasn’t a clear best player available (taking Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker), and adding free agents who at least provide somewhat of an outlet for these redundant rookie-scale players.
The Mystics, though, have almost gone out of their way to create these redundancies; drafting Angela Dugalić and Cotie McMahon while signing Michaela Onyenwere would be inexplicable enough by itself even if Iriafen wasn’t already pencilled in for significant minutes for the next three-plus years. They created zero optionality by backing up Amoore with Rori Harmon, who presents no offensive threat.
Tanking for Watkins is the optimal approach this season, but tanking doesn’t have to mean compromising any ability to play productive basketball. There are ways to prioritize young players while still avoiding the Toronto and Chicago approach of aiming for the No. 8 seed, though Washington’s approach has been to do neither.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The IX Basketball. The IX Basketball’s editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
