Five Out: Chelsea Gray is back and so are the Aces, a bad injury week and a widening gap in the WNBA standings

Are the Aces fine again? What is going on with the Atlanta Dream? And why we shouldn't dismiss the budding Fever - Sky rivalry. Andrew's thoughts on women's basketball for the week of June 24th, 2024.

Jun 24, 2024

By the standards of the first month of the WNBA season, this was actually a relatively quiet week from a discourse perspective. It does appear that the novelty of women playing pro basketball (gasp!) has worn off on some individuals and now we can actually start to let the basketball speak for itself a little bit. When the hottest take of the week was Monica McNutt calling last week’s Fever vs. Sky game a mid-off, it’s an indicator we’re moving in the right direction.

While the bots and the chuds will continue to sully comment sections on less civilized corners of the internet, it does seem like the biggest media outlets took a week and watched some of their coverage back again. If they were capable of shame, I’m sure there would be some embarrassment. Regardless, we move. The rookies are starting to settle in, everyone is becoming accustomed to the newfound attention and it’s clear that the season is starting to chug along as normal.

So let’s enjoy a week of some good ole’ hoops talk. At least before we hit All-Star and the Olympics and the take machine starts to rev up again.

1. Chelsea Gray is back and so are the Aces

Sometimes the column poses a question one week that gets answered in pretty short order. Just seven days ago, the question was whether or not Chelsea Gray would be enough to aid the ills that plagued the Las Vegas Aces. Just a couple days back into the rotation, the answer appears to be a tentative yes.

While she’s on a minutes restriction and hasn’t really gotten her shooting touch back fully, Gray’s presence can’t be understated. She opens the floor up significantly as a ball handler, frees up Jackie Young to primarily be a shooter again and sees the floor in ways that few, if any, players in the entire league do. While A’ja Wilson is the most outstanding and valuable player in the WNBA right now, Gray is the engine of this Aces team. Don’t believe me? Ask Becky Hammon.

“She’s the leader of our team,” the Aces head coach said after Gray’s season debut. “I thought she did a wonderful job too.”

As she continues to get back into playing shape, expect things to just get better and better for the Point Gawd. The pride of Manteca and St. Mary’s Stockton is back and it might be time for the rest of the league to adjust accordingly. It’s especially noteworthy that those wins came against the Storm, who have presented matchup problems to Vegas in the past, and the Sun, who were the top team in the league entering the weekend. Just picture that. Chelsea Gray on 16 minutes a game was enough to take a team that was four points away from going 0-5 in the last two weeks to a dominant force on both ends. I’m not saying the league is cooked but the Aces really don’t have much meat on their schedule until after the Olympics and All-Star break. Between now and their game with the Liberty on August 17th is the Mystics (three times), the Fever, Wings, Sparks, Sky (Twice), Dream and Storm. Expect Vegas to win a lot of those games in that span. Then circle that Liberty game on CBS when you get the chance.

2. Injuries derailed what was shaping up to be a fun week

Injuries are never fun, regardless of player. But this week was a particularly bad slate for those that tune into the league to watch the next generation of potential stars. Maddy Siegrist is going to be out eight weeks with a broken finger. Rhyne Howard rolled her ankle pretty badly against the Lynx and has no timetable for a return. And then there’s Cameron Brink, who had really started to become something of a darling among this rookie class, tearing her ACL. In the case of Howard and Brink, it means Olympic dreams will have to wait another cycle (both were on the USA 3X3 team headed to Paris) too. It was especially sad to read through Brink’s statements and encouraging to see the league wrap their arms around a player that has clearly made an impact so early into her career for what she’s said beyond basketball.

It’s a part of sports, we all know that. But it does suck too because of what each of these players were for their teams. Howard is the best player on the Dream and while the organization appears to be a little bit in limbo (more on that further below), she was ready to break out this year in Paris. Siegrist was finding her shooting touch in her second year and emerging as an elite offensive talent in the league while Cam Brink was on her way to becoming the third superstar of this rookie class. With each of them out, their teams become substantially less threatening. In the case of the Sparks, the tank may be on. Dallas has a chance to get out of the basement if Siegrist and Satou Sabally return but it’ll be a long road. You’ll read about the Dream a little further down.

There’s plenty of star power to spell the league while these three are out. It’s not as though we lost three faces of the WNBA. At the same time the brutal unpredictability of sports is that one bad turn of a leg can change the fortunes of franchises and livelihoods. More than that, it’s just a bummer that we’re not going to see these three players in particular for a little while. They were among the most interesting and exciting players to watch through the first month of the season.

3. Fever vs. Sky is actually the best product the WNBA has to sell right now

There might be a rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark that the masses gravitate towards. Whether the players admit it or not, they unwittingly and unwillingly became proxies in a culture war much like Magic and Bird were. What people miss about Magic and Bird though was that it wasn’t just about the players. Their teams hated each other too. There were rivalries within rivalries and that’s what built that era of Lakers - Celtics.

We’re seeing that play out in the W right now. Because the rivalry on the floor isn’t between Reese and Clark. It’s between Reese and NaLyssa Smith. And while Smith decisively won the last matchup, Angel Reese came out and busted her ass this time. What’s nice and insulating from the off court drama is that it doesn’t appear to be a disdain that goes beyond the floor. Sometimes the best rivals don’t have to hate each other in real life. Sometimes, all it takes is two competitive people that just want to beat each other. It’s intense. It’s emotional. It’s human. That’s why we watch this stuff.

Sunday’s Fever vs. Sky Part III gave us everything we wanted. Big runs, blown leads, a great Caitlin Clark game and a downright dominant Angel Reese game, a FAMs battle between Aliyah Boston and Kamilla Cardoso, a pull-up jumper masterclass from Chennedy Carter all played within a buzzing arena in Chicago.

Yes, these teams are not going to win the WNBA Finals this year. They aren’t the Liberty or the Aces or even the Storm, Lynx or Sun. But you know what they are? Must-see TV.

Is it the best basketball the league has to offer? Not particularly but to say that the talent disparity between these teams and the top of the league over the course of 40 minutes is that wide would be incorrect. There’s blown layups and airballed threes in every game unfortunately. But it’s been clear through three matchups between Indiana and Chicago that they check a lot of boxes for what we as fans want.

Great stadium energy and atmosphere? Check.

Two distinct play styles and roster constructions? Check.

Players that *want* to compete against each other? Check.

Tight, down-to-the-wire competitive games? Check.

Stars performing and rising to the occasion? Check.

So yes, while the game is two mid-tier teams and not Aces vs. Liberty, this game brings us what we want. Sports is inherently storytelling and modern mythmaking. From the days of gladiators and the first Olympics, it’s been that way. It’s not to say that the top teams don’t have stories of their own but Fever vs. Sky feels big in a way the others don’t right now. And in the two games we’ve seen the last week, they’ve been exciting, competitive intense games with rocking buildings behind them. The best news? We’re gonna get these star cores for the next couple years. That’s how rivalries are built. And TV ratings are one of the rare situations where one rising tide does lift all boats. If the Fever and Sky bring in record ratings every game, that translates to more money at the negotiating table with networks, which is more leverage for the players association and possibly more money put to salary increases in the next round of talks. So while I can understand Fever vs. Sky fatigue, this is one situation where a saturation of coverage is actually helping the whole instead of just one or two.

It’s important to note that sometimes rivalries are just created. Colorado vs. Nebraska is one of the biggest rivalries in (formerly) Big 12 country because one day former CU head football coach Bill McCartney decided the Huskers were a rival. Now, we can’t see it any other way. Fever vs. Sky may be manufactured but that doesn’t mean what we’re seeing isn’t the seeds of a true rivalry forming in front of us. 20 years from now, we may be telling new fans that this is how it’s always been. So enjoy watching the start of something. It’s the best one we’ve got so far and more will likely come.

4. It’s time to have some conversations about the Atlanta Dream…

Let’s turn the clocks back to spring of 2023. Hope springs eternal down in Atlanta. The Dream have Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray and just pulled Haley Jones and Laeticia Amihere in the first round of the WNBA Draft. On paper, it feels like the Dream are a team that may have a roster capable of surprising some people. In July of last year, it looked like Tanisha Wright had things figured out. The Dream went 8-3 that month and 5-1 at home. Then came August and a 5-10 end to the season as well as an early playoff bow out to the Dallas Wings.

I give you the preamble because at this point I’m not sure what the plan is for Atlanta. Jones has shown inconsistent flashes that she can be a player at this level but there are still entire games where she isn’t impacting the game the way many (including this columnist) thought she would when she left Stanford. The talk was heavily geared towards ‘Tara Vanderveer didn’t use her properly. Her skillset is more fitting of a WNBA player so she’ll cook in Atlanta’. Amihere, a staple and defensive stalwart of Dawn Staley’s transformational ‘Freshies’ class, is still struggling to see the floor. Jordin Canada has recently returned to the lineup but looked understandably rusty in just one game back. With Rhyne Howard out for what looks like an extended period of time, it begs the question about what this team is?

The tandem of Howard and Gray was supposed to be enough that you could round out your supporting cast with decent to good players and be a top 6 team in the league. After another blowout loss, this one at the hands of the Liberty, I’m left wondering what the long term plan is for the Dream. It just feels like a roster that’s better than what they show, with young players that should be a little further along than they are (Rhyne Howard notwithstanding), making little to no noise in a league where they should be an epicenter of W culture. Their venue is small and, while the atmosphere does sound pretty good in there, it doesn’t sound like this team captures the zeitgeist of Atlanta the way they feel like they should. With the present murky, it’s also tough to look to the future. The Dream traded away their 2025 first round pick in the Allisha Gray trade and this class led by Paige Bueckers and Kiki Iriafen is looking every bit as generational as the class that just got selected.

It may be premature to expect or ask for any changes, especially with Howard freshly injured and Canada returning to the lineup. But as of right now, Atlanta should be better as a team and have more motion as an organization than this. I’m not sure if there’s a solution out there but it has always felt like a sleeping giant resides down in Georgia. Someone just has to wake it up.

5. What exactly is the middle tier of the WNBA?

I was thinking about this after watching the conclusion of the 1:00 (MT) slate of games on Sunday. You’d define the league typically into three or four tiers. It’s either…

Contenders
Playoff Teams
Subpar Teams
Tank Commanders

Contenders
Playoff Teams
Everyone else

This season, it doesn’t even feel like that. The second tier of playoff teams may be…the Phoenix Mercury? But they’ve beaten the Aces, Liberty, Lynx and Storm. No one legitimately believes that 8-6 Las Vegas isn’t a title threat especially with Chelsea Gray in the lineup. So who is it?

Certainly not Atlanta, who I see in limbo. Chicago and Indiana are both multiple games under .500 while the Sparks, Mystics and Wings are either injured or tanking. I bring this up because when we get into the doldrums of the season the league could still use a robust middle to be able to still generate interest in lower tier matchups. Right now, ironically, the most interesting race for seeding is Fever vs. Sky (yes, there’s a lot of time left in the season). It would be nice if there was a bit more parity record-wise to keep things semi-interesting. But it’ll be a good test to see if national media (and a lot of longtime W folks who swear they don’t want to hype Caitlin Clark but can’t get off the narcotic of her SEO boost) are actually capable of talking about two things at the same time.