Five Out: The week of the point guard, fraud watch for the Sun and the sadness of watching Caitlin Clark...

The Lynx are Commissioners Cup champs, now what? Angel Reese continues to surprise and where humbling becomes something else. Andrew's thoughts on women's basketball for the week of July 1, 2024.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Sunday was the game we have all been waiting for: the first WNBA matchup between Diana Taurasi and Caitlin Clark. Like it’s been with most things CC this season, the story wasn’t about the actual game but everything else. The newest bit of thinkpiece discourse concerns mentorship from vets in the league to rookies. We’ll touch on that in point five of the column and, for the first time, I think I left the conversation with more sadness than righteous indignation. All we, as WNBA fans and media, have to do is make sure the network debate shows don’t get their hands on that piece of discourse and we should be okay.

Outside of the “Reality Game”, we had a great week of hoops. Some teams surprised us, for better or worse. We got a couple really enjoyable matchups and plenty of interesting discussion on and off the floor to fill the column.

A couple of content notes: if you want some postgame and weekend review content from Sunday, click here for our Youtube show and click here for our podcast. If you subscribe on Substack it goes straight to your email and makes it easier to find. Additionally, the first Legendarium should be released this week for those of you interested in women’s basketball history. I can say with confidence it’s one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve worked on in a long time and hope you enjoy it as well. Now, to the column…

1. Three point guards are changing the fortunes of their teams…

One thing that’s been tricky about writing the column every week is the nature of these opinions can change so wildly over the course of three or four games played in a seven day span. It also doesn’t help that the Olympics has condensed the schedule to such a degree that we might draw a conclusion about one team or player when the reality is they just need a bit of ramp up time or even time to practice together at all. It was the case with the Fever and now appears to be the case for the Dream.

I want to be clear, I still think Atlanta is a little listless and I’m not sold on the long term organizational strategy or development ability. But with Jordin Canada healthy and active the Dream do look like a completely different outfit. Her defense has been stifling, taking Sabrina Ionescu almost completely out of the game on Sunday. While I still believe in Haley Jones long term, I’m still at a loss to figure out the right position for her on the floor. But it’s clear, through no fault of her own, that Canada is a substantial upgrade at the floor general spot. That also allows Jones to affect the game in other ways and not bear the burden of sole ball handler. The stats may not be there yet but her presence is so much more calming. It’s a shame that Rhyne Howard is still out of the lineup but word is she may be back this season (potentially back for the Olympics too) so that’s when we’ll be able to properly assess Atlanta’s roster.

We’ve known about Jewell Loyd forever. But in past years, the Storm have gone as Sue Bird or Breana Stewart have gone. This season, with Nneka Ogwumike, Skylar Diggins-Smith and Ezi Magbegor comprising the backbone of a starting five that can contend for a title, Loyd is the x-factor. After an 0-9 performance against the Las Vegas Aces, she responded with a 16-5-5 performance in a win over the Sun followed by two 30+ point outings against the Wings and Fever. The formula is simple, when Loyd’s shooting under 33 percent from the field the Storm lose. When she shoots above that number, they win. I’ll take my consultant fee in cash, other WNBA teams.

Now to our third team: for the last two weeks Chelsea Gray has been the subject of a point in the column and it’s really amazing how much of an impact she makes solely with her presence. While she rediscovered her scoring touch this week, all the Aces appear to need is the ball in her hands and the start of the possession to positively affect the game. Things start to open for Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young and the Death Star that is Vegas starts to repower. All I guess I can say about the Aces, who are 4-0 with a 11 point or so margin of victory average since Gray’s return, is that I’m circling my calendar for August 17th when they see the Liberty.

While this league has always been predicated on a dominant big, they need a point guard to run it all. That symbiotic relationship has been so clear among these three teams and this week was a great lesson for basketball novices on why an elite center and elite point guard are the engines of any successful team.

2. The Sun are officially on Fraud Watch

This feels like the same old Sun, in so many ways. For the past handful of years, we always look up and see Connecticut towards the top of the standings and go “huh, I guess they must be pretty good this year!” You start to talk about the Sun as contenders and then they just can’t close the year with a title. It feels like more of the same this season. Whether or not they peaked too early is anyone’s guess, but Connecticut are on fraud watch until we see something different.

Take away a near loss to the Washington Mystics, who continue to show incredible fight despite being at a talent disadvantage with nearly everyone they play. Take away the loss to the Dream even, which is a bad loss given how Atlanta has looked in recent weeks. They’ve played top teams four times this year and lost three of them. The lone win was a one point victory over the Lynx where Kayla McBride did have a chance to win on a buzzer beater.

Is there some schedule bias with how fast the Sun started the year? Absolutely. They have shown that they have the capability to win games and I’ve loved how Ty Harris and DiJonai Carrington have come along as pros. But the concern is Alyssa Thomas having games where she gives you a 6-5-5 type performance when she is a consistent top three MVP vote getter. She hasn’t scored over 15 points in any of the Sun’s losses and at this point there’s enough of a sample.

Each season, the Sun feel like the L.A. Dodgers of old or the Tatum-Brown Boston Celtics (up until this year). They will have to earn the benefit of the doubt as a title contender and the only way to do that will be going out, beating top teams and winning a title.

3. Reassessing Angel Reese’s predraft analysis…

After another record breaking double-double performance against Vegas, I had to rethink Angel Reese. Even the most ardent AR defenders going into the draft knew that the offensive game would need a degree of improvement. It still does, to be sure. But what’s really caught me by surprise is the motor and mental she displays. I knew, as I’m sure many others did, that it was elite at the college level. What I didn’t realize is how elite and unique it is for the pro level.

The best athlete comparison I can think of right now is Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen. A guy with a lot of physical tools coming out of college without a lot of traditional refinement but a desire to be great and an even better locker room presence to go with it. It took a couple of seasons for Allen to really become a star in the league. Once it did, you know the rest. Reese reminds me a lot of him in the sense that her attitude is so good that it is actually able to overcome some of the offensive deficiencies that currently exist. Her mindset is so good that there’s also no doubt that the bag will get bigger in the offseason.

One of the things that helped Allen was the fact that Buffalo was the right organization for him. Chicago — for all of the craziness it’s gone through with James Wade running things in the past — turned out to be the exact type of place for Reese to succeed. It’s a worthwhile question of if we get this kind of Reese if she is in, say, Indiana or Los Angeles as opposed to with the Sky. Chicago’s ownership may be (rightfully) viewed as cheap but with Teresa Weatherspoon as the lead in the locker room, the vibes are wonderful from a chemistry perspective. When we do a redraft years from now we may wonder how Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso ended up on the same team. While there are still pieces of her game I’d like to see improved, it’s time to reassess Reese’s ceiling as long as that motor and mindset stays the way it is. If the skill catches up to the mental? We’re talking about the makings of an all-time great and, dare I say, a face of the league for years to come.

4. The Lynx are Commissioners Cup champions…now what?

Cheryl Reeve gets an early season victory lap. After most of us wondered exactly what role the Lynx would play in the WNBA this year, Napheesa Collier and co. really have done a good job rewriting the narrative on who they are. They took care of the Liberty in the Commissioners Cup final and now face the rest of the season in a west that has two legitimate contenders and one wild card in the Mercury.

So what’s next?

The long slog of the season, of course. And it’s in that slog we’ll figure out if the Lynx three point shooting is sustainable. Kayla McBride has quieted down significantly after a scorching hot start to the year. Three point shooting averages have dropped as a team and the defensive lapses have started to rear their head, including in a 94-88 loss to the Dallas Wings in which Odyssey Sims stepped on the floor fresh off a hardship contract and dropped 18 points. Those were issues that last year were prevalent and stopped the Lynx from taking a step forward. It was encouraging to see the bounce back against the Sky, whose rookie frontcourt is starting to present significant matchup problems for damn near everyone in the league.

Cheryl Reeve has won enough that I won’t dismiss them out of hand like I do the Sun. Are McBride and Courtney Williams a championship backcourt when stacked against the Storm, Aces or Liberty? It’s a fair question. This week, the Lynx get the Liberty, who they’ve beaten twice already in 2024, and a Sun team that is desperate for a statement win. Each week promises something different in the league and I’m interested to see if the grievance of being overlooked can carry Minnesota all the way into the fall.

5. Where the Caitlin Clark critique is warranted and where we start getting into weird territory…

Let’s tell the truth from start to finish. The body language is bad and there isn’t much of an excuse for it. Wright Thompson, in his long piece on Caitlin Clark and her rise to fame, referenced that it’s been a problem since she was in high school. Iowa coaches had to sit her down and make her watch tape to see how it adversely affected her team. That this continues to be a problem is alarming and, at least to me, doesn’t engender a lot of confidence in a Fever organization who no doubt knew about this quirk and haven’t appeared to have done much to support their star outside of basketball.

Simply put, the body language is creating losing basketball plays and bad habits. Plus, it’s just a generally bad look.

Is there nuance in that she is clearly an elite basketball player frustrated by the circumstances around her? Sure. But as Greer noted on our end-of-week postgame show on Youtube, Clark was drafted to be a tone setter for the franchise. And that isn’t positive tone setting. It can’t only be good when you’re winning. The critique and criticism is warranted. There might also be something to the Fever not cultivating a good organization for Clark to step into and not having the resources for her to feel welcome or, at the very least, not on an island the way it appears she is.

If there’s a fireable offense above all for Christy Sides it’s that she’s seemingly given Clark mixed messages, through the press no less, about what her role on the team is and it appears — from an armchair analyst perspective — to have made Clark indecisive and unsure of herself on the floor. That’s not the Caitlin Clark that changed the game and captivated audiences for the past two years. The support for her from teammates appears to wax and wane and in the past members of inner circles have made their thoughts clear on CC and her lack of desire to get into the fray of the culture war and discussion of privilege. To be clear, it’s her prerogative to not do that and I don’t think she should feel like she has to. But it’s clear that it creates problems in that locker room and she’s gotta own that too if she hasn’t already.

Here’s where the human component comes in.

Clark’s quote about not receiving advice from veteran players created an interesting discussion about the two way street of mentorship. While Sabrina Ionescu offered herself publicly as a resource for Clark to navigate her stardom, there hasn’t really been anyone else that’s noticeably done that. Who is Clark’s actual basketball mentor? Does she have one? A’ja Wilson has wrapped her arms around different rookies including Angel Reese and Clark’s former teammate Kate Martin. While it can be easy to overanalyze each piece of video and think there’s something calculated about embracing all but one rookie league-wide, there’s merit to the idea that you also have to be willing to ask for help. What gets hard is watching a 22 year old thrust into this spotlight with what doesn’t look like an active support system within the sorority of players. Simply put, Caitlin Clark looks alone. She sounds alone. All of us have felt that at some point in our lives. It’s deeply human. And it’s deeply sad. While the WNBA shouldn’t be forced to welcome her if it isn’t genuine, I do wonder if other players like Ionescu or Candace Parker — if they were fully candid — faced similar isolation in the start of their career. In the case of Sabrina, it sure looks like she’s legitimately enjoying not being the center of the great white hope discussion for once. That she’s been the one to publicly reach out is a little revealing, at least to me.

In the Last Dance, Michael Jordan talks about the toll exacted for how he played the game. While much of the documentary was a canonization of arguably the greatest athlete of all-time, it was also a sad look into the price paid for being his type of single mindedly competitive. It’s lonely there. And that’s where I think Clark is currently. The Wright Thompson piece discussed how her Iowa teammates eventually stood behind her after rocky starts. In short, they realized her dominance and fell in. But what happens when you’re not dominant at a new place? A lot of that body language and energy doesn’t hit the same. So who is there to support her within the league? More importantly, who wants to? There has to be someone willing to do it. And if not, does that say more about Clark or the league?

Jordan didn’t necessarily face repercussions for his attitude from day one in the NBA. But it’s clear on some level he bears the cross of his drive now in older age. Where I feel for Clark is that her loneliness feels much more on display. She’s has had to exist in her isolation with every phone, camera and mic in front of her. And also had to watch almost every other rookie receive an outpouring of love and support at the same time. Some of it may force Clark to be introspective about her role in the league beyond basketball player but it’s hard to look at some of the body language and behavior and not wonder how much of this is weighing on her. As bad of a look and self defeating as it can be, at the end of the day she’s still a young woman and while I won’t infantilize her (heavy is the head that wears the 28 million dollar shoe contract after all), I hope that the Olympic break will give her a chance to step out of the spotlight and get with a support system within the league that can help raise her spirits. Because when things haven’t been going well, she’s looked mentally drained and, sadly, alone. Maybe, in light of a postgame stamp from Taurasi herself, the tide starts to change. There’s clearly some people in the league that have respect for her and perhaps a GOAT sticking their neck out means that every post about giving a new player flowers isn’t met with over analysis and juxtaposition. The tide should rise together. And in spite of all that’s happened, no one deserves to drown.