WNBA: Aces, Dream Stand Out At Start Of Season
Becky Hammon is a good coach, who would have thought???
Thereโs not a whole lot going on in the Big Ten womenโs basketball stratosphere, which is to be expected in the middle of May. So, this felt like a good time to talk some WNBA, which has had a fun start to its season.
Before that, there is one Big Ten thing I wanted to quickly mention. Rutgers announced that Coquese Washington will be taking over as head coach for the legendary C. Vivian Stringer.
Washington comes to the Scarlet Knights after two seasons as associate head coach at Notre Dame, and has 12 years of head coaching experience within the Big Ten from when she coached at Penn State. The Nittany Lions won three straight regular season titles under Washington, and went to a pair of Sweet 16s.
This seems like a great hire, and about as good as Rutgers could have hoped for this late into the offseason. It would be nearly impossible to replace what Stringer brought to this program, but Washington is a strong choice and could lead a pretty quick turnaround after a down 2021-22 campaign.
The Insanely Fun Las Vegas Aces
I was already planning to watch much more WNBA this year than I had in the past, but ESPN adding a fantasy womenโs basketball has helped to make sure Iโm staying as updated as I should have been. Itโs been a blast, and it has also made sure that I have noticed just how cool the Las Vegas Aces are.
Under former head coach Bill Laimbeer, the Aces were good, but they lacked any perimeter presence, ranking 11th in makes (5.1 per game) and 12th, or last, in attempts (13.5 per game) from deep last season. This was despite Vegas hitting on 37.5 percent of their three attempts, good for second in the WNBA.
Then came Becky Hammon, a WNBA hall-of-fame player who spent eight seasons as an assistant for the San Antonio Spurs. Hammon was so clearly qualified to be a NBA head coach by now, but since that opportunity wrongly didnโt come, Hammon is now head coach for the Aces, and she is unsurprisingly extremely good at it.
The Aces lead the league at 7-1, and are scoring an unreal 93.3 points per game, tops in the WNBA. Instead of building upon what Laimbeer did, which led to a lot of wins, Hammon completely scrapped it. The result? The Aces now shoot 25.8 threes per game, second most in the league and a 91.1 percent increase from the season prior.
Unbelievably, Las Vegas has actually gotten more efficient while firing away almost twice as much. The Aces are making a league-best 10.6 deep balls per game, putting the teamโs three percentage at 41.3 PERCENT. Despicable.
Jackie Young (19.3 PPG) and Kelsey Plum (18.1 PPG) have been the strongest beneficiaries from this offense, with the duo shooting 50 percent and 47.3 percent from deep, respectively, and doing so with at least three deep attempts a night. Star forward Aโja Wilson had two career three attempts before this season. She has 11 this year, knocking down 4 of them for a respectable 36.4 percent clip.
The Aces are must-watch TV under Hammon, and look like a well-oiled machine that can absolutely win their first WNBA title.
The Rhyne Howard Show
I have already made my Atlanta Dream fandom clear, but even I did not expect a start like this.
The Dream seemed to be in clear rebuild mode, which was great for someone like Naz Hillmon, who made the roster as a second-round pick. But through six games, head coach Tanisha Wright has gotten this team to 4-2, which the only losses being to the Aces and a down-to-the-wire defeat to the Washington Mystics, who are 5-2.
How has Wright done this? By relying on rookie Rhyne Howard immediately.
Howard seemed destined to be a star by how she played at Kentucky, but this start by the 2022 No. 1 overall pick is just disgusting:
20.5 PPG, 4.3 RPG, 2.3 APG, 1.5 SPG, 1.0 BPG, 43.7 FG%, 46.7 3PT%
In her first week as a WNBA player, she earned Eastern Conference Player of the Week. She scored 33 in her fourth career game, and Atlanta needed all of it in a six-point win over the Indiana Fever.
Howard has been dominant and composed like no rookie should be, and sheโs had to carry the offensive workload without star forward Tiffany Hayes, who should be returning to action this week after playing overseas.
Thereโs potential that Hayesโ return could cause a disruption, but I think thereโs a better chance that it just makes Howard more efficient, as she will have much more space to work with. In the loss to the Mystics, Howard had 19 points on a perfect 6-of-6 shooting at halftime, but Washington suffocated her in the second half, and the Dreamโs offense fell apart. With Hayes in the mix, teams wonโt be able to do that as easily, and that should only benefit the budding star.
Atlanta is likely to slow down from this red-hot start, but even making the playoffs would be significantly faster progress than anticipated, and that seems extremely reasonable with a sixth of their games completed.
If you want a Hillmon update, she is averaging 2.0 points and 2.2 rebounds per contest. But, she had her best game of the year last Tuesday against Indiana, where she had 8 points, 5 rebounds and 3 assists in 18 minutes. Baby steps, but still good to see Hillmon getting more comfortable to the WNBA game.
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