I totally hear you on our bench issues. I think you can add Li Yueru to the Sami section of performance away from us.
I watched a lot of Kiki last year (Carrie is a USC alum so they’re a team we watch), and she is playing far better than she played there. I read or saw in an interview about Kiki that Tara coached more freely to players’ strengths while Lindsey has more of a system (which she struggled to fit in IMO). There’s a probability that no matter who we picked, we could be watching the next player in the draft perform better elsewhere and that is coaching. Does that make Noey a bad coach? I’m not saying that necessarily…but I am concerned with her rotations. I sit next to benches that are constantly swapping players. In soccer, they call subbing in “fresh legs” for a reason….i feel like this second half of the season is going to be consistently rough. We are meeting below/near 500 teams that are hitting their stride while we look gassed. If Aaliyah Edwards is on the market, maybe we throw a draft pick at them for her? We would be getting an elite youth with another year or two on rookie scale.
That also speaks to my point about if we had gone another way in the draft, would they (Kiki or Sonia) have performed the way they are in WAS? I think perhaps not.
Agreed; I don’t make the linear assumption that what the Mystic rookies are doing in WAS, is what they’d be doing here or anyplace else. Maybe? Maybe not. They are really good, to be sure, and it helps that they’ve played in an environment where the only expectation was that the team wouldn’t be good, and there’s no cost to on the job learning. Here, they’d likely be more productive than Malonga has been, but probably not so much to warrant the Storm drafting differently.
Agree. While Jeff is right that it's too much to expect consistent impact from Malonga, Sky, Gabby, and Nneka aren't here to tank for draft picks. They need help, and the front court specifically needs some help with size. We have a lot of draft capital stocked up. If the Mystics would take the Vegas pick for Edwards, do it.
I would probably dangle their own first or their own first and the Dallas/Connecticut (Seattle owns the rights to the better pick) second-round pick to see if they could do that for Aaliyah Edwards if they think they'll play her. If they aren't going to play her much, why even bother?
They should NOT move the LA first-round pick for anything. The only acceptable move would have been to trade that and #2 overall for Paige Bueckers. There is a high probability that the Sparks' pick is going to be #1 or #2 overall next season. They ideally can draft an All-Star talent-level guard like Azzi Fudd, Olivia Miles, or Flau'jae Johnson with that pick. But if they keep the Aces pick and IF the Aces miss the playoffs, there is a chance they could end up with two of those players I listed above. Or they get one of the guards and top International Prospect Awa Fam or another player like South Carolina's Ashlyn Watkins.
If the Aces move up to the 6th or 7th seed which is still probably more likely although we'll see ... then that pick is around 9th or 10th overall and might be more reasonable to trade away for Aaliyah Edwards. That probably depends on where they rank Edwards and the value of having her versus a rookie.
But also, if I'm the Mystics, I wouldn't move Aaliyah Edwards just to move her. Especially, with Shakira Austin's injury history and the fact that Austin will hist Free Agency soon.
-But also, if I'm the Mystics, I wouldn't move Aaliyah Edwards just to move her. Especially, with Shakira Austin's injury history and the fact that Austin will hist Free Agency soon.-
You're right, and this is probably why they haven't traded her. She'll still have a couple more years of club control after this one. They would have to think there's someone better than Edwards late in the first round of this year's draft, and that's questionable.
I agree with you that the vets seem tired, and while this wasn't a back-to-back it was pretty close as an early Sunday start after a Friday night game. Malonga didn't look great in her 1st half stint, but only giving her those 3 minutes is just crazy. She had 45+ minutes to reflect and get her head right ... you put her back in late 3rd! Sami is a great example along these lines - I thought she was washed after last year, but now it seems clear she wasn't and you have to blame Noey's rotation for a good chunk of her problems. While I think Noey's in-game tactics are medicore at best, I do think she's a net positive for the team based on how good she is between games (and seasons). We always play better in games after practices and all 3 of this year's All Stars clearly love her. Would you want a better in-game coach if it meant Skylar, Nneka, and Gabby all signed elsewhere? I don't think so.
I'd like to think Noey is early enough in her coaching career that she can learn that she just has to play the bench more minutes so the players she does trust will have fresher legs in the 4th quarter. This is especially true with a 44 game season being played in the same amount of time that the league used to play 34 games. All the players are tired right now, across all the teams, and rotation strategies that made sense 5 years ago just aren't correct nowadays. (The new CBA might change this. If they expand the calendar footprint of the WNBA season maybe Noey's instincts will become correct again.)
I think the FO will need to engage in some serious soul-searching regarding the coaching staff this offseason. The positives around Quinn seemingly are more about culture, and whatever goes on apart from the in-game stuff. Who knows if the Big 3 re-up here next year, but it’s hard to imagine they don’t have some degree of frustration around this team’s difficulty getting any traction. Would the FO be willing to make a regime change in the offseason? Who knows? I’d also love to know what other options the FO had/considered when constructing the roster. Some of the injuries are just bad luck, of course, but other things? Maybe not so much. The FO has, IMO, really struggled to build balanced rosters with trustable depth. So we end up with an older, “expensive” top end, and the rest is after-market parts the coach doesn’t trust to use.
All very reasonable thoughts and questions (though the FO deserves credit for getting at least one signing right in Erica Wheeler). I do think the big 3 are all very likely to re-sign though. Gabby gushes about the organization. Nneka and Skylar have said very positive things as well and where else are they gonna go?
I could be wrong, but I think there is a higher chance the Storm would decide to move on from Nneka and Skylar than there is of Skylar and Nneka wanting to leave on their own. Although I don't think either is very likely, if that makes sense.
To Eric, I also have a major hard time blaming the front office when they turned Kia Nurse and a Lottery pick into Skylar Diggins, Nneka Ogwumike, and what looks like a future lottery pick, as Randy mentioned they deserve a lot of credit for the Erica Wheeler signing even if her numbers have dropped recently, they also turned Jewell Loyd who's impact has decreased in recent seasons into the #2 overall pick, Li Yueru, and a future first-round pick. I won't blame them for the unexpected injuries to Jordan Horston and especially Katie Lou Samuelson.
The initial Kia Nurse contract looked bad when they signed it and the fact they had to give away a #4 pick (aka Rickea Jackson) just to dump it when the Skylar/Nneka opportunity came along a year later did not help. BUT. You make a great point: would you rather have Rickea Jackson right now or LA's #1 pick next year? I'd rather have that pick! Good job, front office.
I have no idea why we did not waive Lexie Brown yesterday, she has not contributed anything this season after being sold as some kind of sharp shooter. There are other Tiffany Mitchell level acquisitions we could make that would improve our bench depth which is badly needed to let our starters rest. I know it was bc of injury, but A’ja Wilson played her best game of the season after sitting a game out last week. Nneka, Gabby and Skylar need more downtime and we need a stronger bench. I’m down with who we currently have playing more minutes and getting more trust, but I have no faith in Lexie Brown. All season I have been waiting for her to get cut and I guess I’ll keep waiting smh.
I can help explain. They haven't cut Lexie Brown because she's on a protected guaranteed contract. That means they can't cut her. They aren't able to free up cap space or a roster spot with Lexie Brown because of the guaranteed deal. She is also signed through next year as well. I believe there only option would be to do a contract buyout. But the player has to agree to that and since she has a 2nd year (2026) guaranteed already, I think that's highly unlikely. What might be realistic is that maybe after this season, she agrees to a contract buyout of $50-75K for her final year of her deal. The other hope is that with the new CBA coming next season, ideally, the salary cap will increase significantly, and her $99K contract will either look like a bargain or be low enough where it doesn't negatively affect the Storm. The current minimum deal for veterans is around $75K, but in 2026 that number might be $150K-$200K.
The LA Sparks signed her to a multi-year deal. The Storm just traded for her and took on her contract. I wrote in my above comment some of the thought process as to why it shouldn't hamper them as much down the road.
Thank you for giving more context Jeff! I’ve been wondering why you hadn’t really been talking about her in your recaps. For me she’s more unfortunate of a signing/trade than Katie Lou, injury and all. I remember how Noelle talked about her at the beginning of the year and that just has not showed up at all. I would love her to prove me wrong but in the very limited minutes she’s played this season I just don’t see how that’s possible.
Re:Lexie. I wasn’t “excited” about the signing, but I didn’t think it was a bad signing. Her first minutes weren’t great offensively or defensively-she looked lost, but I did feel like she was making some progress with the minimal minutes she was getting…and then that got derailed with her illness. I hope she proves you (and me to a point) wrong too. I don’t know what to think of our bench. Everyone is a bit all over the place. If you look back at Horston last year, even she was all over the place offensively and she to Jeff’s point was our best bench player. We don’t have anyone that is consistently producing significant points off the bench which pressures our starters. Tiffany Mitchell has been a pleasant surprise tho.
She has Crohn's disease. I'm pretty sure all the games she has missed due to "illness" have been flare ups of that. The hope when acquiring her was that she had it under control after getting diagnosed a year and a half ago. If she could return to the way she was playing in 2001, we'd all be happy. Obviously it has not worked out, and the fact she's on a guaranteed contract has made things pretty rough on us now that KLS got hurt. (Also I think the contract was a sign-and-trade that we negotiated with her, not an LA decision that we inherited. Obv with her illness she wanted the guarantee (and it's why she's one of only 2 vets who signed a contract that runs past the new CBA into next year). I suspect we needed to do that or she would have gone elsewhere, though we do also sometimes overpay for vets we think can help so it could also be that.)
Lexie Brown had already signed that two year deal or maybe it was originally a three-year deal with the LA Sparks. I think Curt Miller signed her to that deal when he was in LA. The Storm didn't sign her to a guaranteed contract. They just inherited her contract when they made the trade for her to move down in the draft. From the middle of the 2nd round to the first pick of the 3rd round.
If we look back at the draft board, they didn't really lose much by making that trade. Lucy Olsen is pretty much the only player drafted after the pick they sent to LA and before the pick they received from LA. They could have taken JJ Quinerly, but they could have had her in the 3rd round instead of Serena Sundell. But I don't really blame them for taking Sundell there. She was projected to go before Quinerly and had better size.
Yeah I remember Noelle talking in the preseason about seeing her play internationally this past off season and how well she was playing and that she’d gotten healthy. I was optimistic about her offensive contribution potential especially from 3 to start the season but obviously hasn’t been that. It’s been really disheartening that we essentially have 10 players and until Tiffany Mitchell, no reliable vets off the bench. Alysha Clark has had a real scoring drought, tho she’s decent defensively despite getting beat on fast breaks, and Zia Cooke has had 1 bucket in the last 4 games? Every time I get excited about our play our shallow bench really checks me about having much hope for the post season.
A tragedy is right - one of the stupidest moves that the FO has ever made! The idea of signing a player who has a disease as serious as Crohn's Disease t a 2-year guaranteed contract is absurd. I don't believe that any other ownership group would ever have taken that kind of a risk. They need to figure out a way to redeem themselves. That was more than stupid.
I totally hear you on our bench issues. I think you can add Li Yueru to the Sami section of performance away from us.
I watched a lot of Kiki last year (Carrie is a USC alum so they’re a team we watch), and she is playing far better than she played there. I read or saw in an interview about Kiki that Tara coached more freely to players’ strengths while Lindsey has more of a system (which she struggled to fit in IMO). There’s a probability that no matter who we picked, we could be watching the next player in the draft perform better elsewhere and that is coaching. Does that make Noey a bad coach? I’m not saying that necessarily…but I am concerned with her rotations. I sit next to benches that are constantly swapping players. In soccer, they call subbing in “fresh legs” for a reason….i feel like this second half of the season is going to be consistently rough. We are meeting below/near 500 teams that are hitting their stride while we look gassed. If Aaliyah Edwards is on the market, maybe we throw a draft pick at them for her? We would be getting an elite youth with another year or two on rookie scale.
WNBA Iriafen looks much more like Stanford Iriafen.
That also speaks to my point about if we had gone another way in the draft, would they (Kiki or Sonia) have performed the way they are in WAS? I think perhaps not.
Agreed; I don’t make the linear assumption that what the Mystic rookies are doing in WAS, is what they’d be doing here or anyplace else. Maybe? Maybe not. They are really good, to be sure, and it helps that they’ve played in an environment where the only expectation was that the team wouldn’t be good, and there’s no cost to on the job learning. Here, they’d likely be more productive than Malonga has been, but probably not so much to warrant the Storm drafting differently.
True.
Agree. While Jeff is right that it's too much to expect consistent impact from Malonga, Sky, Gabby, and Nneka aren't here to tank for draft picks. They need help, and the front court specifically needs some help with size. We have a lot of draft capital stocked up. If the Mystics would take the Vegas pick for Edwards, do it.
I would probably dangle their own first or their own first and the Dallas/Connecticut (Seattle owns the rights to the better pick) second-round pick to see if they could do that for Aaliyah Edwards if they think they'll play her. If they aren't going to play her much, why even bother?
They should NOT move the LA first-round pick for anything. The only acceptable move would have been to trade that and #2 overall for Paige Bueckers. There is a high probability that the Sparks' pick is going to be #1 or #2 overall next season. They ideally can draft an All-Star talent-level guard like Azzi Fudd, Olivia Miles, or Flau'jae Johnson with that pick. But if they keep the Aces pick and IF the Aces miss the playoffs, there is a chance they could end up with two of those players I listed above. Or they get one of the guards and top International Prospect Awa Fam or another player like South Carolina's Ashlyn Watkins.
If the Aces move up to the 6th or 7th seed which is still probably more likely although we'll see ... then that pick is around 9th or 10th overall and might be more reasonable to trade away for Aaliyah Edwards. That probably depends on where they rank Edwards and the value of having her versus a rookie.
But also, if I'm the Mystics, I wouldn't move Aaliyah Edwards just to move her. Especially, with Shakira Austin's injury history and the fact that Austin will hist Free Agency soon.
-But also, if I'm the Mystics, I wouldn't move Aaliyah Edwards just to move her. Especially, with Shakira Austin's injury history and the fact that Austin will hist Free Agency soon.-
You're right, and this is probably why they haven't traded her. She'll still have a couple more years of club control after this one. They would have to think there's someone better than Edwards late in the first round of this year's draft, and that's questionable.
I agree with you that the vets seem tired, and while this wasn't a back-to-back it was pretty close as an early Sunday start after a Friday night game. Malonga didn't look great in her 1st half stint, but only giving her those 3 minutes is just crazy. She had 45+ minutes to reflect and get her head right ... you put her back in late 3rd! Sami is a great example along these lines - I thought she was washed after last year, but now it seems clear she wasn't and you have to blame Noey's rotation for a good chunk of her problems. While I think Noey's in-game tactics are medicore at best, I do think she's a net positive for the team based on how good she is between games (and seasons). We always play better in games after practices and all 3 of this year's All Stars clearly love her. Would you want a better in-game coach if it meant Skylar, Nneka, and Gabby all signed elsewhere? I don't think so.
I'd like to think Noey is early enough in her coaching career that she can learn that she just has to play the bench more minutes so the players she does trust will have fresher legs in the 4th quarter. This is especially true with a 44 game season being played in the same amount of time that the league used to play 34 games. All the players are tired right now, across all the teams, and rotation strategies that made sense 5 years ago just aren't correct nowadays. (The new CBA might change this. If they expand the calendar footprint of the WNBA season maybe Noey's instincts will become correct again.)
I think the FO will need to engage in some serious soul-searching regarding the coaching staff this offseason. The positives around Quinn seemingly are more about culture, and whatever goes on apart from the in-game stuff. Who knows if the Big 3 re-up here next year, but it’s hard to imagine they don’t have some degree of frustration around this team’s difficulty getting any traction. Would the FO be willing to make a regime change in the offseason? Who knows? I’d also love to know what other options the FO had/considered when constructing the roster. Some of the injuries are just bad luck, of course, but other things? Maybe not so much. The FO has, IMO, really struggled to build balanced rosters with trustable depth. So we end up with an older, “expensive” top end, and the rest is after-market parts the coach doesn’t trust to use.
All very reasonable thoughts and questions (though the FO deserves credit for getting at least one signing right in Erica Wheeler). I do think the big 3 are all very likely to re-sign though. Gabby gushes about the organization. Nneka and Skylar have said very positive things as well and where else are they gonna go?
I could be wrong, but I think there is a higher chance the Storm would decide to move on from Nneka and Skylar than there is of Skylar and Nneka wanting to leave on their own. Although I don't think either is very likely, if that makes sense.
To Eric, I also have a major hard time blaming the front office when they turned Kia Nurse and a Lottery pick into Skylar Diggins, Nneka Ogwumike, and what looks like a future lottery pick, as Randy mentioned they deserve a lot of credit for the Erica Wheeler signing even if her numbers have dropped recently, they also turned Jewell Loyd who's impact has decreased in recent seasons into the #2 overall pick, Li Yueru, and a future first-round pick. I won't blame them for the unexpected injuries to Jordan Horston and especially Katie Lou Samuelson.
The initial Kia Nurse contract looked bad when they signed it and the fact they had to give away a #4 pick (aka Rickea Jackson) just to dump it when the Skylar/Nneka opportunity came along a year later did not help. BUT. You make a great point: would you rather have Rickea Jackson right now or LA's #1 pick next year? I'd rather have that pick! Good job, front office.
I have no idea why we did not waive Lexie Brown yesterday, she has not contributed anything this season after being sold as some kind of sharp shooter. There are other Tiffany Mitchell level acquisitions we could make that would improve our bench depth which is badly needed to let our starters rest. I know it was bc of injury, but A’ja Wilson played her best game of the season after sitting a game out last week. Nneka, Gabby and Skylar need more downtime and we need a stronger bench. I’m down with who we currently have playing more minutes and getting more trust, but I have no faith in Lexie Brown. All season I have been waiting for her to get cut and I guess I’ll keep waiting smh.
I can help explain. They haven't cut Lexie Brown because she's on a protected guaranteed contract. That means they can't cut her. They aren't able to free up cap space or a roster spot with Lexie Brown because of the guaranteed deal. She is also signed through next year as well. I believe there only option would be to do a contract buyout. But the player has to agree to that and since she has a 2nd year (2026) guaranteed already, I think that's highly unlikely. What might be realistic is that maybe after this season, she agrees to a contract buyout of $50-75K for her final year of her deal. The other hope is that with the new CBA coming next season, ideally, the salary cap will increase significantly, and her $99K contract will either look like a bargain or be low enough where it doesn't negatively affect the Storm. The current minimum deal for veterans is around $75K, but in 2026 that number might be $150K-$200K.
She’s on a vested contract, if we did, we would have had to pay her anyway.
then I guess the tragedy is signing her in the first place.
The LA Sparks signed her to a multi-year deal. The Storm just traded for her and took on her contract. I wrote in my above comment some of the thought process as to why it shouldn't hamper them as much down the road.
Thank you for giving more context Jeff! I’ve been wondering why you hadn’t really been talking about her in your recaps. For me she’s more unfortunate of a signing/trade than Katie Lou, injury and all. I remember how Noelle talked about her at the beginning of the year and that just has not showed up at all. I would love her to prove me wrong but in the very limited minutes she’s played this season I just don’t see how that’s possible.
Re:Lexie. I wasn’t “excited” about the signing, but I didn’t think it was a bad signing. Her first minutes weren’t great offensively or defensively-she looked lost, but I did feel like she was making some progress with the minimal minutes she was getting…and then that got derailed with her illness. I hope she proves you (and me to a point) wrong too. I don’t know what to think of our bench. Everyone is a bit all over the place. If you look back at Horston last year, even she was all over the place offensively and she to Jeff’s point was our best bench player. We don’t have anyone that is consistently producing significant points off the bench which pressures our starters. Tiffany Mitchell has been a pleasant surprise tho.
She has Crohn's disease. I'm pretty sure all the games she has missed due to "illness" have been flare ups of that. The hope when acquiring her was that she had it under control after getting diagnosed a year and a half ago. If she could return to the way she was playing in 2001, we'd all be happy. Obviously it has not worked out, and the fact she's on a guaranteed contract has made things pretty rough on us now that KLS got hurt. (Also I think the contract was a sign-and-trade that we negotiated with her, not an LA decision that we inherited. Obv with her illness she wanted the guarantee (and it's why she's one of only 2 vets who signed a contract that runs past the new CBA into next year). I suspect we needed to do that or she would have gone elsewhere, though we do also sometimes overpay for vets we think can help so it could also be that.)
Lexie Brown had already signed that two year deal or maybe it was originally a three-year deal with the LA Sparks. I think Curt Miller signed her to that deal when he was in LA. The Storm didn't sign her to a guaranteed contract. They just inherited her contract when they made the trade for her to move down in the draft. From the middle of the 2nd round to the first pick of the 3rd round.
If we look back at the draft board, they didn't really lose much by making that trade. Lucy Olsen is pretty much the only player drafted after the pick they sent to LA and before the pick they received from LA. They could have taken JJ Quinerly, but they could have had her in the 3rd round instead of Serena Sundell. But I don't really blame them for taking Sundell there. She was projected to go before Quinerly and had better size.
Yeah I remember Noelle talking in the preseason about seeing her play internationally this past off season and how well she was playing and that she’d gotten healthy. I was optimistic about her offensive contribution potential especially from 3 to start the season but obviously hasn’t been that. It’s been really disheartening that we essentially have 10 players and until Tiffany Mitchell, no reliable vets off the bench. Alysha Clark has had a real scoring drought, tho she’s decent defensively despite getting beat on fast breaks, and Zia Cooke has had 1 bucket in the last 4 games? Every time I get excited about our play our shallow bench really checks me about having much hope for the post season.
A tragedy is right - one of the stupidest moves that the FO has ever made! The idea of signing a player who has a disease as serious as Crohn's Disease t a 2-year guaranteed contract is absurd. I don't believe that any other ownership group would ever have taken that kind of a risk. They need to figure out a way to redeem themselves. That was more than stupid.