Locked On Women’s Basketball: Reevaluating Kahleah Copper and Courtney Williams as WNBA Draft prospects

First, they discussed Copper’s style of play, how it has developed since she was drafted and how it makes her stand out from other wings:

“Kahleah Copper plays with such rhythm offensively,” Shafer said. “The tempo that she plays at is distinctly her own tempo, and usually that is faster than everyone else on the floor. Kahleah Copper is one of the greatest wing athletes that I’ve ever seen, she’s so quick, her vertical is out of this world. She gets off the floor so fast. And it’s not just like ‘putting up big numbers in an empty gym’ kind of athleticism. This is incredibly functional athleticism. She is beating people to their spots. She’s getting in [the] passing lane. She’s making contests at the rim with verticality, and she’s rising up over whoever is guarding her. This is a tremendous, tremendous athlete who is long, fluid, kind of looks and moves like a young DeWanna Bonner in college.”

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“She is one of the best rebounding wings you’ll get at any point,” Adler added. “Her dexterity … really pops … What I love about watching her is it translates more and more over time, absolutely, very functional. But the more reps she gets, the better it gets … in the beginning, it translates to burst off the dribble. It translates to making rotations. But then as you go on, it translates to cutting. It translates to, I mean, one of the first things it translates to hang time on on pull up [mid-range shots]. … And then you get to another year forward. It translates to screen navigation. It translates to fall pressure. It’s, honestly, there’s very few things she can’t do.”

Later on, they switched over to discussing Williams as a prospect, what she brought coming into the WNBA and where she stands now as a key contributor to the league-leading Minnesota Lynx:

“Think of all the crazy pull up mid range shots that you’ve seen Courtney Williams take in the last two years. She was taking twice as many at South Florida,” Shafer said, laughing. “Like it’s so funny, because this is a basketball player with zero conscience and zero memory of anything that happened on the last time down. … [she was] so over tasked as the only shot creator on that team that it means that she should be taking probably 17 shots game, and instead she’s taking 22. There’s five shots where you’re just like, I see how you got there, but I don’t think you needed to do that.”

“For me, with Court, there’s two different players, right?” Adler said. “Given the quality of the defense, given the passing flashes, … you can see it going a bunch of different directions, but she’s so consistent that that’s a player who can provide value to any team in a variable number of minutes. But … I don’t think you could ever expect her to be able to make a living on twos at the rim. But if you could get her three point attempt rate up … as we know she has the strength she has, and … she’s one of those rare players who [has] an insane hang time on their midi, so they can take it at the apex to not get blocked. But … she actually has a good power transfer, so she can hit those. … There are certainly flashes, if she’s in sort of a secondary lead role, … if you can mold around those things, you have a very different player.”

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Tune in to hear more of Shafer and Adler’s reflections on the 2016 draft, including the draft order, where Copper and Williams landed, and how this draft class continues to impact the league as a whole. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about women’s college basketball, the WNBA, basketball history and much more!