Connecticut Sun, Washington Mystics and Las Vegas Aces dominate WNBA awards picks
Check out our awards picks for WNBA Defensive Player of the Year, Coach of the Year, Sixth Woman of the Year, All-WNBA teams and more.
Another WNBA season is in the books, and before the playoffs start Wednesday night with a double-header on ESPN, let’s say goodbye to the 2019 season with the rest of our awards picks.
If you missed it, check out my case for Napheesa Collier as Rookie of the Year and Elena Delle Donne as MVP. Those two were pretty easy to decide for me, but the rest are tight. Here we go!
Coach of the Year:
1. Mike Thibault, Washington Mystics
2. James Wade, Chicago Sky
3. Curt Miller, Connecticut Sun
At some point, you have to reward greatness, even if it’s become commonplace. At this point in Mike Thibault’s incredible career, it may feel like overkill to give the Washington head coach/general manager his fourth COY trophy. Don’t overthink this. In just his third season with superstar Elena Delle Donne, the 68-year-old basketball lifer has engineered a system that is changing the WNBA.
Without a traditional point guard or center, Thibault instead uses the incredible gravity of his superstar to create space in the half-court on offense. Washington’s offensive efficiency was 12 points per 100 possessions better than the second-place team. All those similarly sized players also allow Thibault to simplify Delle Donne’s role on defense and suffocate opponents by switching almost every screen. No one in the league is doing better at their job than Thibault.
Close behind him is James Wade, the longtime WNBA assistant who transformed a roster that went 13-21 this year into the No. 5 seed. The Sky are unstoppable in transition, they space the floor, and their defense moved toward the middle of the pack after a last-place finish in 2018.
Defense is also at the core of Miller’s candidacy, as the Sun improved their defensive efficiency by 5 points per 100 possession compared with 2018. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the Sun defense is a trustworthy strength this season. Miller has helped turn Jonquel Jones into a Defensive Player of the Year candidate and capitalized on the versatility of his roster to strangle opponents, allowing just 98.7 points per 100 possessions this year.
Executive of the Year: Dan Padover/Bill Laimbeer, Las Vegas Aces
After 2018 WNBA MVP runner-up Liz Cambage initially demanded a trade from the Dallas Wings to the Los Angeles Sparks, the Aces capitalized on the respect between Laimbeer and Cambage to acquire the Aussie center and turned it into a tremendous success in Year One. Laimbeer is the President of Basketball Operations in Las Vegas while Padover is the day-to-day leader. Together, they built a roster around Cambage that is a threat for the 2019 championship.
Their first move was drafting Jackie Young first overall in the 2019 draft, snagging the youngest of the top prospects and added depth with Sydney Colson and Sugar Rodgers. They capped off their season by signing Epiphanny Prince late in the year for a fresh scoring punch. A core of A’ja Wilson, Kayla McBride and Kelsey Plum was going to put Las Vegas in playoff contention, but Laimbeer and Padover shepherded them to a 4-seed as well as a championship-caliber team for the foreseeable future.
Defensive Player of the Year:
1. Natasha Howard, Seattle Storm
2. Jonquel Jones, Connecticut Sun
3. Nneka Ogwumike, Los Angeles Sparks
This was the hardest category outside of All-WNBA. With all due respect to Sylvia Fowles, Brittney Griner and Liz Cambage, it came down to these three, who anchor three of the top five defenses in the WNBA. For Fowles and Griner, the on/off impact just wasn’t strong enough, and they were a touch below their typical elite level. Cambage’s statistical case is stronger than ever, but it’s clear when watching that her incredible teammates are just as big a reason for the Aces’ strong D, if not bigger. The Aces’ strength is in their discipline and intelligence, and teams can still take advantage of Cambage in space despite her career-high 5.1 percent block rate.
The Storm defense allowed 11.7 points fewer per 100 possessions when Howard was on the court. Without her, they wouldn’t sniff the top five. Howard also gets credit for an adjustment in playing alongside second-year standout Mercedes Russell this year. Though Russell was great as a rim protector, Howard’s role changed with a traditional big rather than Breanna Stewart at center. Seattle’s offense also benefited from Howard’s defensive playmaking, as the All-Star was third in steal rate and eighth in block rate this year, igniting easy transition plays. Storm opponents’ effective field goal rate was 1.2 percentage points lower when Howard was on the court, another indicator of just how valuable her roaming free safety role was for Seattle.
The Sun defense only moved one spot higher (to No. 5) in league rankings this season, but Jones’ development as a rim protector brings a new dimension. Starting 4 Alyssa Thomas can defend anyone and Connecticut’s size is intimidating, but Jones’ long arms are the ultimate trump card in the halfcourt. No one’s going near her. Jones led the league in block rate at 6.4 percent, a career-high as well, considerably higher than Cambage’s 5.1 percent mark. Jones also makes Connecticut one of the best defensive rebounding teams in the WNBA, as they are effectively tied with Las Vegas in offensive rebound rate allowed, and while Jones averaged eight defensive rebounds per 36 minutes, no other Connecticut player grabbed more than 6.4.
Though Ogwumike doesn’t quite have the defensive impact on the Sparks’ efficiency as her counterparts on this list, her job this year has been more difficult. With Candace Parker out the first 12 games of the year and at less than 100 percent most of the season, Ogwumike has shared the frontcourt with a carousel of lesser players. Rookie Kalani Brown and the score-first big Maria Vadeeva alternated while Parker was out, and Ogwumike has also had to rediscover chemistry with her sister, Chiney, with whom she last played at Stanford nearly a decade ago. Ogwumike also doesn’t pile up blocks like most WNBA bigs, but her positioning, functional strength and mobility are incredibly effective. She dissuades shooters more than she smacks the ball in their faces.
Most Improved Player: Dearica Hamby, Las Vegas Aces
Runner-up: Alysha Clark, Seattle Storm
My preference for MIP is always a veteran who’s been in the league for several years and unexpectedly adds a new level of efficiency, skill or both to their game. Both women on this list check those boxes.
Hamby’s value isn’t just a result of more minutes given from Laimbeer. She has taken more 3s than at any point in her WNBA career and made 32 percent. Carrying over from last year is an elite level of playmaking for her position, with a 13.4 percent assist rate that is particularly hard to deal with in transition. Hamby also has rebounded better than ever before, playing the 4 more often. Altogether, she carries the greatest on/off value of any Aces player.
Similarly, Clark at age 31 turned in one of the best shooting seasons you’ll ever see, shooting 48 percent on 3s and notching a 60.2 true shooting percentage. Another indication of the greater degree of difficulty of her production this season is an unforeseen 15.8 percent assist rate and 15.3 percent usage rate. The ball was in Clark’s hands more than ever, and she answered the call for Seattle.
Sixth Woman of the Year: Dearica Hamby, Las Vegas Aces; Runner-up: Aerial Powers, Washington Mystics
The case for Hamby as MIP isn’t far off from her 6WOY case. Though we all know candidates for this award can’t start the majority of games they play, it’s my preference that sixth players show a little role versatility. With Wilson missing time for the Aces near mid-season, Hamby stepped in capably and Las Vegas barely missed a beat. Laimbeer has found minutes for Hamby consistently to help solve his usage issue among the team’s stars. She doesn’t need to shoot to help the team, and she doesn’t have to start, either.
It felt silly not to reward someone from Washington’s bench in this category, especially without a second clear-cut candidate behind Hamby. Like the Aces’ star role player, Powers has occasionally stepped into the starting lineup and often plays with the starters even when the team is healthy. She shot 36 percent from deep this season and functioned at a high level as one of the Mystics’ pseudo-point guards.
All-WNBA First Team: Courtney Vandersloot, Kayla McBride, Delle Donne, Ogwumike, Jones
All-WNBA Second Team: Courtney Williams, Chelsea Gray, Diamond DeShields, Howard, Cambage
Rather than revisit what I’ve already written about these players, I’ll mention the notable omissions here to give you a sense of who these 10 beat out.
Honorable mentions: DeWanna Bonner, Chiney Ogwumike, Allie Quigley, Kristi Toliver, Brittney Griner, Leilani Mitchell, Sylvia Fowles, Odyssey Sims, Napheesa Collier, Alyssa Thomas, A’ja Wilson, Tina Charles, Arike Ogunbowale, Tiffany Hayes
A couple of details on the decisions that were toughest for me:
Williams over Sims: The Minnesota Lynx guard wasn’t as efficient as Williams, and Sims was in my opinion the third-most important player on her team, whereas the Sun don’t finish in the top five in both offense and defense without Williams.
DeShields over Bonner: The second-year Sky wing plays like a spinning top, and both players finished with lackluster efficiency on the season. So the tiebreaker went to DeShields, whose defense was more impressive this season and who was a more consistent player for a better team. You feel DeShields every time you play Chicago. Bonner disappeared too often for Phoenix.
Cambage over Griner: The Aces center made real strides as a playmaker and rim protector in her first season with Laimbeer and Wilson, while this was far from Griner’s finest season. Not only was she noticeably less impactful defensively than usual, but Griner also hurt her team’s playoff seeding with a three-game suspension and multiple ejections. When the margins are slim, those disappearances matter, as they did for Phoenix’s place in the standings.