If what you like about basketball is high-octane offense, elegantly executed offensive sets, and great scoring performances from stars, then the Los Angeles Sparks’ 76-68 victory over the San Antonio Silver Stars was probably agonizing.
However, there is something equally compelling about the level of defensive intensity that both teams played with last night that seems to add to the drama of transitioning from the regular season to the playoffs.
The type of defense played last night is not only indicative of a level of aggression, grittiness, and tenacity not normally associated with women’s sports, but also makes the anxiety and sense of urgency of the playoffs start to become tangible.
It’s easy to write off last night’s game as merely an example of poor basketball by pointing to the 16-16 first quarter or the Sparks’ abysmal second quarter in which they shot 28.6%. And as with any game there were missed assignments or mental lapses.
Instead, I suggest that the defining element of both halves was the defensive tone that was established early and particularly caught my eye on a play in which Silver Stars center Ann Wauters made a stop on Sparks forward Candace Parker.
It’s rare to see a Rethinking Basketball post focused on defense, which is somewhat ironic considering that I was a defensive specialist for most of my non-descript organized basketball career. As such, this season I’ve been keeping track of defensive statistics, no matter how futile a cause it may seem.
Defense is probably the most difficult thing to analyze in basketball because there really is no reasonable way to assess it without knowing a) the team’s scheme, b) the overall strategy that the scheme is part of, and c) what is expected of each individual within that strategy.
For example, there are times when a team will live with giving up one thing in hopes of shutting down another. Play to play it might look like “bad defense” on the part of a player when it reality it’s a reasonable strategy to win a game given the personnel. What might seem like a lapse in one situation, may be a stroke of brilliance in another.
The Silver Stars used a creative defensive scheme in the first quarter to keep the Sparks off balance, playing a man defense that functioned something like a zone when players switched.
For example, with 8:55 left in the first, Sparks point guard Noelle Quinn set up the offense for the Sparks and initiated the play by dribbling around a Parker screen on the right wing. Normally on a screen such as that against a man-to-man defense, one would expect a simple exchange of defensive assignments in which Becky Hammon who was guarding Quinn would stick with Parker and Sophia Young would switch from Parker to Quinn.
Instead the Silver Stars made a much more complicated move. Young did step up and stop Quinn, who was clearly setting up a play to Parker, who was rolling to the basket. But rather than Hammon picking up Parker, Ann Wauters – who was sagging way off Lisa Leslie -- picked up Parker and Hammon picked up Leslie who was at the top of the key.
Confusing? Yes, and it’s just as confusing if you have to play against it. That’s the point.
And the Silver Stars did it all game to great effect. It wasn’t until halftime adjustments were made that the Sparks were able to really turn a corner.
Of course, part of the Sparks second-half turnaround was a matter of running more of a fluid motion offense rather than standing around trying to merely exploit their size advantage in the post. Nevertheless, what stifled the Sparks repeatedly in the first half was the Silver Stars defense.
But what actually got my attention is when the uber-athletic Parker actually went to make a move against Wauters on the same play.
Parker took two dribbles with her back to Wauters, subtly giving shoulder fakes to try to catch Wauters off balance and make a spin and drop step. When Parker finally did turn and make a drop step, Wauters did not budge and was able to bother Parker’s shot and send it off the far side of the rim strong.
Obviously, this was a combination of good scouting and good defensive strategy that made that entire sequence happen. But the reason it grabbed my attention is that those are the type of defensive plays that don’t show up in the box score and often go unnoticed.
In the second half, it was the Sparks’ defensive intensity that defined the game flow as the Sparks just used their size and physical advantages to prevent the Silver Stars from doing much of anything – finding scoring opportunities, making interior passes, or even cutting through the lane.
Moreover, the Silver Stars didn’t get to the free throw line once in the third quarter, which was a result of the Sparks defense, regardless of whether the game was called perfectly (no basketball game in history ever has been to my knowledge).
Both sides played physical in the post throughout the game and most of the time it was simply a matter of being disciplined enough to hold one’s position, resist the temptation to bite on fakes or wilt at the sign of any potential contact, and being willing to take a hit and not back down.
And despite the obviously strong defensive play exhibited by both teams, the Silver Stars finished the game shooting 44.6%, while the Sparks shot 50%, including 70% in the second half on 19-29 shooting from the field.
When you combine that type of gritty play with strong offensive play you get what I consider the best of basketball.
It’s not just about the pretty highlight reel plays that excite us on the most basic level. It’s the ongoing chess match from play to play of each team trying to one up the other – on both sides of the ball – and constantly making adjustments, forcing their opponents out of their comfort zone, and improvising as a unit to try to tough out a win.
It’s not the prettiest thing for fans to watch, but it’s good all-around basketball that I have great appreciation for. It seems to give the game an edge that draws you into the competition and helps the player’s passion come alive.
And for a junkie like me, that’s beautiful.
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Defense Defines Sparks Victory Over Silver Stars
Orender, Parker Among the 55 Most Influential in Basketball
Hoopsworld.com completed their list of the 55 "most influential leaders in basketball" and both Donna Orender and Candace Parker made the list.
54 - Donna Orender, President, WNBA: While the WNBA is far from a mainstream hit, the league is growing and awareness of the brand and the sport continues to grow. While the women's game is nowhere near as popular as the men's game, the WNBA's influence on the female sports fans is significant and advertisers and sponsors continue to support the league.
52 - Candace Parker, Player, Los Angeles Sparks (WNBA): She isn't quite LeBron James, but Parker is a star and her influence over the women's game is profound. She is extremely marketable, and a very solid basketball player. As the face of the WNBA she will be a key component to growing the WNBA fan base into a more mainstream product.Obviously, the fact that ESPN is #2 on the list has some bearing on that, if you ask me.
2 - George Bodenheimer, President, ESPN – As the dominant sports brand in media ESPN controls the message. Bodenheimer, in turn, controls ESPN, so you do the math. ESPN is the ultimate kingmaker, their experts are experts by virtue of being with ESPN, and they own the broadcasting rights to so much of the sports landscape they can control and influence what is seen and heard across a variety of mediums. ESPN's influence on who is popular, who is not and what teams and situations are news shapes every aspect of the game. To many if ESPN reports it, it is real. ESPN's flagship program, SportsCenter, is one of the most-watched sports broadcasts anywhere. Between their news-making ability and broadcasting agreements no entity has more influence on the game than Bodenheimer's ESPN.Though women's basketball coverage has gotten better, certainly the way ESPN covers the WNBA will continue to have an affect on its mainstream interest.
Surprisingly, Rebkell did not make the list.
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The Los Angeles Sparks: "Expect Anything"
After the Los Angeles Sparks' 67-66 overtime road win over the Silver Stars last night, San Antonio forward Sophia Young perfectly articulated why this was the one game I was looking forward to seeing all week.
"With LA we expect anything,'' said Young. "It's always going to be a good game. They never blow us out, we never blow them out, and it's always an exciting game for the fans.''
Too bad nobody could see it on WNBA LiveAccess...because there's more than one reason to want to watch the Sparks.
Consistent with Young's statement, this was a tightly contested game, perhaps even an ugly one. Looking at the Four Factors statistics, the only major thing separating the two teams last night was the Sparks' dominance on the offensive boards, which is typical of when these teams play.
Combined with the San Antonio Silver Stars' uncharacteristically low assisted field goal percentage -- meaning they were not moving the ball well -- the Sparks got enough of an edge to pull this one out.
However, what makes the game more significant is that it marks a major turning point for the Sparks season -- the night when they became a legit playoff team. Not just because the Sparks moved into third place in the Western Conference after an abysmal start to their season, but also because of how they did it.
The Sparks beat the defending Western Conference champion Silver Stars in San Antonio in a (seemingly) gritty overtime battle to extend a 3 game winning streak to 4.
That’s the type of game hungry and serious playoff contenders win, not only because they have to fight for playoff position, but just to prove to everyone else that they are a team to beat. It forces us to shift our thinking about the Sparks from wondering about what has transpired thus far this season to wondering what might come to pass in the post-season.
And that’s what makes this most significant to me and the reason why I’ve taken an increasing interest in the Sparks since the All-Star break.
Los Angeles fans shouldn’t be the only celebrating the Sparks transition into a legit playoff team. The Sparks are in the midst of constructing what could become one of the league’s great narratives…and that’s good for anyone who cares about the health of the WNBA.
Having center Lisa Leslie make a deep playoff run in her final season and Parker emerging as a real post-season performer after all the mess of a season this has been for them so far really is a great story that sports fans should be able to step into.
Leslie and Parker are arguably the two most prominent women’s basketball players in the U.S. Dramatizing the transition from one to the other with a successful final run for Leslie is exactly the jolt the league needs.
Given the narrative of this season – maternity leave, injuries, inconsistent rotations – having those two at the center of a successful turnaround also creates a hero narrative for the WNBA that is so rarely applied to women’s team sports. It gives people reasons to continue following.
Part of what attracts people to pro sports are hero narratives – people we can root for and who accomplish things that we can only imagine. People who can overcome adversity when everyone has counted them out and persevere to reach the top of their craft.
We can talk all we want about how basketball is a team game and that's what makes it beautiful, but let's be real: it's individual figures like Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson that make leagues successful.
I’m not saying I am rooting for the Sparks to win it all. But it’s hard to deny that every step closer they get to the WNBA Finals from this point on will be good for the WNBA.
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“Get Schooled”: LeBron James, Viacom, and the Gates Foundation Team Up to Talk Education
I have to commend Viacom, the Gates Foundation, LeBron James, and Kelly Clarkson for taking an interest in the deep educational disparities that exist in the U.S.
Viacom has apparently decided to do some image management by producing an upcoming 30-minute special entitled featuring LeBron James and Kelly Clarkson entitled, “Get Schooled: You Have the Right”.
An excerpt from the press release posted on Slam Online:
“Today, in America, far too many young people enter adulthood unprepared for college, career and life,” said Allan Golston, President of the U.S. Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Changing this reality requires the full engagement of the corporate and nonprofit communities, working harder to support students, families and schools to create an expectation in every community that a college education is possible for all young people. Through the creativity of Viacom’s team and the strong connections its networks cultivate with their audiences, we have a unique ability to reach young people and their families on this critical issue.”I sent this out over a listserv that I’m on and a friend sent back the following response:
This made me read James' bio (one of the first sports bios I've read). James experienced an extraordinary amount of support from outside his family. My question to the producers of this show would be, how could we structure social affordances for "all kids" who have this "right to access to college," so that those (millions of kids) who come from "less-than-adequate" households can be taken in by an elementary school sports team coach to live in a "stable" home?Nope. He’s not missing the point…but he might have missed the most glaring irony of the whole thing.
Or am I missing the point?
Last I checked, LeBron James decided to go to the NBA instead of college…and according to Wikipedia, Kelly Clarkson skipped college for American idol…
So…
What exactly is the message of this program if neither of the stars they have chosen even went to college?
James in particular is an exceptional individual who has led an exceptional life – anybody remember his high school games being broadcast on ESPN? – in a professional sports universe full of exceptional people. What exactly are we supposed to learn about education from these examples?
Hmmm…maybe I’m missing something.
Just to be clear – I have no problem with an athlete like James deciding not to go to college when he was quite clearly the best 18 year old basketball player in this solar system. It just seems like he’s…well…off message for this particular effort.
But where could we find a relatively popular athlete who did go to college and has risen to the top of their game?
Los Angeles Sparks forward Candace Parker maybe? WNBA star, Olympian, and former NCAA Academic All-American?
Doesn’t she better represent the spirit of the program?
I understand she is not nearly as popular as LeBron James -- it would be ridiculous to even think of saying something that absurd -- and I’m not suggesting they made a mistake.
But Parker is a young rising star who succeeded in college and in sports…and it’s worth celebrating that. It would have been an interesting way to spotlight a female role model.
Transition Points:
In other news, recently signed Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick is also contributing to the development of our youth by speaking about dogfighting...
"He's a big influential person and what he says matters," said one of the youth.
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Revisiting the Storm-Sparks Triple Overtime Classic: Do the Sparks Still Have a Shot at the Playoffs?
With less than a minute remaining in the third quarter of last Wednesday’s triple overtime classic in Key Arena, LA Sparks forward Candace Parker had the ball on the wing guarded by Storm forward Camille Little.
Parker had not yet scored to that point in the game and had been the last player down the court on multiple plays. There was no reason for optimism that Parker could suddenly put the team on her back and make something happen, but there was a lingering feeling from 2008 that she could make something happen.
Although Little had done a very good job defending Parker throughout the game, Parker seemed to have a glimmer of you-can’t-guard-me in her eyes. It was a look of determination, intensity and focus. It was a reason to believe that the momentum of the game was about to shift. Down by five points at the time, it appeared as though Parker was not quite ready to let this game slip away, even if the odds – and the Key Arena crowd – were in the Storm’s favor.
The clip played in Key Arena during overtime.
Parker passed the ball, got it back quickly, turned the corner after recognizing some confusion in the Storm’s defensive rotations, and scored over a helpless Storm help defender with a driving layup punctuated by an authoritative slap of the backboard, more reminiscent of the bravado exhibited in a pick-up game than what the average person might expect from a women’s basketball game.
She went on to finish the quarter with another contested layup and started the fourth quarter by assisting Tina Thompson on a three to put the Sparks up four points. Later, she hit a big jumper down the stretch and at one point gave MVP candidate and former Defensive Player of the Year, Lauren Jackson a challenge, drawing a foul on a short jumper.
It appeared Parker was starting to put the league on notice: she’s hitting her stride and once she does, she could return to embarrassing defenders nightly any game now.
Of course, the Sparks lost the game in triple overtime, partially due to a heroic effort by Storm guard Sue Bird in the third overtime, partially due to the Sparks’ mental lapses and inability to execute down the stretch. The Sparks played well enough to win, but in the end, the Storm just had a little bit more, even after losing some of their star power with Tanisha Wright fouled out and Lauren Jackson ejected.
Unfortunately for the Sparks, this scenario is reminiscent of a narrative that could potentially describe their entire season once the WNBA reaches playoff time.
Even if the Sparks turn it on, show the flashes of determined brilliance required of a champion, and hit their stride as a team instead of a collection of talented individuals, it’s very possible that it simply won’t quite be enough to send off a retiring Lisa Leslie with a trip to the post-season.
But can you really count out a team with four Olympians and a volume shooter having an all-star worthy season if they manage to get that determination, focus and intensity required to win? Do they still have a shot at the playoffs?
Reasons for Optimism
Watching Parker starting to turn it on for that momentum-shifting seven minute stretch in the second half is plenty of reason to spark optimism. Parker went on to finish last week’s game with 10 points, 10 rebounds, 6 blocks, and 5 assists, not bad for a player who is still not playing her best ball consistently. Parker’s increasing comfort on the court combined with Lisa Leslie’s expected return in the next few games, is certainly reason for confidence.
However, Parker’s performance alone was not the only reason for optimism evident in that game. As one might have expected, the Sparks got off to a decent start in the Storm game by playing with a higher energy level and outworking the Storm in the paint – in the second quarter, the Sparks had an offensive rebounding percentage of 70%. During that quarter, they only took one three pointer but had a free throw rate of 72%. So focusing on rebounding, high percentage shots, and moving the ball well, helped them overcome 11 first half turnovers and build an 8 point first half lead.
Further reason for optimism is a matter of scheduling, as described by The Root.com’s Martin Johnson:
…the Sparks have played more than twice as many games on the road as they have at home. They are 1-8 on the road and 3-1 at home. In the second half of the season, that split will reverse, giving a bit of hope for the rest of their season.Johnson doesn’t even mention that the Sparks have three games against the struggling Sacramento Monarchs, who they defeated by 20 points in LA on June 21st.
If the Sparks can bring it all together and continue to play like they did in the second quarter, in addition to Parker playing the way she did for seven minutes in the second half, as well as Leslie contributing on both ends of the floor, they could dominate the second half of the season.
That would be the hope.
However reality might not be so kind.
Their best might not be enough.
Practically speaking, the Western Conference might just be too tough. If the Sparks were to sneak in, who might we expect to fall out?The Phoenix Mercury and Seattle Storm – both on pace to win at least 21 games -- would have to completely collapse in order to fall out of the playoffs. When Ann Wauters returns to the Silver Stars, they’ll likely return to last year’s form. The Minnesota Lynx seem to be the most vulnerable team with star player lost for the season due to injury and left with a very young rotation of players, that could collapse. So Lynx coach Jennifer Gillom’s statement that it would take 20 games to make the playoffs this year might be a good barometer for the Sparks.
The Lynx are on pace to win about 20 games, with a record of 10-7 halfway through their schedule. The Sparks would have to win 16 of their remaining 21 games – a winning percentage of 76% -- to get to 20 games. They already lost one game to the Lynx on the road, so if it came down to a tie-breaker, they would need to win all three of their remaining games against the Lynx (2 home, 1 road) to win that. And therefore to avoid a tie-breaker, they’d actually have to win 21 games.
An argument could certainly be made that the Lynx will fail to maintain their current pace in the second half of the season. Kevin Pelton’s expected wins standings have the Lynx finishing with 17.1 wins (and the Sparks with 14.7). Considering that the Sparks are likely to improve on their first half performance as they get their personnel healthy, they are probably more likely to exceed their expected wins than the Lynx.
However, while this is all mathematically possible, it would require an historic run – consider that the Indiana Fever who went on a 11 game win streak in the first half of the season, won 75% of their 16 games. To put it in perspective, the Sparks would have to play a little bit better than the Fever have to this point, for a longer period of time. It’s not unheard of, but it would take a significant turn-around.
Moving to actual game play, the Sparks’ point guard situation has been inconsistent, at best. They get flashes of solid point guard play from either Kristi Harrower, Shannon Bobbitt, or Noelle Quinn, but it’s difficult to predict when any of those players will turn it on, much less which player will do it.
In last week’s game against the Storm, it was Quinn who turned it on, scoring all but one of her 10 points in the overtime periods, including 6 points in the first overtime period just driving right through the Storm’s defense. Bobbitt played well along with Parker at the end of the third, but for most of the game, they did not get much from the point guard position.
For a post-dependent team, it can be a fatal vulnerability – the easy way to beat the Sparks would be to pressure the guards full court and prevent them from getting the team into the offense until late in the shot clock.
Ultimately, this is impossible to predict, which makes it fun to watch.
I said the Sparks would be the number team to watch at the start of the season and I don’t think that’s changed now after a difficult start. Parker will hit her stride. And eventually Parker and Leslie will be playing together. It will be interesting to see what they’re capable of.
However, my biggest reservation about the Sparks at the beginning of the season and the reason I was hesitant to anoint them the pre-destined champion is that I am always skeptical of these type of all-star teams that franchises assemble for one-year runs. They rarely work. When they do it’s because they lack the type of major vulnerability like the Sparks have at point guard.
The number one problem is always figuring out a way to find roles for every player and then finding a chemistry that maximizes each player’s talent within a particular style, not going play to play searching for an option and waiting for someone to step up.
And if they do pull it off, it would actually be a storybook ending for Leslie’s career.
Transition Points:
The energy at Key Arena last Wednesday was amazing. It's not often in life that you get the privilege of being present for a triple overtime game that is as well played as the Sparks-Storm game was (especially in the 4th quarter and overtime(s)). It got so good that Bird's third overtime run was almost anti-climactic -- it felt as though a last second jumper would have been more befitting for the game.
That was one of the games that I wish people on the fence about the WNBA could see -- it had all the passion, big plays, and excitement that you could want for a sport. If you can't appreciate the game after a game like that, then it's not for you...and that's perfectly fine.
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The Sparks' Slump is No Reason for the Storm to Relax at Home Tonight
Reasonable people could probably agree that the Seattle Storm are likely to defeat the Los Angeles Sparks tonight in Seattle.
Tonight’s game will be the Sparks’ fourth road game of a very long road trip. The Sparks are 1-7 on the road this season and have lost 3 of 4 games since demolishing the Storm 82-55 in Los Angeles on June 28. Lisa Leslie is still out due to injury, Candace Parker is back but still looks out of sync. And if you watched their last two games (road losses to the Washington Mystics and Connecticut Sun), the whole team still looks like they are trying to figure each other out.
In contrast, the Storm have three All-Star starters. One of those All-Stars, Lauren Jackson, appears to be returning to action tonight after missing two games due to injury. Tanisha Wright just seems to be getting better by the game. They have won two games in a row after dropping two straight opportunities at home, but they have not necessarily played their best basketball.
And oh yeah, it’s Cram the Key night…and it’s difficult to imagine a tougher atmosphere to play in than those Key Area fans yelling Beat LA.
But I suppose the fact that the cards are stacked against the Sparks is exactly what might give someone who’s watched the Storm at home recently reason for pause.
The Storm have this bad habit of playing about 1.5 quarters of good basketball and spending the other 2.5 quarters MIA. Compounding the problem, is that it is not always two consecutive quarters either, which means it can be difficult to gain momentum.
In other words, they don’t need additional reason to relax.
How the Sparks beat the Storm in LA
The best way to explain how the Sparks beat the Storm in LA is to simply say LA outworked and outhustled them. From the AP report: "We really contested all their shots, ran them off the 3-point line, we double-teamed Lauren every time she got it on the pass,'' Sparks coach Michael Cooper said. "Whenever we're moving around defensively, it creates easy offense for us."
Aside from the Lauren comment, the same analysis could be applied to how the Shock beat the Storm.
However, aside from what the opponents have done to the Storm, part of the problem is what the Storm are doing: letting opponents shoot well over 50% for two or three quarters of the game. While the Storm allowed the Sky to over 50% in every quarter (as high as 69.2% in that second quarter), both the Sky and the Shock shot over 50% -- and perhaps more importantly better than the Storm – in both games.
Against the Lynx, the Storm did better limiting them to 33% shooting in the fourth, but the Storm’s comeback could be attributed as much to the Lynx’s own inability to protect the ball. Minnesota had eight fourth quarter turnovers, two of them horrible passes intercepted by Wright, which led to a turnover percentage of 44.94%.
So the argument that the Storm can coast and turn it on in the fourth falls apart a bit when considering the Lynx game – they cannot count on putting together an solid half quarter and hoping the opposition falls apart. Somehow they have to put together a whole game.
Last, it’s hard not to wonder when will Candace Parker finally find a groove and prove to be a real threat to be reckoned with rather than a potential threat to be aware of?
I think that has more to do with Parker than anything the Storm can prepare for…but does anybody really want to be that team that Parker went off on for the first time in 2009?
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Rethinking Rookie Performance: Beyond Hyperbole and Absurd Expectations
Candace Parker was like everything anyone has ever wanted any rookie to become.
From my limited perspective, she was arguably one of the best rookies to ever enter any professional sport.
No WNBA rookie has ever won Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season (and only two NBA players – Wes Unseld and Wilt Chamberlain – have accomplished that feat). To that feat, you can add winning an Olympic gold medal and NCAA championship in the same year, within six months of each other. And, yeah, she also dunked…twice.
Parker set a gold standard for rookie performance last season that no player is likely to reach again. She was clearly at the top of an outstanding rookie class, which included other future all-stars like Candice Wiggins, Nicky Anosike, and Sylvia Fowles to name a few.
What’s funny is that even if people know Parker is a rare phenomenon, there is a tendency to treat almost every single rookie drafted like they’ll be the next big thing. And if they aren’t the next big thing, we really don’t have a good way to think about rookie performance. At no time is that more evident than draft day. I missed the WNBA’s draft this year, but did catch the NBA draft (as I do every year) and I think the spin is probably worse there.
Hyperbolic NBA draft day talk has become so commonplace that normally I wouldn’t bother to comment. And really, it makes a lot of sense: even if everybody except the newly minted millionaire’s mother knows that the player has no business being drafted in the lottery, you can’t just say that on national television.
It would be boring to say, “He’s going to be a great journeyman who will contribute 5-10 minutes off a fringe playoff team’s bench for 5-7 years.” Instead you have to say something like, “He’s a hardworking winner who can contribute to a team right away.” (Oh no, I’m not referring to anyone in particular).
And yet, ESPN still managed to go over the top during this year’s NBA draft.
In fact, it was one of the worst commentated NBA drafts I’ve ever seen. It’s not just that they were making dumb comments; the problem appeared to be that the litany of meaningless clichés that have accumulated from draft days past had cemented in their minds to the point of preventing any sort of original thoughts being uttered about any player.
The comment that really generated a buzz among the basketball geeks I was watching the draft with came from Fran Fraschilla. After calling Ricky Rubio the best passer drafted in a decade (by “best” I’m assuming he meant “fanciest”) and comparing his feel for the game to Wayne Gretzky’s (feel for hockey, I assume), he later called Rubio “transformative”. Of course, the geeks object. This led us to talk about the difference between transformative (“the skies open and completely alter our way of life”) vs. transformational (“having the potential to change a team’s fortunes”).
(Note: Yes, I do find that type of conversation “fun”.)
Of course, what everyone is looking for – especially early in the draft – is those “transformative” players who can walk on water, part the defense, and float through the air to put the ball in the basket. So it’s not really uncommon I suppose for any league on draft day – I vividly remember Michael Cooper comparing Candace Parker to the Showtime Lakers’ entire starting five or something.
And occasionally, those players come along: most recently LeBron James and Candace Parker have been somewhat transformative. But even they have not been able to win championships in their first seasons (this is what separates Magic Johnson from most mortal basketball players).
Anyway, I always find it funny how after summer league (going on now), pre-season, and failing to get a starting spot on a losing team, the tone of the analysts change. After trying to cast everyone as the biggest thing since the pick before him, reality sets in and you start hearing things like, “It’s going to take time for him to adjust” or “He’s going to have to spend some time learning the game.”
Hopefully, reality has set in for you regarding the WNBA by now.
We’ve seen just enough to get a sense of what each player offers, but not quite enough to make any real solid claims about who is “best”. Nevertheless, after checking out the rookie point guards earlier this season, I did wonder about who was the best rookie overall. Which brings me back a question I asked last year: what is the fairest way to evaluate rookies?
There are many metrics we could use to determine who the best player in the WNBA is. In fact, most of the biggest APBRmetricians have a metric of their own to evaluate player productivity. However, I would argue that most of those are completely inadequate for evaluating rookies for one reason: rookies are wildly inconsistent.
Unless you have a rookie like Candace Parker or LeBron James, it’s almost impossible to know what you’re going to get game to game. That’s just natural: in addition to adjusting to the level of competition, they are learning a new system, figuring out how to move from star and/or leader of their college team to professional role player, and then there’s the issue of opponents eventually figuring out how to best defend them and constantly throwing different looks at them.
As Atlanta Dream commentator LaChina Robinson said during the webcast of at game in which McCoughtry failed to score as fellow rookie first-rounder Shavonte Zellous attempted to carry the Detroit Shock from the free throw line, it’s extremely difficult for a rookie to carry a team and it’s impressive when they do, even if briefly.
So although we are all looking for that dominant game changing rookie who can lift a team from the depths of the cellar to the glory of a WNBA championship, we probably will not get it this season. We are much more likely to be evaluating the player who is best able to adjust to the rigors of professional basketball and have any sort of impact.
Even trying to find predictors of future success is difficult because it all depends on which team they end up on, the role they are able to get on the team, and how hard they work behind the scenes. Given that, I tried to think to take a step backwards and rethink what exactly we should be evaluating when we look at rookie.
Rethinking Basketball rookie refresher
So last year I approached rookie evaluation from two angles: most promising/potential and most outstanding. This year, I’m abandoning the most promising approach simply because there are so many intangibles involved in realizing potential that I am not sure a statistical analysis is that valuable (I do however find Diamond Rating interesting and petrel has already posted those). So I’m just going to try to do an analysis of top rookies, with an eye on how well they contribute to team success.
Last year, I used the following statistics, based on Oliver’s Four Factors and past email exchanges with David Sparks:
Ball movement (unselfishness)
Turnover ratio
Offensive rebound rate
True shooting percentage
Valuable contributions rating
This year I am adding:
Plus/minus
SPI versatility
The goal of this approach was simply to examine the different ways each player is able to contribute to the key factors of success rather than trying to use one overarching metric to evaluate inconsistent production.
However, when I looked back at last year’s numbers I wasn’t quite satisfied with the process…especially for a year like this one when there is considerably less star power, but still a number of solid players. The problem is that every rookie this year has glaring flaws that keeps them from being a great all-around player conducive to high ratings on many of the linear production metrics that one might choose to use.
So I wanted to figure out a better way…
Two tidbits of wisdom regarding rookies
So as I looked around the web for wisdom about how to evaluate rookies, two things really stood out for me – nobody really has a good way of evaluating rookies…aside from waiting to see how they turn out. But within that, just surfing the web and reading other people’s analyses did yield a few useful tidbits.
First, Dave Berri has done some very interesting work looking at the NBA’s Kevin Durant and today he compared Durant’s rookie campaign to Carmelo Anthony and Jerry Stackhouse. But Anthony is simply not outstanding at any aspect of the game. And to be outstanding, you have to do something outstanding. Yes, it’s that simple.
What I like about Berri’s analysis is the focus on what a player does well beyond just scoring points. We all know from past experience that points per game simply is not a good indicator of how good a rookie is in terms of their ability to contribute to a team.
….
And that is my point. Players should be evaluated in terms of what they actually have done. Not in terms of what we imagine they might do at some point in the future.
What’s important, whether we are judging the best rookie or potential success, is that a rookie be able to do something well.
Which takes me to another bit of wisdom that I heard in reference to the NBA’s Bruce Bowen during a broadcast one time. Someone made the point that what allows a player like Bowen to succeed in the NBA is not that he wows you with athleticism or dominant talent, but that he has learned to do one thing well on each side of the ball (making spot up threes and playing tough perimeter defense).
Along with Berri’s analysis, I think that actually provides a helpful framework for rookie analysis – what has a rookie shown that they can do well? And more importantly, what can they contribute to a professional team?
Overall productivity measures are helpful to give us a player’s net effect, but don’t answer those more specific questions that are probably more important for making an analysis of a player who is constantly developing. And therefore, I’m not entirely sure overall rankings are helpful.
When you think about a player like Crystal Langhorne, she didn’t dazzle anyone last year, but she did do two things rather well – getting offensive rebounds and score with a high percentage. She established that she had skills to build on. So if we look for those specific assets and how well they do those, I think we might be able to find a more nuanced way to analyze rookies…
Hmmmm….more on this tomorrow..
Transition Points:
Best drafted passer in the last decade: I think Chris Paul, Shaun Livingston, Jordan Farmar, and Baron Davis would all argue that they were pretty good passers coming into the league. In fact there’s a whole league of fancy passers who would rather show off than win games – it’s called And 1.
Rubio’s moves are nice, but let’s try to keep things in perspective: fancy passing is entertaining, but does not necessarily translate to wins, though it might get you an early playoff exit before the team decides to acquire a point guard with substance. Just ask Jason Williams…and he actually had a jumpshot. And he was already compared to Maravich too. But I guess since it was more than a decade ago, we can forget about that.
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“At Last”: Opening Day Preview
Finally.
By some strange coincidence, every single WNBA pre-season game was during a meeting, class, or the NBA playoffs (and I think I overslept a morning one or two). So aside from the Storm game that I went to, I have to confess that I have not seen enough of the WNBA pre-season to give a full preview.
But hey, that didn’t exactly stop a few major national publications from writing something…so why shouldn’t I?
So instead of the typical season preview that either does the impossible and predicts the outcomes or gives a roster analysis, I thought I would present a few themes that I intend to follow throughout the season.
A first will probably come as no surprise if you followed this blog last season: the role of the point guard.
I was talking to some folks the other day about how some people were claiming that last year in the NBA was the “Year of the Point Guard”, that point guards like Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Rajon Rondo were emerging to dominate the league.
Then of course, when you look at this year’s NBA playoffs, of the four teams that made the semifinals, only one (Denver) had an established point guard (Mo Williams is solid but not quite “established” yet). So the point guard match-ups in the Finals are as follows: Derek Fisher, Tony Farmar, and Shannon Brown vs. Rafer Alston, Jameer Nelson (still recovering from injury), and Anthony Johnson?
Does it look to you that point guards are the key to these teams? On the surface, not really…but that’s where I took the argument a bit further.
My whole point about the point guard is that it’s a position about decision making and goodness of fit. Successful teams don’t absolutely need a superstar point guard capable of completely dominating a game (e.g. Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups). They need a style of point guard that both defines and fits what they want to do.
The decision making framework becomes a particularly relevant point once you reach the second tier of point guards – does your point guard know when to push the ball and when to slow it down? Do they know when to drive or when to shoot? Do they know when to take the ball and swing it or reset the offense? Can they make an eff-ing entry pass?
All of these things sound super simple, right? Yeah, but some people simply don’t have it even though they have all the physical tools in the world.
What we have seen from the point guards playing in the Finals is solid decision making frm…even if that means pass to Kobe and clear. Derek Fisher’s style of play – as much as I despise him for his performance with and against the Warriors – is a great fit for the Lakers because he generally makes good decisions (as in limiting turnovers). Farmar is nice as a change of pace to pick up the tempo with the second unit, which has been extremely effective at times. Rafer Alston is perfect for the Magic because he can penetrate and find open shooters.
It seems likely that we will see a similar pattern in the WNBA this year – the best point guards in the league (Sue Bird & Lindsay Whalen) might be at home watching the conference finals. But I would argue that the point guard play of this year’s pre-season front-runner (the Sparks) will be huge.
And there will be a few teams whose playoff hopes might be riding on the play of a rookie point guard by the end of the season – there were three point guards taken in the first six picks of the draft and by the end of the season, all three could be starters.
So with that, my top five players and teams to watch as the season begins.
Top 5 Players to Watch
5. Lifelock’s Diana Taurasi: Always interesting to watch and will have quite a burden trying to get her team to the playoffs. Having Lauren Jackson would have been nice, but she showed last year that she can take a team to the brink of the playoffs almost by herself. When you look around at the Western Conference, it will be tough to make the playoffs…and if the Mercury want it, Taurasi will have to have an amazing season. I think she can do it.
4. Kristi Toliver, Renee Montgomery, and Briann January: All three of these point guards could be starting by mid-season depending on how the veterans around them play and how they fit into their respective systems. And I think following the progression of rookie point guards is fascinating. January has already been announced the starter of her team, Toliver has a good chance to challenge Chicago’s shooting guards filling the point guard spot, and Montgomery will have to work. But this will be interesting to watch – by the end of the season, who will be the best point guard in the 2009 draft?
3. Sylvia Fowles: the main storyline this season will probably be Lisa Leslie retiring and passing the torch to Candace Parker. But I see it slightly differently – the torch in terms of WNBA post play is being passed to Fowles. And she’s more than ready. The big question will be how the Sky use her. Last year, it just seemed like she was not incorporated into the offense very well. This year having demonstrated what she can do both in Europe and the Olympics, it seems unfathomable that she would not be the focal point of this team. No pressure, Coach Key.
2. Lindsay Whalen: This might seem like an odd pick, but she just seems like the eternal underdog. The GMs selected Sue Bird as the best point guard in the league in something of a landslide, which makes me wonder, what does Lindsay Whalen have to do to establish herself as the best? Well, winning a championship would be nice, but it seems unlikely this year. Some of their young players will have a year more under their belts though which could give Whalen more support so they don’t go through another 8 game slump like last year. But ultimately the Sun’s chances will boil down to Whalen. And if they do well, might she be anointed the top point guard in the league next year?
1. Candace Parker: Duh. That was easy. Coming back off her MVP season and off-season pregnancy, can she get her first championship?
Top 5 Teams to Watch
5. Diana Taurasi’s Lifelock (aka Phoenix Mercury): I love Diana Taurasi…and really, how can you not? She all about helping the children stay healthy and everything. But seriously – and no disrespect to Cappie Pondexter – the Mercury will live or die based on Taurasi’s performance this season. And if this Mercury team somehow gets to the playoffs – as 50% of WNBA GMs predicted – she is hands down the 2009 WNBA MVP. How 50% of GMs predicted the Mercury making the playoffs and only one predicted Taurasi winning the MVP is actually baffling to me.
4. New York Liberty: OK, ok… yes, I just really like Leilani Mitchel as a point guard. But that’s not really the point. The question for the Liberty is whether they can take that next step and return to the WNBA finals…which ultimately comes down to a question of whether they can take down Detroit.
3. Sacramento Monarchs: This is my dark horse team of the 2009 season. I’ve seen some people write this team off but as usual, this frontcourt is absolutely loaded. And when this team is clicking on all cylinders, they will be extremely difficult to stop. They have added Courtney Paris – who I think will be a force on the boards – and have a constantly improving Crystal Kelly to make up a potentially dominant frontcourt of the future. They have also added Hamchetou Maiga-Ba who should be able to just adds another veteran presence. This is a team with the capacity to challenge the top teams in the Western Conference while simultaneously having a bright future. And that’s always fascinating to watch. And I will never ever…evaevaevaevaeva count out Ticha Penicheiro…ok?
2. Chicago Sky: I just love the Sky. I love the combination of talent they have: two great post players, an outstanding all-around perimeter player in Jia Perkins, and Armintie Price who is just one of the league’s great personalities. Not that personalities win games…but it makes it even more fun to root for (or in the case of Kobe Bryant, against). I have gone on and on about them in the past, so I spare you here. But I’m really really interested in seeing how Kristi Toliver fits into this team. She could easily take the starting spot by mid-season.
1. LA Sparks: the Sparks have put together one of those fantasy teams that almost try to shape destiny by bringing together a group of players that just seems unstoppable…you know, if they all play the way they’re supposed to and actually come together to work as a team. It’s almost as with these squads are supposed to overwhelm you with star power before you even step on the court.
And as we saw last year with the Storm, this doesn’t always work…
In the NBA, the 2000 Portland Trailblazers and the 2004 LA Lakers immediately come to mind. Really, they had two different problems – the Blazers were just loaded top to bottom whereas the Lakers had four Hall of Famers and little depth. What’s interesting is that in this year’s WNBA just as in the NBA in 2004, it could be a gritty Detroit team that was assembled for a particular style of play that topples the fantasy team.
But in addition to trying to bring this talent and mold them into a team, there will be the additional adjustment once Candace Parker comes back to the team. So they will have to do a double adjustment this season…and that doesn’t sound easy in the WNBA’s short regular season. The key will be to see where they’re at near the end of the season. And you have to wonder how that will influence home court advantage in the Western Conference.
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Expect Great ’09: A case study and reflection
Unfortunately, I don’t have any juicy information about the opening of WNBA training camps that you couldn’t get elsewhere.
So instead, I thought this was a good opportunity to comment about another major occurrence yesterday – the television premiere of the newest Expect Great ads.
As excited as I was about yesterday’s NBA game sevens, they were a huge disappointment, which is probably why my mind just wandered to this post.
I watched with 3 of my friends at my friend C’s house (pseudonyms have been used to protect the identities of the innocent). As the games continued to suck, our attention wavered and we started talking about all kinds of random stuff, including watching YouTube clips of C’s brother’s band at one point.
So what ended up grabbing my attention was my friends’ responses to the Expect Great commercials. Of course, the commercials are what inspired me to write this blog so naturally I’m interested in how well this newest iteration “works”. And what better way to do that than with a bunch of over-educated dudes watching basketball?
Anyway, C is in love with his DVR and has now decided that he has no use for commercials. So we “accidentally” caught the WNBA commercials only twice (I’m not sure if they were on more than that throughout the afternoon). But I think the conversation (and non-conversation) was enough to make a point about this year’s first iteration of ads.
We are all graduate students (meaning we have a lot of time on our hands to think about inconsequential aspects of the world around us). None of them are WNBA fans and they don’t watch as far as I know. I’m not sure if they’ve ever been to a game. None of them played high school basketball, though I have played intramural basketball with C and R, both of whom did play a high sport. All of us, however, are NBA fans, and at least C and G are NCAA fans as well.
A random note that should not matter, but usually manages to come up in conversations:
C just got married last year (no kids yet), R is engaged, and G is pathetically single, like me.
Obviously, I had seen the ads before online and I’m assuming they had not. And prior to watching it with them, here’s essentially what I thought:
I agree with those who say they are an upgrade from last year – the gloomy tone is gone and the images are…interesting – but they still fall way short of building a buzz about the league among their target audience.
After watching it with my friends, here’s what I think now:
Whereas last year’s initial spots targeted men, grabbed their attention, and challenged them to interrogate their own biases (thus turning off a number of lunkheads who were shocked that women were allowed to leave the kitchen), this year’s ads are still targeted at men, but fail to grab their attention and hardly get them to interrogate their own biases.
My thoughts on last year’s ads
Just to recap, here’s what I thought about last year’s Expect Great ads:
My friend and I were trying to figure out if these “Expect Great” commercials were effective and whether we liked them. After some deliberation, the verdict was “no” on both counts.That of course essentially frames the goal of this blog – to just appreciate the WNBA on its own terms and find ways to highlight its bright spots (some of the best female athletes in the world competing to see whose team is best).
The tone was probably too gloomy and it was just uninspiring. I also have a hard time getting over the grammatical incorrectness of “Expect Great”. I guess it grabs attention because it’s so awkward….but whatever…
So after thinking about what the commercials needed to communicate, here’s what we came up with: in order to appreciate the WNBA people have to stop comparing it to the men’s basketball as inherently “inferior”.
People have to be able to envision basketball without 300 pound 7-footers and highlight reel dunks. Somehow people need to redefine their own conceptions about what basketball is and how the women’s game fits under an umbrella that includes many distinct variations: the NBA, FIBA rules, And1 Mix Tapes, NCAA basketball, and everyday streetball.
So here’s what happened yesterday.
Data: My friends’ responses
So when the ad flashed on the screen for the first time, we were all just zoned out or in the middle of a conversation or something. The ad passed by without anyone even bothering to pay attention to it. If anyone did have a thought, they just didn’t share. My only thought was – man, that fell as flat on the big screen as it did on my computer.
But when it came on the second time, there was a different response, it went roughly as follows.
[Commercial ends]
[Collective reflective pause]
“You know I was just reading that Sheryl Swoopes is coming out of retirement this year…like she just had a baby two years ago or something,” says R.
[Collective bewildered pause]
“Yeah, I just read that Candace Parker is having a baby and might not be playing this year,” says C.
[Pause]
“Actually R, Swoopes played last year,” I say. “In fact, she played right here in Seattle for the Storm.”
“Oh,” says R somewhat surprised. “Well I thought someone was coming out of retirement or something.”
[Pause – I realize now he’s talking about Holdsclaw…but before I can respond…]
“You know I would really like to go to one of those games this summer if any of you are up for it,” says R.
“Yeah, I’ve been to a few. I was planning on going this summer,” I say. “We should get together and go sometime.”
“Cool.”
Data analysis: Conflating old narratives
What I find absolutely fascinating about this is that R had essentially conflated three different major WNBA “narratives”:
- Holdsclaw coming out of retirement
- Swoopes, clearly a star around the time we were in college, who did have a child
- And Parker, who just had a child
No.
And thus he is left grasping at straws to create connections among a bunch of images of players he doesn’t even know.
The Holdsclaw story would certainly grab attention, but given that she’s left teams twice for personal reasons, making that story prominent for this season is probably inappropriate.
However, it is Lisa Leslie’s last season. People do know Swoopes. But I imagine the average male who knows those players knows nothing about the current league or who is even playing in their own city – even when it is Sheryl Swoopes.
C might have read the ESPN the Mag article about Parker or seen something on ESPN.com, but probably couldn’t tell you who Parker plays for.
Keep in mind, this was one of the most intelligent conversations I’ve had with men about the WNBA since the league started (I had a college roommate who is now a sports producer who just knew everything about every sport).
So where does this leave us?
Implications for Future Research
Obviously, I can't really generalize or make any causal claims based on this case study "data". However, it does lead me to some insights we could gain from this.
First of all, if the WNBA wants to target male fans (which I'm not saying is the best strategy) my group of friends are the type who I think the WNBA should be targeting. They're far more likely to show up at a game than the clown in the bar who is looking forward to lingerie football. Lingerie football and the WNBA are just incommensurable. Let the lunkheads do as they please, WNBA. We'll address them at some later date...
In this particular group of males, we do not see the blatantly disrespectful and dismissive remarks that we might find at the local dive bar or a Lingerie Bowl fan club. So they, like me, would probably be interested in the WNBA purely for the sport of it. They just need a reason.
However for this group – and many males like my friends – I imagine the WNBA equation looks something like the following:
WNBA = Leslie + Swoopes + Holdsclaw + Parker
I’m sure that there would be additional names added to this equation depending on location and age. And there may be additional individual differences based on where people went to college. But in my experience – this and others – even players like Lauren Jackson, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi are relative unknowns on a national scale.
The problem, of course, is that Leslie, Swoopes and Holdsclaw are past their primes, if not retiring. And Parker won’t be playing for a while this season.
So when taking this “data” (really just grounded assumptions) into consideration, what can we say about WNBA marketing?
The first impulse might be to say that we need to pump up these “unknown” stars to demonstrate that indeed, the league has made progress since inception and there are reasons to watch.
But upon further reflection I thought of something else – with Leslie retiring, isn’t this the perfect time to come up with some “passing the torch” campaign? Something reminiscent of the “We Got Next” campaign? Like who has next after Leslie, Swoopes, and Holdsclaw are off the radar? Yeah, sure there’s Parker but now that she’s out for a bit, why not introduce the next squad who has next?
I thought the Olympics set the stage nicely for a “passing the torch” campaign – the Leslie to Fowles handoff was essentially executed in Beijing as far as I’m concerned. So why not expand that theme a little?
In addition to Fowles, there’s Candice Wiggins, who’s like lightning in a bottle off the bench. Then there’s a set of young players like Cappie Pondexter, Candice Dupree, Sophia Young and Seimone Augustus who can flat out play.
Fowles, Wiggins, Pondexter, Dupree, Augustus, Young…and of course there are others...
They got next. Why not tell us to watch them in your commercials?
Why not give people an actual story to follow of some sort?
This is not to say that Bird, Jackson, and Taurasi are somehow uninteresting – you know I love Taurasi. But why not build a narrative – no matter how contrived – that people might hear about and talk about and actually want to go see develop?
What if the conversation with my buddies involved hearing about the next dominant post player in the WNBA in Fowles? Or the scoring ability and intensity of Candice Wiggins (who some people may know from her NCAA days? Or Augustus’ ability to score 30 points on 80% shooting on one of the best defenses in the league?
You want my buddies to Expect Great? Tell them what’s been going on in the last decade since they last paid attention to Leslie, Swoopes, and Holdsclaw. Tell them what’s on the horizon and help them step into a developing story.
I’m not even suggesting a second iteration of “We Got Next” – the slogan could certainly change, but I think that spirit would be perfect for the WNBA right now. But everybody likes to be the one who picked up on the next big thing before they were the big thing. Why not help people get there?
Random images of people they don’t recognize and pictures of girls in the crowd ain’t gonna do it.
Transition Points:
The NBA has had similar campaigns “passing the torch” campaigns to promote Kobe and Tim Duncan in the post-Jordan years. Of course, it was all with the help of their corporate friends:
But some of it was the NBA’s own promotion of the game. Anybody remember the hype around the Kobe-MJ matchup in the 1998 all-star game?
There was also a brief effort to compare Dwyane Wade to Jordan (a disservice to both men) on a lesser scale as well.
We can debate whether these efforts were “effective” – and honestly, they annoyed me to no end -- but there’s no doubt that this set of players have ended up carrying the torch for the NBA while the world waited for LeBron to just take over.
And as though the anticipation around a Kobe-LeBron NBA finals showdown needed more hype this year, the commercial that got us all going during yesterday’s games was Nike’s Kobe-LeBron puppets commercials.
The thing is, I could imagine Kobe being that…um…”proud” of his accomplishments… I think it would even funnier if they added a Carmelo Anthony puppet just begging for some attention…
Something else I thought about: Right now may not even be the time to really campaign hard for the WNBA -- it's not starting until June 6th. So maybe right now is just the time to plant the seeds since there's not much to watch yet...maybe the WNBA will have a second iteration closer to June 6th tip-off? Who knows...
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Why Noelle Quinn is a great pick up for the Sparks
Much was made of the LA Sparks point guard play last year and they probably hope that Tuesday’s trade for Noelle Quinn will help bolster an otherwise thin point guard rotation for the 2009 season.
Is Quinn the ideal point guard for the Sparks? Probably not.
But is Quinn a good fit for the 2009 Sparks as currently constituted? Perhaps so.
While it may strike some as odd that the Sparks gave up two players – Sidney Spencer and Raffaella Masciadri -- to acquire Quinn, I would argue that this trade is exactly what the Sparks needed.
When your end of season team figures to be Lisa Leslie, DeLisha Milton-Jones, Betty Lenox, and a returning to form Candace Parker, you don’t need a superstar running point. All you need is a player to bring the ball up the court and pass it off to someone who can score. Really, this point guard shouldn’t even expect the ball back -- just pass the ball and don’t make mistakes.
Noelle Quinn fits the bill.
Consider the following that I wrote about Quinn’s play after a Minnesota Lynx – New York Liberty game last June (link):
Noelle Quinn is probably the epitome of a distributor – nothing fancy, just getting the ball up the court and efficiently initiating the offense. Last year she was second only to Ticha Penicheiro in pure point rating and first in Hollinger’s assist ratio among point guards – meaning she was very likely to pass the ball when it was in her hands.If we label Quinn according to the point guard styles that I laid out later in the summer, Quinn would actually be something more of an initiator – the player who brings the ball up court and gets the team into the offense, seemingly what the Sparks need. But really, that’s what they had last year in Shannon Bobbitt, Temeka Johnson, and Keisha Brown so what’s different (or better) about Quinn? Isn’t this just more of the same?
She’s going to take what the defense gives her and get the team into the offense. This is what I think is normally meant by a “pass-first” point guard.
Perhaps not.
Quinn is entering her third year of professional ball and in the short excerpt above lies the key to evaluating this trade: which Noelle Quinn will the Sparks get – the one that was a rather efficient distributor in 2007 or the one that was a marginal initiator in 2008? Which leads to a sub-question: what happened in the 2008 that led to such a significant drop in point guard production (though an improvement in shooting statistics)?
I was about to write that this trade is therefore a calculated risk, but in reality it isn’t – the Sparks didn’t really give up enough to consider this “risky”. They needed a point guard and the Lynx had a glut at the guard spot. But if Quinn can return to her 2007 form, the Sparks may have just become an even more dangerous team…and in fact, Quinn might end up being the missing point guard piece that many Sparks fans longed for last season.
The Sparks problems were bigger than their point guard play
Point guard was indeed the Sparks’ weakest position last year, so of course filling that void should have been seen as a major off-season priority. And with the acquisition of Betty Lennox, that point guard weak spot is even more evident rather than less.
The argument for directing a spotlight at the point guard spot is simple (well…aside from the fact that coach Michael Cooper called out his point guards on more than one occasion): the point guard is the one responsible for maintaining the tempo, initiating the offense, and managing the team on the floor.
However, that does not necessarily mean the point guard deserves the brunt of the blame when things go wrong. And in the case of the Sparks, that was particularly true last year.
Sparks fans probably need not be told that the Sparks offense was erratic…but it was not always the point guards’ fault. Early in the season, they were trying to be an uptempo team. Later, they tried to position Parker as a superwoman who could bring the ball up the court, play from the wing, and play the post. If the point guards are asked to run a broken system, it will not work no matter who is running the show (see 2008-2009 Phoenix Suns).
Once the Sparks did settle into a defined system, it was much easier for Bobbitt to play the position extremely effectively. The game that really stands out in my mind was a mid-season win against the Mercury. Bobbitt brought energy, got the team into the offense quickly, and played admirable defense. When you have an Olympic frontcourt, that’s all you really need from a point guard.
Looking at last year’s point guard statistics, Quinn will bring about the same thing to the court as last year’s point guard triad. Beyond the statistics, although she might be a step slower than Bobbitt or Johnson, she is probably a better passer than any of the point guards they had last year. If she returns to the type of player she was in 2007 – moving from a player who is able to just bring the ball up the court back to one who can facilitate opportunities for others – she would be an upgrade from last season.
This, of course, does not take defense into account. However, if you have ever played with two dominant shot blockers, you might know that perimeter defense becomes much easier – since it’s harder to score inside, all you have to do on the perimeter is apply pressure, rotate, and help. Penetration is not only less of a problem, but it is also a strategy that most opponents would not even bother trying.
So what the Sparks need to hope for from Quinn and Bobbitt is simple: development. They are both young point guards who have shown flashes of doing exactly what the Sparks would need them to do. Therefore, it’s the rest of the veterans’ and the coach staff’s responsibility to provide the framework within which the young point guards can operate. For the Sparks, it should be obvious.
The key to the Sparks is the high low offense and rebounding
Nobody is going to stop a combination of Leslie and Parker.
They are the two best bigs in the WNBA which means double teaming one of them leaves the other open. Single coverage means leaving the other open.
So why would the Sparks do anything other than look into the post on every single possession?
Some would argue that the point guard needs to be an adept outside shooter to spread the defense. However, I would argue that their wins last year when they played the high-low post offense are proof that the Sparks just need someone to initiate the offense.
If Candace Parker is at the top of the key and Lisa Leslie is posting up, how exactly would a defense stop that?
If you throw the ball to the post and the defense doubles down off the non-shooting the guard, the guard can still drive in and hit a cutter. If the defense doubles off the high post, then that post can make a play. Single coverage in the post? I’ll bet on Leslie/Parker one-on-one against anyone in the league.
Others might respond that Leslie/Parker might have off games, therefore needing the guards to shoot from outside. However, this is also among the most dominant offensive rebounding teams in the league with Leslie, Paker, and DeLisha Milton-Jones – so once they do get a shot up they are able to get a number of second chances.
In other words, if the Sparks play to their strengths and force the other team to respond to their crew of Olympians, all the point guard has to do is limit mistakes. Noelle Quinn is perfectly capable of that.
Relevant Links:
Sparks’ Team Chemistry: A Bigger Problem Than Point Guard Play
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/07/sparks-team-chemistry-bigger-problem.html
L.A. Gets A Spark From Bobbit As Starting Point Guard
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/07/la-gets-spark-from-bobbit-as-starting.html
Why the Sparks’ Performance is Finally Meeting Pre-Season Expectations
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-sparks-performance-is-finally.html
Los Angeles-San Antonio Scouting Report: Offensive Rebounding is the Key
http://rethinkbball.blogspot.com/2008/08/los-angeles-v-san-antonio-preview-value.html
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What the NBA Could Learn From the WNBA: Staying in School FTW
Martin Johnson wrote a nice little piece for TheRoot.com about how the University of North Carolina men's team won the national title primarily on the strength of their upperclassmen...which is further support for the NBA to implement a higher age minimum, as the WNBA has always done. The result could be better basketball:
As a result, the sort of “veteran” teams that we’ve become accustomed to seeing cut down the nets on the first Monday in April, may become the norm throughout the NCAA. Building a winning college basketball program used to be equal parts recruiting talented players and coaching them into a unit. Since the mid-‘90s, it seemed that recruiting had begun to take on a dominant share. With the recent title teams and coming changes in the NBA, those veteran teams will become the standard across the board. When they do, the upsets that once characterized this tournament will return.
The response from women's basketball fans: uh, duh....
No matter what critiques one might have about women's basketball this is something that it has right already -- their players stay longer and it makes for the development of great teams rather than the fleeting excitement of great individual performances.
Nevertheless, I often go back and forth on this age minimum issue (especially when considering Darnellia Russell's situation), but you can't deny the results: as a fan, it makes for better basketball during one of the premiere basketball events in the U.S. -- March Madness. How can you argue with that?
So I wonder, having just witnessed March Madness and now looking forward to the draft, does anyone really believe that the WNBA should loosen their age minimum? If so, how?
I'm honestly soliciting thoughts on this rather than purporting to have something new to say about the issue... but I will just rehash some of the age-old arguments for the sake of discussion...
The Phenom Factor
I would call you foolish without reservation if you said that LeBron James was not ready to go pro. Ditto for Greg Oden...Kevin Durant...the list goes on. The latest in that line of players who has absolutely nothing further to gain from college basketball is clearly Blake Griffin, who announced that he's making the jump to the NBA yesterday.
So would the WNBA cave or bend their age requirement with a player like Brittney Griner coming through the pipeline...or having already watched Maya Moore play around with college kids all season?
Clearly players like Chamique Holdsclaw and Candace Parker have argued that staying in school was a good decision...so I don't know how much clamoring for a change there really is. And honestly, if Parker and Holdsclaw are ok with it, there aren't really many other college players in the world who should have a problem with it.
But is it fair to confine a player of Griner's obvious talent to the NCAA?
Why the Phenom Factor *Should* Not Matter for the WNBA?
People love stories.
Plenty of people have done research on that... but really, I think we can all agree on that.
Women's basketball needs a narrative that will "legitimize" it to people who have doubts, draw them in, and keep them coming back.
Those narratives should start by watching the players develop a college legacy -- from the recruitment stages, to the growing pains of losing in the early years, to winning championships in their later years. It gives us something to hold on to. Something to look forward to...and builds upon long-standing college allegiances to build pro allegiances.
Furthermore, it goes back to developing a narrative about what a female athlete *is* before even trying to move forward with marketing a professional women's game. We have to shift the narrative of what it means to be a female athlete if we really want to see women's sports take off in this country.
So then...
Why Not Scrap the Age Minimum and Start Creating Those Narratives With Younger Players?
Simple answer (to the completely absurd hypothetical question I've made up to set up the rest of my post): It's just plain silly to send messages about a glamorous career in sports to kids who have not even lived away from their guardians yet. In fact, it borders on irresponsible, reprehensible, immoral.
OK... strong words... (perhaps you can tell the recruiting industry bothers me).
But when I see stories about sixth grade phenoms who are ranked as a member of next decade's recruiting class, I almost want to vomit. I mean wasn't there a great movie documenting how corrupting these elusive Hoop Dreams can be on players, family members, and coaches? Was that not convincing enough? Why do we continue to want to perpetuate this cycle of setting kids up to be crushed?
And though the NBA can not be held responsible for some opportunistic wanna-be who feels the need to make a living ranking sixth graders in basketball, part of what keeps this insane recruiting industry sinking to new lows is the large amounts of money in the promised land at the top, in the NBA. The easier it is to get to that promised land -- meaning you don't have to pretend to take four years of classes seriously -- the easier it will be to legitimize the idea that someone should be tracking kids as early as sixth grade. So although I don't blame the NBA (or the NY Times) for creating this basketball mythology, I think that sending a message from the top that there is more to life than basketball (*gasp*...I can't even believe I wrote that) is valuable.
So I will come to a tentative conclusion about the WNBA age requirement: if women's basketball wants to avoid this race to the bottom of convincing kids who still watch Saturday Morning cartoons that "Basketball is Life" then the age requirement is one way to keep things in perspective. This is a game, kids should enjoy as a game, and hopefully continue to see it as a ticket to getting a top flight education rather than a gambling on the fragility of a professional basketball career.
I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow... ;)
Transition Points:
For anyone who really wanted to Free Brittney Griner from the horrific tyranny of a college education, then consider the Brandon Jennings plan -- go play in Europe and get your money until you're eligible to play pro in the U.S. Call me crazy, but I happen to think Griner made the right decision by choosing education... but how long before a female baller decides she's better off bolting to Europe for a few years?
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What Difference a Year Makes: Why Ahistorical Analyses of Sport Perpetuate Misrepresentations of the WNBA
If you pay attention to women's basketball, you've probably heard about that March ESPN the Magazine article that included a cover photo of a pregnant Parker.
Of course, this led to some commentary about the state of the WNBA, female athletes, and marketing. The WNBA even made a good move by posting an interview with the editor of ESPN the Mag to get some insight into the thinking behind the article. But there were two articles in the last week or so that really caught my eye.
Of course, there weren't really any new arguments added to the discussion... really just people rehashing the same old arguments in new packaging.
However, the big difference this time around is that given all the media attention given to Parker and the Olympics last year, speaking from a place self-imposed ignorance about the WNBA no longer carries much credibility. Parker's arrival on the national (and international) sports scene last summer was one of those special moments in sports history that even the below-average lunkhead male would have had a hard time just ignoring. This does not mean we suddenly have a whole lot of enlightened, gender-conscious WNBA commentary...it's just a new sort of ignorance I guess...
So that's progress, right? Maybe people are watching and now making "grounded" critiques of women's sport? Eh...partially. What really bothers me is how people insist upon accounting for the WNBA's struggles by scrutinizing the athletes rather than thinking through the business of sport. What we end up getting is these analyses that exist within an historical vacuum and lead to conclusions that don't really add up when you try to re-situate them in reality.
Call me crazy, but I just happen to like arguments that are based on some form of real evidence... so here are some of the thoughts I jotted down.
Framing is Everything
First, before jumping on the easy critique bandwagon, ESPN the Mag should be applauded for putting a female athlete on their cover in the off-season. It is not necessarily unprecedented, but let's admit it's rare, especially for team sport athletes.
Second, I think getting to know these athletes as people is a valuable endeavor, so the ESPN article was good in that respect as well.
So the positives aside, what has obviously attracted attention about the article is the discussion of Parker's cup size in the opening paragraph.
Regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of critique of that opening paragraph, I think it's the perfect time to ask a question: beyond WNBA.com's question of what was the thought process behind putting Parker on the cover, I wonder what was the thought process behind how they would present Parker to the world.
So going back to the issue of getting to know the athletes, here's what I think we have to consider: if Parker herself brought up this issue of cup size, then it's not so much a question of a sexist double standard to mention it -- it occurred in the interaction and is therefore something worth accounting for in the description. My question is why frame the article by sexualizing Parker given that this is a sexist society? Couldn't that have waited for a few paragraphs?
Editor-in-Chief Gary Belsky claimed in the WNBA.com interview that they put Parker on the cover because she ESPN the Mag "...is a magazine that makes its living by predicting the future and looking forward." OK, fair enough. But wouldn't it have been neat to start looking forward by trying to shift the way we think about female athletes rather than going through the same routine of interpolating them through a beauty standard?
Rather than looking forward to a time when we appreciate female athletes for being female athletes, the framing of the article simply reinforced the way we already see female athletes. But it's almost as if even in the process of trying to move forward in representing female athletes, we get tripped up by the same old narrative.
We can't blame ESPN the Mag for that -- I don't think anyone has the "right" language to talk about female athletes yet. But at the very least, we need to work to find ways to anticipate the consequences of certain framing decisions and work to mitigate them. Where better to start than our professional wordsmiths? I'll look forward to seeing what ESPN the Mag does the next time a female basketball player graces their cover...and hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
Framing Sets the Stage for How We Discuss Women's Sports
So anyway, moving beyond the context of the ESPN the Mag article, here's another problem with how we discuss women's sports: since we don't really have a good way of discussing or understanding female athletes without blatantly objectifying them, we instead try to compare them to male athletes.
I think I've ranted about the tendency to compare female athletes to male athletes before, so I won't go deep into it. But I think this tendency along with our lack of familiarity with seeing female athletes in the public eye leads to these strange ahistorical arguments.
There was a March 31st article in an Illinois State school newspaper (ok, I know... I'm not going to expect too much from a student newspaper) with the headline, "There's no stopping it...men's sports are better than women's sports". The author claims to be taking a balanced approach to understanding why women's sports -- like the WNBA -- are struggling by essentially saying the following:
It is not that people do not want to watch a sporting event that showcases all women, it is that people would rather spend more time watching (who they by and large consider to be) the best. It is not that people do not want to watch a sporting event that showcases all women, it is that people would rather spend more time watching (who they by and large consider to be) the best.
Next, it is the level of difficulty. Many people watch sports to see spectacular plays that they could never actually perform themselves. This typically happens more frequently in the men's game.
Whether it is basketball, football, baseball, etc., people want to be entertained, and a "highlight reel" play has a greater chance of happening at a men's game.
Women's sports, while also performed at a proportionately high level, tend to place a much greater focus on the fundamentals of its game (or at least that is what is advertised).
So while execution may, in fact, be equal to or possibly greater in the women's game than the men's, it can become boring. And the major networks cannot afford to televise boring.
Then in the next paragraph he presents an argument that I find quite important:Brand loyalty is also a major reason behind the masses preferring one game over the other. Although, both the men and women played their first official game in the same year (1892), their major league equivalents (NBA and WNBA) saw the men's game evolve into a televised program long before the women. So to expect fan and media coverage to drastically even out, even though the WNBA did not start until 1996, seems a bit unreasonable.
So here's the contradiction and the reason I think situating these arguments historically helps a little.
Essentially his argument is as follows:
People like to watch the best play a given sport.
People like to watch the best because they make spectacular plays.
Men are more likely to make spectacular plays than women.
Women are comparatively boring and therefore difficult to market before they're boring.
But then he acknowledges that the WNBA has only been around since 1996...exactly 50 years after the NBA (founded in July 1946). If we buy his argumentation, we might be led to the assume that people immediately took to the NBA because it was spectacular. But that's not true at all.
If you look closely at the development of the NBA (or the NFL...or NHL for that matter) the trend is much different than that. In the beginning, people thought the NBA would never compete with more popular sports like boxing (yes, boxing!) and baseball. Once the NBA got past that initial hurdle of becoming a viable sport, it hit a slump again in the 70's which some people associate with an increase in black players along with owner corruption. It wasn't until the Bird-Magic rivalry of the 80's that the NBA really took off.
So why is this important to consider? There was a time when the idea of professional basketball being marketable was laughable. There was a time when the idea of black professional basketball players was laughable. It's not like people watch sports purely because they are spectacular. By most accounts, the ABA definitely had the NBA beat in the "spectacular" category. In the end, it comes down to people buying into the narrative a sport presents.
Until we find ways of presenting legitimate narratives about female athletes and female team sports, they will continue to remain unmarketable because people are simply too steeped in thing about women as sex objects. The NBA found gold by doing two things: 1) embracing the good fortune of having a bi-coastal, bi-racial rivalry between Bird-Magic and 2) deciding to market individuals rather than teams. People connect with stories. They talk about stories. And they get addicted to stories. It just so happens that the stories that work best are those that resonate with people's existing sensibilities...not ones that challenge their pre-existing ways of thinking about the world. That's quite a hurdle for women's basketball to overcome...
"The Pimping of Candace Parker"
So given the need to create new narratives, can we blame "Team Parker" and the WNBA for going along with this ESPN the Mag story...especially prior to knowing that Parker's C cup would take on a prominent role? I say no.
There was a pretty good article at the Bleacher Report last week with the headline "The Pimping of Candace Parker". In it, the author claims the following:This transitions to the second point—women's sports are "foreign." It can be seen as different or foreign from men's sports. Trying to sell the WNBA to men who are used to seeing rim-rattling dunks, no-look passes, ankle-breaking crossovers, and backboard-pinned blocks is similar to attempts at sell soccer to the football-crazed United States.
Agreed. But then he concludes with the following:However, the selling of these leagues are doomed to failed thanks in part to the difficulties in expanding its audience to include a male demographic who have a hard time buying women as athletes or their leagues as comparable to male leagues.
The desperation to sell women's professional athletics in the United States must resort to the unfortunate pimping of its talented (and beautiful) athletes, such as Candace Parker. Unfortunately, there are not enough Johns out there to buy the product.
For the record, I agree with most of what the author says... but I think the conclusion could be refined. Both male and female athletes are "pimped". The difference is that within the definition of masculinity is included some notion of physical prowess and dominance. That simply does not yet exist within the "feminine mystique" that most people have bought into.
It would be hard to establish that Michael Jordan as "basketball player" is not intimately tied to our implicit understandings of Michael Jordan as "male". He's a physical specimen and dominated the NBA for years.
The difference is that within the context of society we understand these as unproblematic attributes of maleness. The challenge then is not to sell women as athletes separate from their gender but to learn how to include "female athlete" within our entrenched understandings of femininity. That is going to take time and conscious effort on the part of those who write about and frame news about female athletes.
It's not a failure of the athletes. It's not necessarily a failure of the WNBA in the way they're "pimping" their athletes. It's a matter of finding a way to integrate the narrative of a given sport within the epic social narratives we've already accepted. That will be harder for women's sports because we as a society do not yet accept women as athletes. But we cannot pretend that anybody has ever accepted a professional sport purely on its "merit" of being "spectacular".
The problem the WNBA faces has as much to do with sexism as it does with the fact the we have become a hyper-consumerist society that buys in order to establish and reinforce our sense of self. Instead of continuing to make arguments about whether women are spectacular enough to be accepted as athletes -- meaning we would need more Parker-types who can dunk -- I think we need to start thinking about developing a language that helps us embrace athlete within our notions of femininity.
And perhaps that will allow us to find other ways to frame articles about female athletes other than discussing their cup size...
Update: Responses to this post from other blogs
New Rethinking Basketball Post
http://atlantadreamblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-rethinking-basketball-post.html
On Ginobili's Injury and Candace Parker's League
http://fruithoopz.blogspot.com/2009/04/on-ginobilis-injury-and-candace-parkers.html
Relevant Links:
Female Athletes: Be pretty, but not sexy. Or pregnant.
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/04/21/female-athletes-be-pretty-but-not-sexy-or-pregnant/
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