The Storm Mid-Season Report Card

As of the July 17 game against the Fever, we’re a couple of games past the mid-point in the season. I think it’s a good time to look at every roster spot and give that player a grade for the season so far. The grades are relative to expectations for that player, but the list is sorted by their long-term value.

Dom is clearly having a solid sophomore season with16.2 points per game and 8.5 rebounds, but there are still a number of areas where she can improve. You would expect a 6’6” player who takes most of her shots near the rim to have a field goal percentage better than 46.8%, but her finishing isn’t as good as it should be (will be?). She also leads the team in turnovers per game at 2.9.

I don’t hate that she’s pushing some limits and seeing what works and what doesn’t—this is the right season for experimenting—but that’s way too many turnovers for a player who only gets 1.6 assists per game. I do like the way her rebounding has picked up lately. She’s got 3 double-doubles in a row and is averaging 11.8 boards per game on the 5-game road trip, but I do not think she’s as good on defense as her massive wingspan suggests she should be. When she makes a concerted effort to challenge shots, she winds up in foul trouble.

None of this is troubling. After all, she made the All-Star game at 20 years old! I just think her rate of improvement from where she was at the end of last year is only ok. It’s still a trajectory that heads toward the moon if it keeps going, but we’re just not there yet.

There were real doubts about her ability to star in the W or she wouldn’t have fallen to 8th in the draft. However, she has proven that she can not just play at this level, but thrive. She has the best plus/minus on the team thanks to her contributions on defense where she puts up impressive numbers of rebounds, blocks, and steals. On offense she’s third on the team in points, though she has by far the worst FG% among starters at 38.8%.

The moves she uses to get to the rim are more impressive than her finishing which is always with her right hand, even when she’s on the left side of the basket. Her 3-point shooting is just 27.4%. This feels like a situation where you just want her to get all the reps and all the experience she can. We have every reason to believe she’ll be more efficient next year, and she seems to be firmly entrenched as one of the key pieces of our future.

Awa has lived up to the hype that came with going #3 overall in the draft. She just turned 20 and is just 17 games into her career, but she already looks comfortable and is putting up 11.3 and 5.5 with a steal, a block, and 2 assists per game. She’s also shooting 37.2% from 3 on over 4 attempts per game. That 3-point shooting has me optimistic about the long-term fit next to Dom as it means Awa can drift out to the perimeter and force a defender to come with her rather than clogging up the paint where Dom is at her best.

Between her off-season foot injury and a broken nose a week and a half ago, Ezi has only gotten to play 4 games so far, and she was on a pretty severe minutes restriction in those. We’ve yet to see a single minute of her playing with both Dom and Awa, which basically has to work or there aren’t enough minutes to go around for all 3 players long-term.

I am skeptical about that configuration, and I therefore expect the team to eventually trade Ezi. I am not skeptical about Ezi’s defense as she was all-W in each of the last 4 years, so I do think there will be a market for her even at her near-max salary for the next two seasons. My best guess is that the Storm knew this roster would be misaligned when they signed her, but signing her and eventually trading her made more sense than just letting her walk for free. With so many of their best players on rookie-scale contracts, the Storm are well under the salary cap even while paying Ezi $1.2 million and would be well under the salary floor if they weren’t.

This year has been T’s first chance to start regularly and she has taken full advantage of it, putting up career highs across the stat sheet. I think a lot of people expected her to be the floor general, being the one veteran in the lineup and organizing the offense. However, instead Sonia has clearly asked her to look to score and T has responded by leading the team in points (at 15.8) with solid efficiency, too (46.0%/35.9%/89.4%). She’s also leading the team in assists at 4.4 per game. The biggest issue she’s had is late in close games where she is shooting just 24% (6 for 25). At 29 years old, it’s not crazy to imagine her as part of the next good Storm team, but it’s also not crazy to imagine her moving on. She’s currently signed for one more year after this one.

The good news is that after missing last year with an ACL tear, Jordan is back, looks healthy, and seems to have retained her athleticism. Her defense is great and if you look at on/off numbers, she ranks as the team’s 3rd or 4th best player. In other words, they only lose her minutes by 1.7 per 100 possessions while their overall average is -9.1 points per 100 possessions.

However, her offensive contributions have been nonexistent. She’s shooting just 35.5% from the field despite most of her shots coming in the paint, all of which adds up to just 4.4 points per game. She was starting before she picked up a foot injury about a month ago but is only averaging 15 minutes a game since then and hasn’t gotten a start. I think Sonia has soured a bit on Jordan because the offense has been so bad For me, I think Jordan is still useful to the team. I look at those on/off numbers and think maybe Jordan deserves more minutes than she’s getting, especially since it seems reasonable to believe that more reps would help her figure out how to contribute on offense. She’s a reserved free agent this off-season, which means she’s not allowed to negotiate with anyone else but us unless we fail to offer her a minimum contract, so she should get one more year after this one to prove that she belongs as part of the long-term plan.

Jade stepped into the starting lineup when Jordan got hurt and Sonia has stuck with this alignment of starters for 11 games in a row. It seems that she’s giving Jade every chance to prove that she can be a starting point guard in this league. This also allows T to be more of a 2-guard, focusing on scoring points, and Flau’jae is probably better as a #3 then a #2 anyway. Of course, Sonia’s offense is fairly positionless. she prefers that players take whatever advantages are available and make plays rather than get hung up on who has what role, but it’s still a significant change to have Jade starting as Jade functions best, with the ball in her hands, looking for opportunities to drive and score or drive and kick.

Personally, I think Jade is better served as an energy-off-the-bench player. Her speed is more effective against the other team’s bench than against their starters, and the current lineup feels to me like it’s one playmaking guard short of being good. However, I do think it makes a lot of sense to resolve this question. Jade is 23 and signed to a 1-year contract. On one hand, she’s having by far the best year of her career. On the other hand, it’s 9 points and 4 assists per game. I do think she’s proven that she belongs in the league and can be a useful piece to have in your rotation, but can she start on a good team? I’m happy for the team to give her however many starts it takes for them to feel confident they know the answer to that question.

Lou has never lived up to the hype around her. She was drafted 4th overall in 2019 after being perceived as the best player on a UConn team that also included Napheesa Collier who went #6 in the same draft. In retrospect, I think Phee probably deserved a lot more of the credit for their 4 final fours, but Lou is still a 6’3” player with an above-average 3-point shot who missed one year to pregnancy and last year to an ACL tear. You can see why the Storm would talk themselves into giving her a 2-year contract at a little bit more than the minimum to maybe finally realize her potential.

Things have not gone great so far, with her 4.4 points per game coming in under her unimpressive 5.7 ppg career average. She also has the worst on/off split on the entire team and has resembled a traffic cone on defense, although a traffic cone that has at least leaned on the occasional veteran “you beat me but I’m going to tap the ball out of your hands from behind” move. I would have given her an even worse grade, but a) it often takes players as much as a whole season to get all the way back from an ACL injury and b) her last handful of games have been a bit better. She hit double digit points for the first time this week against Chicago and over her last 6 games, she’s hit 7 of her 11 3-point attempts. In the final minutes against Indiana, Sonia was using her in an offense/defense swap with Jordan while Jade watched from the bench, and it didn’t seem unreasonable. This might just be a short-term hot streak, but it’s also possible this is a sign that we shouldn’t give up on her just yet.

Mack hasn’t gotten a lot of playing time, but I have enjoyed what I’ve seen when she does get in there. She was the team’s 3rd big at the beginning of the season when Ezi was hurt and Awa hadn’t reported yet, but she’s basically fallen out of the rotation since Awa showed up. Even with Ezi hurt again, she’s still only getting garbage-time minutes.

When she does play, she seems to lift the energy of the team by hustling to more than her fair share of 50-50 balls. She’s also hit 6 of her 10 3-point attempts this season. Are we sure Stephanie Dolson is better than her? Even if she is right now, Mack is only in her 2nd year in the W and is coming off an all-WNBL season in Australia. Maybe it’s obvious from practices that Mack doesn’t belong in the rotation, but I’d like to see her get a little more run.

I suspect the real value of signing Stef does not show up in the on-court product. She’s a 14-year veteran who seems like a great person to have in the locker room and helps to keep things organized during games. That said, the on-court product has been underwhelming. She’s started 12 times and plays 17 minutes per game, but she’s only scoring 4 points a game and pulling down 2.5 rebounds. She’s never been a particularly good rebounder for someone who is a legit 6’5”, but she used to earn her keep with screens that just aren’t as effective now that the league has decided to call a lot more freedom of movement fouls. They only gave her a 1-year contract, so I don’t think the team has anything to regret here, but I also don’t think they should keep her around—that is, unless she takes a pay cut down to something near the minimum.

Zia has shown enough flashes of potential to stay on the fringe of the rotation all season. She’s one of just 4 players to appear in all 27 games so far, but on average, she’s been highly inefficient and the on/off numbers hate her. 34.3% shooting (29.2% from 3) isn’t going to get it done even if you do sometimes pop for 25 points (like the win against Connecticut) or 18 (in the narrow loss to Dallas). I don’t think she’s shown enough to earn a place in the long-term plan, but I also won’t be surprised if she sticks around on a minimum for a few more years.

The Storm signed Taylor when they cut Lexie Brown, but she has failed to earn any meaningful playing time in the 6 weeks since then. She did score 6 points in her very first game for the Storm, but has zero points in 29 scattered minutes across 8 games. One steal and 6 rebounds are all she has to show for that time. She does seem like a perfectly reasonable sort of player to give the last roster spot to, and maybe she’ll find her footing over the rest of the season, but so far this is not a roll of the dice that has worked out.

Taina is on a development player contract, which means she can only be active for a total of 12 games all season. So far, she’s gotten onto the court 3 times for 13 total minutes, so it’s hard to know how well she’s developing. She certainly plays a position—point guard—where we could use more help. She was also the rawest prospect drafted in the first round this year. If she was wowing people in practice, they probably would have promoted her to the main roster instead of signing Taylor Thierry, so we do know that she hasn’t been amazing, but it’s hard to give her any grade other than an I.

Grace was a 3rd round draft pick who made the roster out of training camp because of an extra spot left by Awa Fam who left to finish overseas obligations; she helped Valencia win the Spanish league title. Grace got 48 minutes of playing time across four games before Awa showed up and showed enough promise that, when she was waived, he Indiana Fever offered her a spot on their main roster. This would be a requirement before she could be offered the other developmental player spot, which I imagine was the plan. Fair enough, congrats to her on earning a full-time job. The real roster spots pay $277,500 for the season whereas the dev team spots only pay about $500 a week plus $6,300 whenever you are active for a game) so of course she was going to take the better offer. Should we have cut Lexie Brown instead of waiving Grace? Maybe, though we’re probably better off with a guard or a wing in that spot rather than yet another post player. Meanwhile, she’s only gotten 24 scattered garbage-time minutes for the Fever in the two months since then, scoring just 6 points whereas she had 17 points for the Storm.

Lexie’s time with the Storm did not work out. She wasn’t playing well and she’s too old to fit into the plan anyway, so the Storm decided to just eat her guaranteed contract and waive her so they could use the roster spot on someone younger.