WNBA Notes: Sparks frontcourt decisions, hot shooting from Sonia Citron, Jewell Loyd

For reference, since this notebook comes out over the weekend, I define “this week” as the prior Sunday through last night, and all stats are as of Friday.

Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?

Subscribe now to The IX Sports and receive our daily women’s sports newsletter covering soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers. That includes Basketball Wednesday from founder and editor Howard Megdal.

Readers of The IX Basketball now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.

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):

Las Vegas Aces

Checking in on Jewell Loyd’s abysmal start to the year from 2-point range: Since July 25, a span that runs a few games longer than Las Vegas’ current winning streak, she is shooting 50% from two, per WNBA Advanced Stats. Moving to the bench has helped, as has everyone playing better, but Loyd has also upped her 3-point attempt rate from 53.1% to 62.6%.

Willingness to adapt your role as your career progresses is a great way to remain a valuable player for a long time!

The IX Basketball, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom powered by The Next

The IX Basketball: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX Sports. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.

Los Angeles Sparks

I wrote last week about Seattle’s looming decision with regards to re-signing Ezi Magbegor vis-à-vis Dominique Malonga’s development. A quick update on that: during the Storm’s possibly season-altering 21-point comeback, Magbegor and Malonga shared the floor for the six-minute run to close the third quarter that swung a 14-point deficit into a three-point lead. And they looked pretty solid playing off each other!

The Sparks have a similar quandary, although the risks and rewards are both lower-stakes than what Seattle is dealing with. Because Cameron Brink should be ready to start again next season. And, assuming both Dearica Hamby and Azurá Stevens will be getting paid close to max salaries in free agency — money commensurate with their offensive production and the recurring trend of what happens when a league’s cap rises considerably — Los Angeles would be better served by not signing both of them to market-rate deals only for one to come off the bench.

Stevens is the better fit next to Brink, as a reliable shooter who doesn’t play through the post, leaving Brink more easily able to play both inside and out with clogging the lane, and her defensive strengths and weaknesses complement Brink’s fairly well; for her defensive struggles in the post with the Sparks, Stevens was a quality defender in Chicago as a jumbo-sized wing defender who could provide some rim protection. Hamby is a far more consistent offensive threat, but has been one of the few worst frontcourt defenders in the W since she got to LA.

What to do at the 2-guard spot, then, is an interesting question as well. Assuming Kelsey Plum re-signs, a lineup of Plum-Rickea Jackson-Stevens-Brink has a ton of juice: at least capable shooting at every position, midrange shot-creators, some rim pressure, and at least pretty good frontcourt defense. They desperately need a great point-of-attack (POA) defender to complement them, and given Lynne Roberts’ approach, one’s who’s either a good shooter or a rim-pressure guard who isn’t a liability from three. Ariel Atkins seems like the obvious player to target for that spot. Loyd isn’t the same caliber of defender she used to be, but is one of the few others who can fill a 3-&-D role at the POA, and Jordin Canada and Natasha Cloud seem like decent pivots as well.

“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.

Buy it now!

Washington Mystics

Some interesting peripherals I’ve been looking at with Sonia Citron (all per Synergy): as an underclassman at Notre Dame, she ran an excellent 40.4% rim rate, which fell to a merely fine 27.0% as an upperclassman.¹ In her rookie season in Washington, she’s at 30.7%, good for top-20 among backcourt players this year with at least 50 rim attempts. Rim rates tend to stabilize quickly; Citron has had no trouble adjusting to downhill pressure in the WNBA.

Through her junior year, Citron shot a decent 36.3% on pull-up 2s, and a stellar 44.8% as a senior. She’s up to 47.2% as a Mystic, ninth-best among players with at least 25 attempts. Given the sudden jump, it’s possible she made an appreciable gain in the quality of her midrange shot off the dribble, or she could be on a prolonged hot streak. Given the volume of attempts, it’s more likely the former.

Citon shot 39.3% on open 3-pointers in college, and is at 50.5% this season. That one is probably going to regress back toward 40% at some point. Although if it doesn’t, Citron might just be around a true talent 50/40/90 player. As if the Ariel Atkins trade wasn’t bad enough.

Your business can reach over 3 million women’s sports fans every single month!

Here at The IX Basketball and The IX Sports, our audience is a collection of the smartest, most passionate women’s sports fans in the world. If your business has a mission to serve these fans, reach out to our team at BAlarie@theixsports.com to discuss ways to work together.

1. The notable change from Citron’s underclassman to upperclassman seasons was the matriculation of Hannah Hidalgo. No idea why that would cause her rim rate to drastically fall, though.