Deanna Nolan Quietly Exudes the “Superstar Attitude”…At the Expense of the Mystics

Some basketball players amaze me with their ability to overwhelm their opponents.

Other players stun me with their ability to make things happen that I couldn’t have imagined.

But I marvel at Deanna Nolan.

Moreso than any other player in the league, it seems that the only to fully appreciate her as a basketball player is to watch her play – stats, box scores, and game summaries just don’t seem to do her justice.

The Shock’s 81-77 victory over the Mystics last night is the perfect example.

Most of the summaries of last night’s game justifiably focus on the Shock’s surge/Mystics collapse in the fourth and Nolan’s game-high 23 points, further evidence that she is getting healthier by the game.

However, Nolan actually set the stage for the comeback victory with her performance in the third quarter. Nolan just looked unstoppable in the third quarter, hitting a variety of jumpers over whichever Mystics defender had the misfortune of guarding her.

Once the Mystics started swarming her when she got the ball in an attempt to stop her from scoring, she started finding open teammates and setting them up for scoring opportunities. Though she didn’t actually record an assist in the third, I marked her with four “lost assists”, baskets on which she would have been credited with an assist had her teammate made the basket. Two were very likely assists – Mystics guard Alana Beard blocked a layup attempt by Shock forward Cheryl Ford; forward Taj McWilliams-Franklin was fouled on a layup attempt after a beautiful drive and wrap-around pass from Nolan. But two others were open shots that the shooter just missed.

Nolan was outstanding in the 3rd quarter. And it was as though she expected all along that she would win the game. From the WNBA.com recap:

The Shock rebounded from a 53-41 deficit late in the third quarter.

"We weren't worried,'' Nolan said. "We were hitting shots. It was just a matter of getting those stops. We were in an offensive rhythm ... attacking, getting to the basket, getting to the free-throw line.''

That is what makes me marvel at Nolan – she makes everything seem so effortless and matter-of-fact.

And what’s there to worry about if it all seems to come so naturally?

It’s not just the way she literally glides along the court looking like she’s on Astroturf while everyone else is running through quicksand. Nor is it the way floats over her defenders making it almost impossible to actually contest her shots as she hovers above their outstretched arms.

And she does it all with this expressionless game face that makes her seem like more of a cold-blooded assassin than someone merely playing a game.

Nolan is not expressionless in the way San Antonio Spurs post Tim Duncan is, whose glare never changes but somehow constantly exudes fierceness. Nor is quite like Boston Celtics guard Ray Allen who almost seems to wear a look of disdain for those that would dare expect to influence whether his shot is on or off.

Nolan’s expressionless game face is almost indifferent to the current circumstances or the people who valiantly endeavor to stop her. Those other five people in the opposing jerseys almost don’t matter as if to say:

I don’t care what just happened. I don’t care what you do next.

In the end, you can’t stop me.

Nolan strikes me as one of those players who is so good that she is unstoppable simply because she decides to be unstoppable.

Call it arrogance or confidence but the best athletes in any sport legitimately believe they cannot be stopped.

That’s not to say they don’t put in hours of practice over the course of years to develop the capacity to be unstoppable…but the fact is, that it’s as much a mindset as it is physical tools.

It’s what retired NBA forward Charles Barkley calls the “Superstar Attitude”.

‘If a guy was sleeping and thought he could stop me, I’d go over to his house in the middle of the night and slap the hell out of him. If he even was dreaming about the fact that he could stop me, I would go to his house, and I’d just walk in his room and slap the hell out of him, and say, ‘Wake up. Don’t even think you can guard me.’ That’s the mentality you have to have if you’re gonna be a superstar in this league.”’

To borrow a lyric from Detroit-area native Eminem – one of the few people on the planet who can match the uncompromising bravado of Barkley – it’s like Barkley has an attitude that does not even allow for the possibility of “thinking of having them thoughts thought up” about stopping him.

As I watched the Mystics play the Shock last night, that’s exactly what I was thinking – Deanna Nolan is not even entertaining the possibility that a Mystics player might be able to stop her.

However, the difference is that Nolan does not seem to have the desire or need to go around forcing people to recognize that she’s better than them.

Rather than focusing on the insecurity of the short-view full of “what-ifs” and “maybes”, Nolan seems to have a sense of the long-view that allows her to put each fleeting moment in perspective, making the play-by-play almost insignificant in the context of the big picture.

If the Shock manage to sneak their way into the playoffs, Nolan’s unflappable demeanor would almost best embody the veteran presence of mind that allowed them to turn things around while all about them younger teams collapsed under the pressure of a post-season.

But it’s almost as though opponents can think, feel, or dream whatever they want because they simply pose no threat to a player like Nolan.

What they do just doesn’t matter.

Transition Points:

Shavonte Zellous chimes in on teammate Deanna Nolan in a recent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"There are a lot of great players in this league, but my teammate, Deanna Nolan, is the toughest player I've had to guard," Zellous said. "And I have to guard her every single day. She really pushes me. She helps me a lot with my game because she plays hard all the time. That's been a great thing about this team. They've all been so helpful and made me feel so welcome."

“Hold up, hold up -- stop the beat a minute… I’ve got something to say…” Yes, Eminem is probably the worst possible person to quote in singing the praises of a WNBA player…given that the WNBA is a family league and all that. I mean, could you imagine him showing up and opening a Detroit Shock game to get the crowd going? The concert might get folks hyped…but…



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President Obama Describes Why "Money Isn't Everything": How the WNBA Represents an Opportunity to "Release the Imagination"

When President Barack Obama honored the 2008 WNBA champion Detroit Shock today, he once again took the opportunity to mention what the league means to his daughters.

Let me also say something as a father -- I was mentioning it to the team before we came out. It's hard to believe the WNBA has already been around for 12 years. And that means that my daughters have never known a time when women couldn't play professional sports.

They look at the TV and they see me watching SportsCenter and they see young women who look like them on the screen. And that lets them and all our young women, as well as young men know that we should take for granted that women are going to thrive and excel as athletes. And it makes my daughters look at themselves differently; to see that they can be champions, too.

So, as a father, I want to say thank you.

These remarks may strike you as a mundane repetition of the comments he made back in April while congratulating the University of Connecticut championship women’s basketball team.

But it never gets old to me.

Although Obama’s agenda for gender equity may not please everyone, the message he’s sending about the value of female role models is an important one and is worthy of repetition as long as we continue to live in a society with deep gender disparities. What makes Obama’s remarks assume even greater importance is that his daughters are young black girls and the dearth of positive black female role models in the mainstream makes the existence of the WNBA even more important.

Although images of positive black female role models in the mainstream have certainly evolved beyond Oprah and Clair Huxtable – including First Lady Michelle Obama – I would argue that our society could do more to support the dreams and aspirations of black girls. That starts with thinking about how black women are represented in the media.

Unfortunately, mere representation is not enough – it is just as important to consider how black women are represented in the mainstream media (the central dilemma in the controversy surrounding Candace Parker’s ESPN the Magazine cover story). Close scrutiny of how black women are represented in the mainstream media reveals more than mere coincidence or arbitrary action, but a pattern of conscious editorial decision-making that becomes rather troubling in the aggregate.

The fact is that the way in which WNBA women are represented is only one piece of a much larger pattern of decision making that not only includes decisions about representation, but omission. And the invisibilizing of black women often reflects a much more troubling underlying assumption – that black women are not marketable.

If we accept the assumption that black women are not marketable, it seems almost irresponsible not to ask a) why?, b) what are the consequences of that assumption, and c) to what extent are the editorial decisions themselves responsible for perpetuating the problem? Ultimately, the answers to that line of questioning only reinforce the point Chantelle Anderson made in her most recent blog post: Money Isn’t Everything.

The violence of omission

As an example of how these editorial decisions operate beyond sports, Australian young adult literature author and WNBA fan Justine Larbalestier recently blogged about her publisher’s decision to use a cover image of a white girl to represent a black female protagonist for her recent book Liar. Larbalestier points out in her blog that she envisioned the protagonist looking something like Washington Mystics All-Star guard Alana Beard.

Larbalestier’s entire post (click here) is worth a read, but this excerpt seems relevant to the present discussion:

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white? Why would she pick up Liar when it has a cover that so explicitly excludes her?

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them. Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.”

While these editorial decisions may seem distant from sports, consider the consequences of this whitewashing of young adult literature – it not only sends messages of who/what is valued in our society, but also presents a completely skewed version of what our world looks like. Compounding the problem is that publishers, libraries, and bookstores, are actively making decisions that set these books up to fail…which thus reinforces their belief that the books are worth publicizing.

The same goes for women’s professional sports, and particularly the WNBA with it’s large percentage of black women: it is paradoxical to not market something – or even deliberately hide it – and then standby the claim that it’s not worth marketing because it’s not marketable.

While this phenomenon should not come as a surprise, it is troubling to think that we live in a society that deliberately prioritizes profit over the humanity of our youth.

What I love about Chantelle Anderson’s recent blog post is that it captures what is humanly at stake in having mainstream representations of black women that serve as role models. The value of honoring the humanity of our young black girls extends well beyond commodification, marketability, and profit margins toward something seemingly more fundamental to what makes us all human.

Anderson’s articulation of why the WNBA is valuable is a perfect example of why all this talk of representation and role models really matters.

To summarize, Anderson tells a story about a high school girl whom she met after a speaking engagement who was involved in gang activity and had recently quit her basketball team. The coach asked Anderson to talk to the sophomore and presumably convince her to return to the basketball team. Anderson not only inspired the girl to decrease her involvement with the gang, but also help her get to college on a Division I scholarship. Anderson nicely explains the value of WNBA role models in her concluding paragraphs:

I met Tamika when she was a sophomore in high school. As of now, she just finished her freshman year at a Division one university, which she attended on a full ride basketball scholarship. To say that I am proud of her would be an understatement. To say that I believe God used my position as a professional athlete to help save this girls life would be the truth. We hear countless stories about the NBA players that used basketball as a ticket out of the dangerous neighborhoods and broken homes of their childhood. But what about the little girls left in those neighborhoods? Don’t they deserve a chance too?

This was not meant to be some sentimental plea to keep the WNBA alive or garner fan support. It was meant to show that even if countless men don’t value it, professional women’s sports do and should have a place in our society. This story is not a fluke or an isolated incident. Stuff like this happens regularly to myself and other WNBA players; and not just involving kids. I’ve had women tell me watching how hard I work in my workouts helped keep them coming to the gym and eating healthy. And I’ve had men tell me they use me as an example to encourage their daughters to dream. These compliments are such an honor to me; way better than being told I’m pretty, or even smart. But I would hate to turn around and tell those people that none of what they feel deserves validation because women’s basketball doesn’t make enough money. That’s why the WNBA is important.

There’s a lot going on in Anderson’s story, but as an educator and someone interested in the welfare of youth, I want to bring it back to this notion of what it means to honor the humanity of youth.

While removing oneself from gang activity and going to college is an important accomplishment, I would argue that the even more valuable aspect of this scenario is that Anderson helped Tamika see alternative possibilities for herself beyond what the limited perspective she saw in daily life. That capacity to imagine an alternative vision for oneself and act upon the world with that vision in mind is what makes all this talk of representations and role models so important.

Releasing the imagination of young black girls is of the utmost importance.

Educational philosopher, social activist, and teacher Maxine Greene has written extensively about the topic of imagination and I think she can provide some additional insight to the value of thinking more deeply about the value of the WNBA both in terms of representations of black women and mentoring relationships, such as Anderson’s.

First, the reason that these mainstream representations are important to reflect upon is not just a matter of self-esteem, but more a matter of future orientation and self-concept: encouraging young girls to imagine multiple possibilities for society and letting them know they have support in those endeavors. When we as a society make decisions not to help scaffold that imagination with multiple representations of what could be (e.g. deciding black women are not marketable and thus not worthy of representation in young adult literature), we leave the possibility of positive self-concept and self-determination to chance.

In her book Releasing the Imagination, Greene writes the following about this problem:

Far too seldom are such young people looked upon as beings capable of imagining, of choosing, and of acting from their own vantage point on perceived possibility. Instead they are subjected to outside pressures, manipulations, and predictions. The supporting structures that exist are not used to sustain a sense of agency among those they shelter; instead they legitimate treatment, remediation, and control – anything but difference and release.

When I read Anderson’s story about her experience meeting Tamika, that’s what I see – a young girl who without support in imagining the range of future possibilities fell victim to the deceptive pressure of gang activity. After all, gang activity provides everything school and society often doesn’t – a sense of belonging, an identity of agency, and a peer community of mutual support…not to mention additional street cred that many school-based options simply don’t provide.

We are often too quick to condemn youth involved in gangs without attempting to understand the opportunity structure in society that they perceive in front of them. For some, this society does not look like it’s full of opportunity and rhetoric to the contrary is thus all the more alienating.

“Imagination,” writes Greene, is therefore “…the gateway through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present.” To elaborate, imagination is an antidote to the inertia of ill-formed common sense that serves to privilege some ways of being at the expense of others.

To tap into the imagination is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed and finished, objectively and independently real. It is to see beyond that what the imaginer has called normal or “common sensible” and to carve out new orders in experience. Doing so, a person may become freed to glimpse what might be, to form notions of what should be and what is not yet. And the same person may, at the same time, remain in touch with what presumably is.

As President Obama alludes to, the value of the WNBA is not just in inspiring female basketball players or even female athletes more broadly. What it represents is a small departure from a world in which women were once told there were things they cannot do. It lets them know that there is something beyond what some people still espouse as common sense about women’s limitations.

In my ideal world, we would cease asking whether the WNBA or images of black women are profitable in the mainstream and start asking ourselves what the value of either is to society at large. If what it means is a few multi-millionaires lose a couple of bucks here and there for the sake of millions of young girls worldwide, I’ll gladly go along with it.

For black girls in particular – in a world where some people think of their image only in terms of its toxicity to profit – the WNBA provides a glimpse into a world in which there are a range of positive representations of “blackness” and “womanhood” for them to imagine what has not yet come for themselves.

So I don’t begrudge those who don’t want to watch the WNBA. I begrudge those who go out of their way to demean and dismiss it as some sort of irrelevant sideshow.

Understanding the value of women’s professional sports to our young girls shouldn’t require being a father, brother, or husband. Nor should it limited to radical feminists or political leaders trying to establish themselves as advocates of gender equity.

It’s about respecting the humanity of our youth.

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Shavonte Zellous: A Talented Scorer and Promising All-Around Defender

Shavonte Zellous does not exactly have the same imposing physical presence that many of her Detroit Shock teammates bring to the court.

At 5’10” one could assume that she weighs no more than 140 pounds on a good day, a point only reinforced by the fact that most WNBA websites -- and the programs distributed at Key Arena -- don’t list her weight. Her wiry frame and seemingly nonchalant demeanor on the sidelines hardly seem to fit the profile of the successful professional athlete that we may have grown accustomed to.

And yet, underneath that slight build and unassuming demeanor is an immensely talented and athletic rookie who has not only earned a spot in the Shock’s veteran rotation, but also leads all rookies in minutes per game. Even though her statistics in the first 11 games of her rookie year have been less than stellar, it becomes obvious why Zellous has earned such a significant role in the Shock’s rotation when watching her play.

She plays with the confidence and tenacity of a veteran and is full of energy with plenty of energy to spare. She makes up for her slight frame with amazing speed, darting around the court to free herself for scoring opportunities on offense and disrupting the opponents’ plays on defense.

When I first heard someone compare her to her star teammate Deanna Nolan, I was immediately skeptical. Nolan is not only one of the WNBA’s top guards, scorers, and defenders, but she also possesses unparalleled athleticism. She almost seems to be gliding across the court when she runs with her long strides, looking so effortless that it almost hides just how fast she is. Could Zellous really become that good?

It’s difficult to tell just how good Zellous can become right now, but she certainly has all the athleticism, speed, and skill to warrant the comparison to Nolan. And of course it doesn’t hurt that she modeled her game after Nolan even prior to being drafted by the Shock.

So when I went to the Storm – Shock game at Key Arena on Wednesday night, Zellous was one of the players I chose to focus on and really a major reason I was looking forward to the game. I came away quite impressed.

An amazing ability to create shots…and working on making them

The WNBA.com draft preview described Zellous as, “an explosive and entertaining guard that has the ability to create her own shot off the dribble and either get to the basket or pull up with a smooth jumper.”

But so often it’s hard to tell whether that will translate into success on the professional level. Thus far, those abilities she displayed in college have done her well on the professional level as well.

In addition to being a close second to DeWanna Bonner (11.7) in points per game among rookies with an average of 11.5, Zellous is also among the league leaders in free throw rate and makes opponents pay for putting her on the line with a 90.9% free throw shooting percentage.

She draws fouls simply by out-quicking opponents – as a defender, if you give her any space she’ll quickly pull up for a jumper and if you player her close she has shown that she can blow by almost anyone. By the time most opponents can catch up, they’re grabbing at her a few steps behind. Once that jumper starts falling more often, she will be nearly impossible to guard.

A promising all-around defender

As amazing as she is offensively, I was far more impressed by her defense in watching her live against the Storm. I’m not sure I got a sense of just how fast she is and how much energy she plays with watching her on television (or LiveAccess). She is in constant motion. And that translates into really solid defensive play.

And when I say solid defensive play, I don’t just mean staying in front of perimeter players. Against the Storm, she guarded just about every position on the floor at various times. And no not just on switches or odd rotations – she was briefly matched up with the likes of all-stars Lauren Jackson and Swin Cash as well as forward Camille Little at various times, in addition to Storm guards.

But what’s important is that she was not just in the vicinity of these players creating an easy mismatch to exploit, but she fought…hard…and on more than one occasion, she was able to force them off their position, force a turnover, or even come up with a blocked shot. If defense is all about hard work and effort, Zellous’ performance against the Storm was the embodiment of that – she just seemed to want it a little bit more than the players she was guarding and found the strength to make plays on defense despite a serious size disadvantage.

Zellous’ toughness, tenacity and fearlessness on the defensive end is makes her a potentially special player at the professional level. While she’ll probably earn build her reputation as an offensive weapon, her defensive ability is what will probably allow her to find a long-term place in the WNBA.



Looking forward to a bright future

At halftime of the Storm-Shock game, an acquaintance who had followed Zellous since her high school days -- when she was an unheralded Pitt recruit out of Florida -- commented that that “this kid has a career”. And that seems to be an understatement.

She has all the tools to have a long and productive career as a key player on competitive WNBA teams. And there aren’t many players who can say that they actually have the opportunity to learn from the player they aspire to become.

However, just being around great players doesn’t seem to mean a whole lot unless a rookie is willing to listen. In talking about rookie point guard Renee Montgomery, Minnesota Lynx assistant coach Jim Peterson mentioned that one thing that makes Montgomery successful is that she is an active listener, constantly trying to get better. And watching Zellous during the game, it was clear that she possesses a similar desire to listen.

It seemed she was not only listening attentively to every word spoken on the sideline, but also actively seeking out information from almost anybody that would offer it – teammates or coaches, on the court or on the bench. She appears to be constantly engaged in a process of becoming a better player. And that could lead to great things in the future.






Transition Points:

Zellous is ranked third in the most recent WNBA.com rookie rankings and fourth in the most recent Rethinking Basketball rookie rankings. Aside from the ranking of DeWanna Bonner, Angel McCoughtry and Shavonte Zellous, the WNBA rankings differ quite a bit from my rankings. Given her defensive ability, I would definitely bump her up to third. Will be interesting to see how this plays out over the course of the season.

Zellous is one of three rookies in the top 20 of the highest percentage of unassisted field goals according to Swanny's Stats: Zellous is #16 with an unassisted field goal percentage of 58.1%, Renee Montgomery is 3rd at 72.5%, and Angel McCoughtry is 4th at 70%. I suggested these three would give Rookie of the Year front runner DeWanna Bonner a run for her money because of their ability to create scoring opportunities with the ball in their hands. This statistic would provide further support for their abilities.

Zellous is also right ahead of Shock teammates Nolan and Alexis Hornbuckle's 57.1% and Katie Smith is 10th at 62.7%. While the stat by itself only says that these players are able to create a number of scoring opportunities by themselves, the fact that all four guards in the Shock made this list means that they might not be getting the type of ball movement they had in their offense last year.

That theory is supported by the fact that their assists/field goals attempted percentage is 20% thus far this season -- last season, the lowest ast/fga percentage was the 4-30 Atlanta Dream with a ratio of 21.46%. Against the storm, their ratio was 38.3%. Ball movement might not be the only explanation for the Shock's woes -- they had an ast/fga percentage of 10% in their previous win against the Sun -- but it seems to be one potential difference from last season.

If the Shock are looking to get back on track this season, this might be the right time -- their next game is against the Phoenix Mercury (who will be missing Diana Taurasi due to suspension) and the Sacramento Monarchs (now in sole possession of last place in the WNBA with the Shock's win on Wednesday night) before a four game home stand.
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How the Shock Beat the Storm: Shock Remind the Storm That Basketball is a Contact Sport

Once again the Seattle Storm faced an opponent that limped into Key Arena searching for answers to their flickering expectations and an unlikely win in a game in which they really had nothing to lose.

And once again, the Storm allowed what appeared to be an easy victim overcome the Key Arena mystique and beat them in their own house.

The basic boxscore explanation for the Detroit Shock’s surprising 66-63 victory over the Storm last night is reminiscent of the Storm’s previous loss to the Chicago Sky on Sunday night: the Storm allowed the Shock to shoot 53.2% from the field and a blistering 62.5% from the three point line.

In case you're new to basketball, a team that allows their opponent to hit more than half the shots they take for 40 minutes generally does not win...it's just sort of hard.

However, the story underlying the statistics might be more important to understanding what happened in this game: the Shock just bullied the Storm into submission for most of the game, which is exactly what informed WNBA fans might expect them to do.

Long before Katie Smith’s outstanding performance late in the fourth, Detroit just seemed to be overwhelming the Storm with their physical style of play on both ends of the floor. Most Storm shots were contested, every cutter caught an elbow to the chest, and the Shock’s infantry of post players just out-muscled, out-hustled, and outworked the Storm’s frontline for most of the game.

While the physical nature of the game took its toll on both teams – Shock forward Kara Braxton left the game in the third with a bloody nose, shortly before Storm forward Lauren Jackson headed to the locker room with a calf injury – Detroit just seemed to keep coming with more bodies and more tenacity. They just never let up.

Perhaps none of that should be surprising from a Rick Mahorn coached team shaped by Bill Laimbeer.

However, what was even more impressive is that in the process of brutalizing the Storm, the Shock also seemed to be beating the Storm mentally. Even after hitting a lull early in the second half eroded their nine point halftime lead to two points before falling behind by four late in the fourth, the Shock just appeared unflappable. And in turn, while they kept their heads, they found ways to continually disrupt the Storm.

Detroit’s Defensive schemes kept Seattle off balance

With a number of physical post players along with very athletic perimeter players, the Shock are able to toss a number of defensive looks at their opponents and keep them off balance.

More concretely, this team appears to be so confident defensively, that it doesn’t matter if forward Cheryl Ford rotates to guard shifty guard Tanisha Wright or if diminutive rookie guard Shavonte Zellous is matched up with Camille Little. There is never any sign of panic – there seems to be a faith in the system and each other that they will pull through as a unit.

However, the other thing that having so many talented defensive pieces means is that the Shock are extremely flexible in terms of the type of defense they can throw at their opponents.

During one sequence late in the fourth quarter with the Storm up 63-62 after Katie Smith hit a pull-up jumper from the wing, the Shock’s man defense that had tormented the Storm all night suddenly morphed into a 2-3 zone. After wasting time on the shot clock trying to recognize the zone, Camille Little forced up a contested shot in the paint, and the Shock ended up just outworking the Storm for the rebound. Smith got the ball off of a screen on the other end and hit another jumper to put the Shock up one.

The Storm then brought the ball across mid-court on the next play and after having trouble recognizing the defense again, they spent a timeout with 53.6 to work out their strategy…only to get another contested jumper by Wright.

Sometimes it’s not just having talent or having the right pre-game strategy but using the right tactics at the right time to take the opponents out of their game and keep them just enough off balance to gain a tiny and temporary advantage. The Shock did that very well throughout the game last night.

After losing to the Sky at home on Sunday for the first time in over a year, most people in Key Arena probably expected the Shock to come out of the gate the more hungry and focused team last night. Unfortunately, the Shock had different plans. While it looked like Doppler came prepared to stare down the Shock, the Storm just didn't seem to have enough last night.

Did someone wake the snoozing champion?

2009 has been rough for Detroit thus far, but if last night’s game is any indication, this team might be ready to make a push to defend their title in the post-season again.

And unlike the Sky, who made their win in Seattle look like a fluke after their 84-74 loss to the Indiana Fever yesterday (that looked worse than the score indicates), the Shock appear to be putting things together rather than just haphazardly finding temporary solutions to long-term problems.

This could be crazy talk considering that they currently are at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. But if they continue to stick to the physical style of play they treated Key Arena fans to last night, do you really think that erratic New York, Atlanta, Connecticut or even Chicago teams will stand in their way?

I haven’t watched enough Shock games this season to make claims that they have finally turned it around. Nolan is clearly still recovering from injury and working herself back to form. There still seems to be a lot of confusion out on the court, possibly the residual effects of the early season coaching change.

But there’s one thing you cannot deny when watching the Shock – this is a well-assembled, mentally tough, and extremely talented basketball team.

Transition Points:

A note on the refs (who missed a few calls...here and there...): A quote from Jayda Evans, "Officials don't know what a travel is in this quarter, but that's working in Seattle's favor."

Yes, the Storm got a few bad breaks, but so did the Shock. As a semi-neutral fan (it's hard to be fully neutral in the Key) I actually thought there were a number of bad calls and a lot of them against the Storm. The most important one: on that play at the end of the game where Wright drove and had the ball "knocked away" from her out of bounds. I was in pretty good position to see the play and it very, very clearly went off of Wright's leg out of bounds. Had the Storm actually made that last shot attempt, the Shock would have plenty to legitimately complain about. In other words, for Storm fans complaining about the refs, the reffing did not lose the game for the Storm -- the Shock did.

Despite failing to hit the shot near the end of the game, I was again quite impressed by Tanisha Wright. I say she has a good shot at an all-star spot…we’ll see what the coaches think.

Tomorrow: my impressions of Shavonte Zellous (she’s gonna be good…and I probably underestimated her in my latest rookie rankings)

Seeing Rick Mahorn in person was great as those Bad Boys Pistons are still special to me. I never saw them actually play in person (the Pistons heyday was before I attended my first NBA game in Oakland) so this was probably as close as I'll get. Wishing him luck on the rest of the season!



Kate Starbird was in attendance at Key Arena last night. She is apparently in graduate school in Colorado now studying technology in society in hopes of helping more girls get interested in technical fields. Definitely a worthy cause. Growing up in the Bay Area, I definitely remember hearing Starbird’s name quite a bit though I don’t have any vivid memories of her playing.

I went with the more traditional bratwurst instead of the Thai food last night. Big mistake – not only was the brat less filling, but for six dollars it was not nearly the same bang for the buck. Next time, back to the Thai.

Hoosiers is one of my favorite basketball dramas of all-time. During the break between the third and fourth quarter, the clip below from the movie as part of their Storm Vision trivia. The trivia question was something to the effect of, "What does Jimmy say in response to Gene Hackman after he asks, 'What's the matter with you?'" It was a rather simple multiple choice test, but the clip was still perfect to get the crowd riled up for a tight fourth quarter. Kudos to whomever is in charge of producing these little in-game activities.

And for the record, my favorite basketball movie ever is Hoop Dreams, followed closely by Heart of the Game. My favorite basketball drama (non-documentary) is Love and Basketball, followed closely by Hoosiers. All very different takes on basketball that capture different elements of what I love about the game and sometimes hate about the adults who control the game for youth.

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Chuck Daly, Bill Laimbeer, and the formation of a basketball (junkie's) consciousness

Occasionally when a sports figure passes away it sends us into a mode of collective reflection in which we recognize the full extent to which the way they have shaped the way we perceive, understand, and play the games we love.

When I heard that legendary Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly had passed away yesterday, I instantly felt the void left by his departure.

And it was that void that I felt that made me realize how much of an impact Daly had on my "assumptive basketball world" -- the fundamental assumptions, beliefs, and values that inform how I relate to basketball. Whereas a breakdown in one’s assumptive world is normally considered something to overcome in traditional psychiatry, I think in this situation it forced me to recognize just how important Daly was to the basketball world and simultaneously how underappreciated he was in comparison to his modern NBA counterparts.

Daly didn’t have the championships of Phil Jackson, the smoothness of Pat Riley, the longevity of Jerry Sloan, or the pedagogical ability of Larry Brown. Daly was never named coach of the year, despite ending the dominance of the Lakers and Celtics only to be dethroned by an emergent star named Jordan. And yet Chuck Daly is undoubtedly one of the most influential coaches in basketball history, as described by Phillip Zaroo of MLive.com:

Daddy Rich, as John Salley dubbed Daly because of his impeccable styling, melded the big egos of a group of alpha males, and authored the defense that literally changed the face of the NBA. He did it with class and integrity the entire way.

Daly (and staff) created the "Jordan Rules" strategy and the NBA eventually changed rules in response to the Pistons' physical style of play. Despite the mythology and surface level perceptions, the “Bad Boys’” style of play was not just common street ball thuggery, but a coordinated system of gritty defensive basketball that aimed to completely disrupt the opponents’ offense.



It was probably the ability to meld the egos of a team composed of Isaiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, and Rick Mahorn into a coherent unit and later leading the (real) Dream Team that made Daly great (Shaq should still be mad that Christian Laettner was added to that team over him…but one more supersized ego on that team might have even driven Daly mad). When considering the fact that so many people perceive the NBA as an ego-driven one-on-one exhibition, what Daly did with the group of egos he was given is quite remarkable.

The obvious WNBA connection to Daly is Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn, the coaches of the Detroit Shock. While the defensive mentality of Laimbeer is likely influenced by his time with Daly, a major difference is that his ego sometimes seems to overshadow that of his team whereas Daly sort of let the players shine.

But as I started to wonder about Daly’s impact on the WNBA, I slipped back into my own personal basketball history. And since petrel wrote a little basketball history the other day on the Pleasant Dreams blog, I thought I’d copy him and write my own, a history that Daly is actually right in the middle of.

You had me at hello

I’ve previously referred to the importance of narratives that shape the way we understand the sports we love. This late 80’s narrative was undoubtedly the narrative that made me fall in love with basketball, even before my dad was ever compelled to take me to a game.

When I first picked up a basketball in 1988, the basketball world was dominated by the Showtime Lakers but on the cusp of the transition to the all-too-brief Bad Boys era. As a Californian, the Showtime Lakers were the center of my basketball universe – my dad (who I revere) rooted for them, they had a rad point guard named “Magic”, and an underrated shooting guard in Byron Scott (who quickly became my first favorite player).

That the Bad Boys not only challenged, but also dethroned the Lakers was enough to earn my 10-year-old respect. And on top of that, they were led by a guy who could dominate despite being the shortest man on the court in most cases – Isaiah Thomas.

The Bad Boys marked a huge shift in power in the NBA world, the emergence of “DEEE-TROIT BAS-KET-BAAALLLL” for an otherwise “uninteresting” Pistons franchise, and the introduction of a fascinating cast of characters into the annals of basketball history.

Think this is all over-dramatic nonsense? Not in the mind of a 10-year-old.

So the fact that Chuck Daly was at the center of this storm made him a larger than life figure in my mind.

The formation of a basketball (junkie’s) consciousness

The first blip on the radar of my basketball consciousness was actually sort of random –- the DePaul Blue Demons, the name of the first rec league basketball team I played for. While that sounds ludicrous now, they were actually a perennial NCAA men’s tournament team at the time. And the fact that my dad was co-coach for the team was even more reason to pay attention to the nuance of the game.

Dad was a college recruiter for a sales firm at the time so he told me where DePaul was and watched a game they played on television with me once or twice. I had previously watched basketball with friends and watched the dunk contest (when it was still worth watching) but I never had a reason to really pay attention to the game and internalize it. Dad talked strategy with me and often tried to find players I could model my game after.

From there, I started watching more basketball with dad…and that’s when I learned about the NBA. The Lakers became the center of the universe, the Celtics were this evil threat from across the universe, and then there’s that guy in Chicago (near DePaul) who can apparently fly based on his dunk contest performances. Then this team from some place named Detroit comes along and beats all of them led by Thomas, this little guy who never got the memo that the NBA is a game dominated by height.


I instantly fell in love with Isaiah Thomas. My second season in rec league basketball, I was determined to be #11. My younger brother – who ended up being totally indifferent to sports, despite being a pretty good soccer player – liked James Edwards, a guy who was just as tough as Laimbeer, Mahorn, and Dennis Rodman, but just did his job without a lot of fanfare.

But the Bad Boys as a whole just had so many guys to root for. There was the quiet defensive intensity of Joe Dumars. And of course you can’t forget about Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson. John Salley was just a goofy guy. And at the time, Rodman was not quite a (public) nutcase yet, so you could still appreciate his hustle and energy.

No matter which individual on the team you liked best, what you had to appreciate is the way Daly got them to play as a coherent unit. Everyone had a clear role to fulfill, whether it be to score, defend, or rebound…or bust someone in the jaw with an elbow. From Zaroo again:

Those guys fought tooth-and-nail for every win, and they cherished each one like they'd never see victory again. They defined what a team should be about – winning, plain and simple. Though they weren't all best buds off the court, there was never any concern about who got the credit. The Pistons worked together as a team, and each knew he played an important role.

And as a budding basketball player who was rather scrawny and shy, this team was fun because they played tough and depended on the contributions of every single player to win.

There was a fearlessness with which the Bad Boys played that was just inspiring. They weren’t as flashy as the Lakers, didn’t have the (evil) tradition of the Celtics, and didn’t have a legend in the making like the Bulls. Bird, Magic, Jordan – those guys were pre-destined to win championships. And that’s what made this Pistons team fun to watch – they weren’t really supposed to be great; this team was like a disruption in a divine basketball plan. And as Jemele Hill reports, without Daly, none of it would have happened.

When I think about how I think about basketball, Daly’s legacy with the Bad Boys pretty much captures it.

The Daly-Laimbeer connection

But there’s still that nagging question of how exactly Daly influenced the coaching philosophies of players like Laimbeer. And at this point, I can’t find anything explicit. However, I find this quote from the AP article about Daly interesting:

Laimbeer, now coach of the Shock, said in 1990: "Chuck is our coach, but he is really our manager. He manages us. He doesn't know the X's and O's any better than anyone else, and his assistants know more about the game than he does. We do the playing, but he keeps us going. He manages all these personalities and brings out the best in us."

Daly has been caught a few times over the year’s praising Laimbeer’s potential as a coach. In fact, he even provided the Kings with an unsolicited recommendation for Laimbeer when the NBA’s Sacramento Kings were looking for a coach last year:

On why former Pistons center and current Detroit Shock coach Bill Laimbeer can't land an NBA head coaching job: "I think it must be because Billy made a lot of enemies when he was a player. But I tell you what. He is as smart as a whip. Someone is going to get darn lucky in this league. They just have to take a chance. I talked to the Maloofs about him when they were looking for a coach (last year), and they would have talked to him. But Geoff (Petrie) wasn't interested."

But how has Daly’s legacy influenced the WNBA via Laimbeer?

Clearly, the defensive intensity that Daly (and staff) emphasized is readily apparent on the Shock. The Shock play with a very similar grit. And to some extent the frontcourt depth of the Shock is reminiscent of those Bad Boys teams.

But will Laimbeer ever have the same impact on basketball that Daly did? Probably not.

Daly’s skill at coaching and teaching made him bigger than life, whereas Laimbeer’s reputation really preceeded him…as a result of Daly. Nevertheless, one could certainly argue that Laimbeer’s mark on the WNBA in these early years of the league make him as important a figure in the expansion of professional basketball in the U.S. as Daly was for the expansion of the NBA worldwide.

Regardless, the WNBA needs a team with a catchy image who almost anyone – including a young Californian – can root for purely for the way the team plays the game. Yes, the Bad Boys were hated by many, but they also really took defensive basketball to a new level.

As much talk as there is about inter-gender differences in basketball, what made basketball great in that late-80’s/early-90’s era was the intra-gender differences in style – the Showtime Lakers, the Bad Boys, the Jordan Bulls, and the Celtics (shout out to the Blazers too) all played very different types of basketball. And as someone who loves the game in all of its forms – from 2nd grade YMCA leagues to high school championships to women’s professional basketball – I think it’s the variations in style and the individuals that make a style come alive that make the game of basketball great.

For me, Daly is as important to the basketball world as George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Bird, Magic, and Jordan…and more recently, Kobe and LeBron. At a time when the league was increasingly emphasizing individual performance (and marketing), he was successful by subordinating individuals to the team concept. And that’s basketball at its best to me – harmony, balance, and continuity…and yes, a few elbows to the jaw as necessary (no blood, no foul).

You’ll be missed, Chuck.

Outtakes:

An 80’s pop culture analogy: The plot of the late 80’s NBA is similar to Cybertronian Wars in the 1986 animated version of Transformers the Movie – the Autobots (the Lakers) and the Decepticons (the Celtics) have been battling for years. Suddenly along comes Unicron (the Bad Boys) just eating planets whole and dominating the entire universe. Then at the end, a young Hot Rod (Michael Jordan) gains access to the power of the Matrix and destroys Unicron…and banishes Galvatron (the evil Celtics) into the depths of space. Or something like that…

Transition Points:

Apparently Debbie Schlussel is also a fan of Chuck Daly…

My love for basketball really took off when my dad took me to my first Warriors game in 1991. It was against the Lakers. The only thing I remember is the Warriors losing and the following message flashing on the scoreboard as the clock wound down: "It's not LA. Why are you leaving?" Funny.

Update: upon re-reading, I realize that Sparks coach Michael Cooper was never really anyone I paid attention to on the Lakers. I was much more interested in Scott, Magic, Kareem, and AC Green and Terry Teagle (I have NO idea why). Even James Worthy didn’t grab my attention actually. What a weird kid I was…

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Mercury Eliminated From the Playoffs, But Can Still Get To .500

Well, as could probably be expected, the Shock pounded the Mercury in the paint and eliminated them from the playoffs. That's sad -- I was rooting for them.

After playing a close game for three quarters, the Shock got 67% of the available offensive rebounds and took as many free throws as field goals in the 4th quarter. Once the Shock started focusing on their strengths, the Mercury just didn't have an answer.

But the fourth quarter isn't the whole story. Being the defensive team that they are, the Shock completely took away the balance that helped the Mercury get out of the Western Conference cellar. Kelly Miller had a negative pure point rating, which means she wasn't creating for others as well as she had in past games. The Shock forced the Mercury into their old one-on-one habits and forced them into taking bad shots.

The Mercury didn't play a bad game, the Shock just stepped up their defense in the second half when it counted. I was hoping the Mercury would turn it around, but you could just feel the game slipping away in the third quarter. The Shock just seemed to have complete control of the game.

It's hard to even say what the Mercury could have done to pull that one out...short of having Penny Taylor and Tangela Smith in the lineup. They were just over-matched and the better team won. Oh well.

There's still a shot at getting to .500 and for Taurasi to get the MVP. It will be an exciting end to the season.


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The Shock-Mystics Trade Analysis: Who Wins the Exchange of Experience for Potential?

I have to confess that watching U.S. basketball players blow out Olympic competition in the preliminary rounds has only left me more impatient for the return of the WNBA.

So the Mystics-Shock trade of Taj McWilliams-Franklin for Tasha Humphrey, Eshaya Murphy, and a 2009 second-round draft pick is a welcome WNBA diversion and gives us something else to look forward to after the Olympic break.

But is there a clear cut winner in this trade?

What makes the trade hard to evaluate is that it is obviously an exchange of experience for potential, which just leads to further questions.

Clearly Detroit was looking for a replacement for Cheryl Ford as they try to make another playoff run, but was it worth giving up the enormous potential of Tasha Humphrey?

Clearly Washington has decided that this is not their year to make the playoffs, but was it worth giving up their only all-star caliber player?

In my estimation, the answer to both questions is “yes”. But to get a sense of the degree to which each team stands to benefit takes a bit more analysis and the statistics might help.

Was it worth giving up the enormous potential of Humphrey?

If the Shock want to challenge for the championship, they absolutely had to replace Ford’s rebounding, particularly her offensive rebounding. Ford is first among qualified players in the WNBA in offensive rebounding.

Tough offensive rebounding has been the foundation of Detroit’s success over the last few years, so it is an urgent need if they want to perform well in the playoffs. As an example of the importance of offensive rebounding, in the last five games before the break – three of which were played with Ford and Pierson -- they went 1-4 and their offensive rebounding percentage during that time was below their league-leading season average (32.9% to their normal 36.7%).

So for a team whose success is predicated on strong offensive rebounding, trading Humphrey makes sense: Humphrey does not even rank in the top 50 in the WNBA in offensive rebounding. Enter McWilliams-Franklin.

While McWilliams-Franklin doesn’t entirely replace Ford’s offensive rebounding (2.3/game to Ford’s 3.1/game), she does add a rugged post scorer to the Shock’s roster as well as a strong help defender, as evidenced by her strong block and steal percentage numbers.

Although Detroit fans may lament losing Humphrey’s enormous potential, that potential is not quite as valuable to the Shock's championship run as McWilliams-Franklin’s rebounding and defense. However, Humphrey’s potential might be perfect for a rebuilding team.

Was it worth giving up a six-time all-star in McWilliams-Franklin?

The Mystics are two games out of the playoffs with 8 games left after the break, four of which are on the road. Given that they have gone 4-9 on the road this season, it’s possible they decided that the playoffs are out of reach (though of course, they will deny that). And even if they did make the playoffs, the reality is that they were not going to go very far.

So this was a move for the future – keeping McWilliams-Franklin might have gotten them to the playoffs, but it would not have lifted them out of mediocrity. And as noted by the DC BasketCases blog, keeping McWilliams-Franklin actually came with some measure of risk.

… Taj only signed a one-year contract with the Mystics, and given that she is nearly 38 years old, there is no guarantee that Taj would be back next summer (would you re-up if you were Taj?). This means that by trading Taj now, the Mystics manage to get some value for her, rather than nothing.

Although they lose the post presence and veteran leadership that McWilliams-Franklin provided (and according to the Arbitrarian’s Boxscores, their most valuable player), they add value that they can continue building on in the future so that they can move forward. And there are plenty of reasons for a forward-thinking franchise to move forward with Humphrey.

The reasons why Humphrey is a good piece to move forward with are the same reasons I believe she is a worthy candidate for the 2008 All-Rookie team: she’s one of the most efficient, versatile, and promising rookies in the WNBA this year. Put her next to Alana Beard, Monique Currie and Crystal Langhorne and I think you have an offensive team that has the potential to develop into something pretty solid.

But they still have some major deficiencies. They still need a point guard who can penetrate and make things happen off the dribble and they will have to find a way to replace McWilliams-Franklin’s toughness down low. In fact, one thing that jumps out to me as I look at the Arbitrarian's SPI player styles spectrum is that adding Humphrey is adds another perimeter oriented scorer to their lineup, meaning that their foundation for the future is somewhat imbalanced. It will be interesting to see how they address this imbalance as they move forward and adding another strong "utility player" like Nakia Sanford may be part of the answer.

Which leads to another point -- defensively, this is not a team that stands to strike fear into the hearts of their opponents. It’s worth noting that even pre-trade, no matter what means you use to measure defense, the Mystics are one of the worst in the league…and defensively, neither Humphrey nor Langhorne are outstanding. So whomever they add along the front line will absolutely have to be a good defender. Fortunately, they're in position to address multiple needs through the draft.

So who got the better of this trade?

Overall, I think the best way to evaluate this trade is by looking at how much closer it brings these two teams to their goals – the Shock are looking for another championship and the Mystics looking to build for the future. Given what we know about the players, I’d have to say that Detroit’s prospects for winning a championship are greatly improved, whereas the Mystics’ future is still uncertain because they still have major defensive deficiencies. So I’ll give the edge to Detroit for now, even if they don’t win the championship, which is never a guarantee anyway.

Nevertheless, there are a number of questions with regard to evaluating Washington's future: how well will Humphrey fit in the Mystics system? Will Humphrey and Langhorne develop and reach their potential to make this a potential playoff team? Can the Mystics find some defensive players to put beside Humphrey and Langhorne to strengthen their defense?

Those questions put a lot of pressure on Washington to develop their young talent and make some shrewd moves during the upcoming off-season.

Transition Points:

The Mystics claim that, "Shay (Murphy) is a high-energy second year player who works hard on the defensive end." This is Murphy's 3rd team in her short two year career, so could her defense help her earn more playing time with the Mystics? They have a crowded back court so it's tough to say...

Relevant Links:

Trade Analysis: Taj for Tasha
http://seattlestorm.blogspot.com/2008/08/trade-analysis-taj-for-tasha.html

McWilliams-Franklin Traded to Shock: Rookie Humphrey, Murphy and Draft Pick Swapped for Mystics’ Forward.
http://shesgotgame.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/mcwilliams-franklin-traded-to-shock-rookie-humphrey-murphy-and-draft-pick-swapped-for-mystics-forward/

Mystics go young in deal with Shock
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/13/mystics-go-young-in-deal-with-shock/

A Win-Now Move
http://www.wnba.com/shock/news/trade_080812.html

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Olympic Break Rookie Rankings: What happened to Alexis Hornbuckle?

At one point this season Alexis Hornbuckle was ranked as one of the top rookies in the league – not only here and but also on WNBA.com's rookie rankings.

Now she barely cracks the top 10 here and has fallen off of the WNBA.com list altogether. I appreciate her hustle and toughness so I am a bit surprised at her decline. So how do we explain that?

First, she may have been overrated a little because she was once the league leader in steals at one point and is still in the top 3. She gets a lot of those steals with outstanding anticipation -- commentator Greg Kelser mentioned during their last web cast on Sunday that, "Her defense is fun to watch!" However, being fun to watch does not necessarily mean one is a great defender -- Hornbuckle is not quite the on-ball defender that fellow rookie Essence Carson is, for example. But she is extremely disruptive and brings a lot of energy defensively, which helps the Shock disrupt their opponents' offensive rhythm.

But the biggest reason for her decline is that her offensive game has really fallen off. She only scored in double figures in points once in July and that was a 99-62 blow-out of Washington that probably got Tree Rollins fired. But her true shooting percentage is also rather low at 45.5%. That is probably due to the fact that she struggles to create her own offensive opportunities, especially against stronger defenders.

It’s not that Hornbuckle is bad at any one thing – she’s just not great at anything either. And the fact that she’s still #10 in these rankings is a testament to her talent. But it’s also indicative of how good this rookie class is even beyond superstar Candace Parker. But who else is ahead of Hornbuckle?

A few more tweaks to the process

Evaluating rookies is a strange task because they are understandably inconsistent and constantly learning on the fly, especially with the WNBA’s shortened pre-season.

So it probably doesn’t help that I keep changing the metrics I use to evaluate them because I can’t decide how to get a handle on these moving targets. Nevertheless, I did make another change to my ranking system in search of stronger results that I could have more confidence in.

Gone is the defensive PER statistic I used before because ultimately, there are elements of defense that aren’t measured well with statistics. In its place, I have brought back the usage rate because the ability to create one’s own shot is so important to success in the WNBA. I have also adjusted the versatility ranking to include a wider variety of statistics consistent with the SPI style formula.

So let’s get started…

Usage Rate – how well does she create her own offense?

Usage rate is the percentage of team plays in which the player ends an offensive play with an assist, turnover, or shot. According to Bradford Doolittle, the skill being evaluated with usage rate is a player’s ability to create their own offense for the team. It might seem to benefit average players on bad teams that require one player to score a disproportionate amount, but that’s not quite what’s occurring here. Here are the top 10 rookies in usage rate:

Usage Rate
Ajavon, Matee 22.27
Wiggins, Candice 20.17
Parker, Candace 19.43
Houston, Charde 18.49
Humphrey, Tasha 17.73
Fowles, Sylvia 17.40
Gruda, Sandrine 17.31
Larkins, Erlana 15.53
Young, Tamera 15.52
Carson, Essence 15.37
Kelly, Crystal 15.11

Just from watching games, these numbers come as no surprise to me. However, usage is more valuable when evaluated next to efficiency and only a few of these players manage to do well in both.

True shooting percentage -- how good a shooter is she?

True shooting percentage (TS%) evaluates a player’s shooting ability from the field, the free throw line, and the three point line. So it gives a reasonable idea of the player’s overall scoring efficiency. Here are the top 10 rookies in true shooting percentage:

TS%
Kelly, Crystal 0.63
Langhorne, Crystal 0.62
Humphrey, Tasha 0.59
Parker, Candace 0.56
Wiggins, Candice 0.56
Pringle, LaToya 0.54
Mitchell, Leilani 0.53
Harper, Laura 0.53
Larkins, Erlana 0.53
Anosike, Nicky 0.52

The only players that show up in the top 10 in both shooting percentage and usage percentage are Humphrey, Kelly, Larkins, Parker, Wiggins. Larkins might be the biggest surprise for me, but she’s doing a lot in limited minutes.

However, what separates the rest from Larkins might be plus/minus rating.

Plus/Minus rating

Plus/minus rating looks at a player’s impact on the court in terms of changes in the game’s score. I find this interesting to use for rookies (or any player evaluation) because it tells us a little something about whether they know how to positively impact the game and indirectly tells us something about their defensive abilities.

Here’s the top 10 rookies in plus/minus (from the Lynx page):

Plus/Minus
Parker, Candace 9.5
Wiggins, Candice 9.4
Mitchell, Leilani 9.4
Humphrey, Tasha 7.1
Gruda, Sandrine 4.9
Kelly, Crystal 4.6
Ajavon, Matee 4
Hornbuckle, Alexis 3.7
Gardin, Kerri 3
Atunrase, Morenike 1.1

Again, we see Humphrey, Kelly, Parker, and Wiggins starting to emerge as the top four rookies. For the Leilanians out there, Mitchell’s appearance so high on the plus/minus list should come as no surprise – she is extremely efficient when in the game and is often responsible for maintaining or increasing leads.

So it may seem that Mitchell has a lot of promise for future growth and she’s among the top ten there too.

Valuable Contributions Ratio Diamond Rating

Diamond rating is something I’ve used a few times already and find it to be extremely useful for projecting rookies that have the potential to breakout with more minutes on the court. For rookies, I think it’s valuable regardless of minutes because all of them are going to grow as players – that’s right, even Candace Parker.

Valuable contributions ratio measures the percent of valuable contributions that a player makes to her team. As a per minute statistic, it’s especially useful for evaluating rookies because it measures what they’re able to contribute to the team regardless of limited minutes or a team’s pace.

So using VCR with diamond rating is essentially evaluating who has the greatest potential to contribute more given more minutes.

VCR Diamond Rating
Kelly, Crystal 46.25
Humphrey, Tasha 44.52
Langhorne, Crystal 43.73
Pringle, LaToya 40.04
Gruda, Sandrine 32.72
Fowles, Sylvia 31.99
Parker, Candace 30.34
Wiggins, Candice 29.38
Mitchell, Leilani 27.35
Anosike, Nicky 26.98

Again we see the usual suspects and Mitchell as well. Kelly is no surprise here as she is an extremely efficient player in limited minutes (15.2 mpg). When you consider that she’s coming into games, having a positive impact, and shooting efficiently, you have to be optimistic about her future. However, one thing Kelly is not at this point in her career is versatile.

SPI Versatility rating

I’ve used versatility rating in the past using points, rebounds, and assists. However, there are more ways to judge a player’s versatility than that and since I’ve been utilizing David Sparks’ work elsewhere, I decided to use it here.

SPI (scorer-perimeter-interior) is the name applied to Sparks’ player styles spectrum. Since that already provides a pretty solid way to understand different styles of play, I decided to use that formula to measure a player’s versatility. So the formula is this: fga + fta (scoring), ast + stl (perimeter), and reb + blks (interior) multiplied together and then taking the cube root to get an index of sorts. So here are the top 10 most versatile rookies:

SPI Versatility
Parker, Candace 29.88
Anosike, Nicky 24.73
Wiggins, Candice 24.57
Hornbuckle, Alexis 23.15
Gruda, Sandrine 23.10
Humphrey, Tasha 22.78
Ajavon, Matee 22.24
Fowles, Sylvia 21.75
Houston, Charde 21.65
Pringle, LaToya 21.49

Hornbuckle’s defense and versatility are definitely going to be her biggest assets in the WNBA and you hope she works hard to get her shooting percentages up. This is also where Anosike stands out as she’s a player that can do a little bit of everything.

So who are the most promising rookies overall?

Total
Parker, Candace 114
Wiggins, Candice 110
Humphrey, Tasha 110
Gruda, Sandrine 95
Kelly, Crystal 92
Houston, Charde 80
Ajavon, Matee 79
Mitchell, Leilani 77
Fowles, Sylvia 74
Hornbuckle, Alexis 72

This is a lot different than the rankings at WNBA.com but it’s worth noting again that these are not evaluating the same things – WNBA.com is looking at the best rookies and I’m looking here at the rookies who have the most potential for the future.

What strikes me here is Sylvia Fowles. She was great before her injury and has come back a little slow. What these numbers say is that she’s still one of the top 10 stars in this class which isn’t bad. It’s also notable that Mitchell has played her way into the top ten for the first time this season. Despite her size, she’s showing a lot of potential to run a WNBA team effectively.

But this still leaves one question unanswered: how do we compare rookies and understand who is better right now in addition to what they might (or might not) do in the future? That is a question I will answer tomorrow when looking at the Most Outstanding Rookie and revisiting the All-Rookie team candidates.

Transition Points:

Just a reminder: The rankings are determined by ranking each player 1-25 in each category with first place getting 25 pts and last getting 1 point. I didn't insert any of my own subjective opinions into the mix...but that might come with tomorrow's rankings. :)

The raw data for these rankings was gathered via Dougstats.com, by far the best site for WNBA stats on the web. It makes it a whole lot easier to put together player data quickly.

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A Review of Media Attention to the Melee & Perceptions of Female Athletes

If there was any doubt about whether female athletes faced double standards, the reactions to Tuesday night’s scuffle should be convincing evidence of the challenges they must overcome.

That is not to say that the incident will have an adverse effect on the WNBA’s popularity (though I don’t think it is positive effect either). In fact, I think we can conclude is that it’s not the fight itself that says anything particularly insightful about female athletes, except that female athletes can show a lack of judgment too (“It was just a couple of people being stupid," as Rebecca Lobo put it).

Instead, I think the incident makes the double standards female athletes face obvious for those who try to deny their existence. And in admitting their existence, I think it’s reasonable to say that those double standards distort people’s ideas about women’s basketball and shape what’s acceptable to say about it publicly.

The WNBA provides a meaningful lens through which to understand mainstream perceptions of women because it is one of many growing spaces that challenges traditional notions of what constitutes “womanhood”. What makes the commentary on the fight particularly interesting is how various people in the media deal with the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality in the WNBA (even in choosing to ignore them).

Those additional stereotypes that female athletes face are one major way that makes this scuffle different from the 2004 or 2006 brawls in the NBA -– like it or not, women have much less room for error than their male counterparts. Tuesday night’s fight was a much different phenomenon with different implications.

A look at some of the commentary from the past week may help us answer some important questions for women’s sports: how exactly do double standards influence perceptions of women’s sports ? Is any publicity really good publicity for women’s sports?

If this is gender equity, why do we laugh when women fight?

Some commentators believed that the scuffle might help the WNBA because it shows the intensity, passion, and toughness that mainstream society assumes women lack. From Harvey Araton of the New York Times:

A sports culture that historically has preferred its female athletic icons ponytailed or pixie-framed (our Olympic gymnasts will soon be tumbling their way across television screens, into American hearts) could stand a little reconditioning on the appeal of strong, aggressive women, who not only can dunk but can dish it out.

From this perspective, a fight is a good thing because it shows that female athletes are as capable of the average nonsense that men are capable of. And in doing what the men do, some believe a fight may encourage a gender neutral approach to women’s sports. From Ray Ratto, via the Wall Street Journal blog:

It was the stuff of stuff-happens, and to get one’s Under Armour in a bunch over it is exactly the wrong overreaction. But it was also a gender-neutral nostalgia-fest, a more ground-bound Lakers-Pistons battle from the late ’80s when the Lakers were winding down and the Pistons were trying to overthrow the established order.

However, the other day I posted the following quote from columnist Tom Haddock regarding the scuffle’s implications for gender equity:

There is a disparity between the way men's and women's sports are perceived. Clearly, they are viewed differently. We laugh when women fight. We are outraged when men fight. Until that changes, men and women in sports will always be different.

And I think Jemele Hill of ESPN.com nicely elaborated on this point:

It's interesting how differently we look at boorish behavior when gender is involved. The reaction to women fighting is usually a mixture of astonishment and fascination. Sure, some of it is because it plays into juvenile male fantasies… We treat girl fights like a novelty, when they shouldn't be seen as such. News flash to those still using sticks to create fire: Female athletes are just as competitive as men and when some are pushed to the edge, they'll exhibit the same lack of control.

If we agree with Haddock and Hill then any increased attention to women’s basketball over the remainder of the season could be attributed to a “novelty effect”, which will naturally end at some point. The notion of aggressive, rugged women throwing down on the court will be “cool” to watch for a while, but won’t sustain an audience if it’s treated as nothing more than a spectacle. Again from Harvey Araton of the New York Times:

Wednesday night, I happened to catch the last 20 minutes of a cable news show (I won’t say which one, except that it was mostly fair-and-balanced Obama bashing), which signed off with the Sparks-Shock fisticuffs — without commentary, context or even an identification of the combatants.

Chick fight on court, no details at 11.

Ultimately, all this fight shows about gender equity is that we’re not yet there for female athletes and that WNBA players will likely continue to face negative perceptions as long as they play ball. From Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant:

If this is gender equity, give me a little gender inequity where the women have held the high ground on athletic anger management.

There is a line between Billie Jean King and Don King. There is a line between Title IX and Title Asinine.

And these two WNBA teams crossed it.

After we laugh about women fighting, we assume they're "acting like men"

What I think the discussions on gender illustrates is that we’re still constantly comparing female athletes to men and when that happens, it’s difficult for women to establish legitimacy, even if they’re doing the “same” things. From Marie Hardin of the Sports Media & Society blog:

It's also these kinds of assessments of women's sports -- judging them by male standards -- that feed the tremendous struggles of female athletes for legitimacy.

And of course, when women do what the men do, surely they are trying to be like men… From Gregg Doyel of Sportsline.com:

It was one thing back in the day when Cynthia Cooper mimicked the men and overdosed on that ridiculous "raise the roof" sign to the point that Amy Winehouse thought maybe Cooper needed an intervention. But it's something else entirely -- something so unnecessarily male -- for WNBA players to throw down, as they did Tuesday night in Auburn Hills, Mich.

And if the women are acting like men, people will inevitably call into question their sexuality…because of course, women who fight, must be lesbians too… From SOHH.com:

There’ll you’ll see what looks like Mahorn pushing Lisa Leslie (Deuce Bigalow style: “Now, that’s a big, bi**h!”) down to the ground. One of Lesbian’s, er Leslie’s, teammates then slaps Mahorn in the back seconds later (around the :51 mark).

We shouldn’t have to detail the personal lives of the participants involved to show how inaccurate this comment is. That’s beside the point. The fact is, women who play sports are not only seen as unladylike but also homosexual.

And without conducting a large scale study about why people don’t watch the WNBA, it’s safe to say that “concerns” about women’s sexuality might be enough to create a stigma about women’s sports that keeps people from watching. I can’t prove it, but at this point, I don't think it's fair to dismiss it either.

“Angry-black-female-phobia”

We also cannot forget that society is not particularly fond of the “angry black woman”…and of course, that would be any black woman who dares assert herself publicly (see Michelle Obama at Feministing.com). The fact that the participants in this fight were primarily black women (Katie Smith was on the court but to my knowledge, not a primary participant) constitutes nothing but “gender trouble” – black women “complicating” an already complex discussion of womanhood. From the Womanist Musings blog:

Black women count only when the talk turns to sacrifice. The black male cannot speak on behalf of the black female because even though we share the same race it effects us differently. Yes the black male is constructed as a violent criminal rapist, but it is our bodies that are violated.

Returning to the notion of a novelty effect, in a way, this is not a novel situation at all in terms of mainstream perceptions of black women – this only perpetuates a long held notion that black women are a monolithic group of angry people and therefore, a group to fear. From the 1369 lightbulbs blog:

This, to me, speaks to a deeper problem - how readily America pigeonholes that which it cannot readily understand, or seems at all foreign. And America surely has not figured out the Angry Black Female. Jemele's aside, public reactions to this fight have ranged from sanctimoniously horrified to sexually condescending ("Cat fight!"). Obviously this is not how the WNBA would like to project itself, let alone market itself - but it may have been a necessary evil to expose, once again, the very attitudes that hold back women's sports in this country. We love to compartmentalize women into roles that were set for them generations ago, and sometimes we even have their help in doing so.

Racist attitudes affect the men’s game as well as the women’s game. So I am surprised when people remark that there is no reason to worry about the scuffle because it a) is a common occurrence in men’s sports and b) never causes a problem for men.

Aside from statement “a” being historically inaccurate (it’s happened less than once a year in the last decade in men’s professional basketball…which is hardly "often" considering each of the 30 teams play 82 games), I don’t think the NBA would agree with statement “b”. And a large reason it causes a problem for men could be attributed to racism. From TrueHoop:

The league has had grave PR trouble at various times in the past (mostly because there's some racist seeming notion on the part of ticket-buying fans that when basketball players do things that other athletes also do, like fight, or party, they're in dire need of taming). When that trouble gets serious enough, it really hurts the bottom line, and nowhere does it say that leagues like the NBA will never have real financial trouble. With some bad decisions, it can happen. Ask the NHL.

One of the bigger NBA PR problems of recent years was fighting (oddly, a feature in hockey, but whatever) which used to happen quite often. So the league took some serious -- even draconian -- steps to prevent it. One of those anti-mayhem rules was that no NBA player should ever leave the bench during an altercation, and if they do, they are instantly suspended, with, essentially, no questions asked.

The black athlete has always been seen as a problem for professional sports even as they are so often also cast as heroes, generally heroes that have “beat the odds” to succeed. So yes, black athletes face double standards male or female. To say that a fight among black athletes is positive for the perception sport, is to ignore the fact that men’s professional basketball has always struggled with constructing a public image with black players. From the Daily Fortune blog:

Professional basketball has continuously worked on perfecting its public image, one that requires using many black americans faces and bodies, for decades. After the drug and alcohol abuse situations in the NBA during the late seventies into the late eighties, the NBA has enforced strict laws that however have unevenly vilified black players as destroying the game… So when WNBA players emphasize their hard work and love for the game, perhaps its in fear of being vilified as greedy black male athletes…except the fact that the average salary for a WNBA player is somewhere between 60,000-80,000 dollars.

Even if you don’t agree that black WNBA players are consciously fighting against being vilified as greedy black athletes, the fact remains that black athletes are a tough sell for mainstream U.S. society because of long-standing racial stereotypes. A nationally televised scuffle is just more reason to vilify these black athletes despite their best attempts to separate themselves from their male counterparts.

It’s been a long, long time, comin’…

Again, I think this incident demonstrates more about perceptions of female athletes than the implications for the popularity of women’s basketball. I believe that the WNBA’s core fan base is likely less concerned with the gender, race, and sexuality of the players, perhaps to the point of being color/gender/sexuality-blind (which can be dangerous, but is an entirely separate conversation). However it would seem that the casual fan is quite concerned with the identity of the WNBA’s players, if the commentary around the web is any indicator.

The underlying theme to me is this – our society, our world, still struggles with the notion of femininity. What’s disturbing about some of these accounts (and many others I didn’t post here) are that I didn’t find them at “AverageLunkheadMale.blogspot.com” – many of these are national media outlets. The fact is that most of us know what to say to be politically correct, but on the whole we simultaneously condemn women who step outside of the mold.

And isn’t it odd that in a season that began with the league providing makeup and fashion tips for rookies (read more at smartlikeme.wordpress.com) to ensure that they presented themselves as “women first”, we now have a fight that calls into question their womanhood? It seems like overall we’re got our priorities wrong with regard to what is important for female athletes and this is just a very public example of that. From Jeff Jacobs at the Hartford Courant again:

What should be celebrated is toughness. What shouldn't be celebrated is a loss of composure. This isn't a matter of X and Y chromosomes. This is about the ABCs of athletic play. Toughness is taking a hit and getting back up. Idiocy is throwing a punch, getting in a brawl.

It seems like some people have confused a hyper-masculine display of strength with passion and toughness and for inexplicably applied it to women’s basketball. And that does nothing to help a sport that already struggles with the notion that these women are “unladylike”.

It’s a beautiful thing to say that basketball is basketball and that athletes are athletes, but the fact is the majority of our society simply doesn’t agree. And it’s hard to conclude that these factors have no bearing on ratings, even when there is a fight that garners attention for the wrong reasons. From Barry Horn of the Dallas News:

Of course, that didn't translate to an overflowing eyeball convention for Thursday night's follow-up between the Shock and Houston Comets on ESPN2. That game featured the Bill Veeck-like return of 50-year-old Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman, who made a cameo on-court appearance for the depleted Shock.

Average major-market rating for the season's first 11 games on ESPN2: 0.23.

Average major-market rating for the first post-brawl game on ESPN2: 0.25.

I think this is a chance to put things in perspective. The biggest benefit of this scuffle to the WNBA would be a sustained increase in media attention. I think the blogosphere is helping greatly with that, but the major media outlets would have to do more than focus on a fight. Regardless of whether you think people are dumb, the media is a major factor in shaping people’s opinions about the world, even when something is omitted.

Part of the burden of increasing media attention does of course lie with the WNBA and I think the web can play a major part in that, as Helen from Women’s Hoops points out often (so often that I can’t even keep up). And of course, there’s already been plenty written about the “Expect Great” ads.

But the other part of that burden rests with the “journalists” that perpetuate blatantly homophobic, racist, and sexist ideas about the WNBA in the public sphere. And that responsibility seems to lie with editors and producers.

If all people see of the WNBA this year is a circus act with women fighting, I don’t see how the league will increase its popularity, though it might just stagnate. And it really can’t afford stagnation at this point in its development.

Relevant Links:

Like it or not, melee lifts WNBA's exposure
http://www.connpost.com/sports/ci_9990335

Why The WNBA Brawl Could Be Good For The League
http://jezebel.com/5029067/why-the-wnba-brawl-could-be-good-for-the-league

Taking it seriously.
http://meganwegan.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/taking-it-seriously/

Blog Hound: Fight During Tuesday's Game Good Or Bad For WNBA?
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=sbd.preview&articleID=122691

Hey, WNBA, don't run away from this fight (…and an idea for a new ad campaign)
http://weblogs.newsday.com/sports/KBQB_blog/2008/07/hey_wnba_dont_run_away_from_th.html


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