The 2021 WNBA season is still months away but Howard Megdal is already laying it on the line with fearless predictions about what’s to come.
In these uncertain times, it can be an impossible task to try and process the present, let alone predict the future.
So I’d urge you to stick with me on what to expect in 2021. After all, in my 2019 predictions, I accurately foretold of COVID-19, the fall of Quibi, and the rise of Betnijah Laney. Here’s where to pop that link in, you guys. What? Can’t find it? Oh well.
Accordingly, given this track record, please take these fearless 2021 predictions as nothing less than prophecies. That they are hopeful, as I sit here in my home and ponder yet another month without the rush of covering basketball in person, is as much a balm to my own emotional state as it is to yours.
FEARLESS PREDICTION 1: Sabrina Ionescu at sold-out Barclays
Okay, so I don’t know exactly when we’re going to reach that magic number of vaccinated Americans that allow us to pack into a hot summer arena. But everything points to that happening sometime between the beginning of the WNBA season, typically in May, and the end of that season in October.
And so, when it happens, you can be sure they’re going to pack into Barclays Center for an unveiling that both player and her team, the New York Liberty, have long deserved.
Remember: the New York Liberty, before 2020, never had the first overall pick. In what doesn’t feel like unrelated news, the Liberty have never won a WNBA title. But a fully supported franchise, with a real home, a signature star, and a public eager to rejoice out and about safely in the things that bring them joy — and Sabrina Ionescu’s game certainly qualifies — are going to make sure she finally has that experience in 2021.
FEARLESS PREDICTION 2: Charli Collier will be the No. 1 overall pick
This one might age poorly. The Liberty can bring back Amanda Zahui B. to play stretch-5, there are some big names in the free-agent pool, and Collier, who has been dominant for Texas this year as a junior, might decide to stay in Austin for another year and break all the records.
But she could also come out this spring, join Ionescu as a powerful 1-2 punch in Brooklyn, with the skills required of the position to be a star and a personality that will help sell the Liberty rebrand in the process. There’s not a player with a higher ceiling eligible for this draft, and the Liberty could well build around their first two top overall picks ever.
FEARLESS PREDICTION 3: Brittney Griner‘s tenure in Phoenix is over
You know who doesn’t sound like a general manager who is keeping Brittney Griner in 2021? Mercury GM Jim Pitman. Here’s what he had to say in this Jeff Metcalfe article about some allegations over the way Griner exited the bubble early in 2020:
“She’s under contract for two more years with us. We expect she’ll be a WNBA player and that we’ll look forward to getting the best group we can together to win. Hopefully, she’ll be back and playing. I have no reason to doubt that.”
So, right, “we expect she’ll be a WNBA player” isn’t exactly the ringing endorsement of a player you drafted and built around, who is signed for another two years at the supermax salary level. Have you ever heard a GM say that about a player that’s already been placed on the trading block?
That’s some distancing. Expect Griner to play elsewhere, whether that’s in the league or out of it, since she remains one of the premier talents in the world. But whatever went down in Bradenton, it sure sounds like it changed the way Phoenix values Brittney Griner.
FEARLESS PREDICTION 4: Tina Charles will win Comeback Player of the Year
Yes, things ended poorly in New York. But I feel like there’s a collective amnesia about how good Tina Charles is when she wants to be there.
No, Tina Charles didn’t want to play in Westchester anymore, though to be fair, nobody did. But she does love Mike Thibault, her coach in DC, assuming she re-signs (and Thibault certainly thinks so), and she’s going to get a ton of time at the 5, single-covered, in an offense featuring Elena Delle Donne and Natasha Cloud, Ariel Atkins and Emma Meesseman, Aerial Powers and Myisha Hines-Allen.
Tina Charles is a generational talent in a supporting role. I’m just waiting for the look on her face after the first game she plays in, really, ever, where she isn’t triple-teamed. The box score’s going to be popping when it happens, too.
FEARLESS PREDICTION 5: The Elena Delle Donne-Breanna Stewart showdown we all deserve is coming
Over the last three years, the two figures who have come to both represent the new, inside-outside vanguard of players to follow in Candace Parker’s footsteps are Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne. Stewart won the 2018 MVP, 2018 and 2020 WNBA titles, with a pair of Finals MVPs to go with them; Delle Donne took home the MVP and title in 2019.
But we still haven’t gotten the following: a healthy Stewart and a healthy Delle Donne, start to finish, with a battle in the Finals for supremacy.
Delle Donne was playing on a deep bone bruise in the 2018 Finals. Stewart tore her Achilles and missed all of 2019. And Delle Donne rightfully opted out of the 2020 season over concerns stemming from her Lyme Disease.
These are the two players we’re going to look back on when we talk about the current period of the WNBA first, though A’ja Wilson, the 2020 MVP, is doing all she can to make it a triumvirate. We deserve, very much, a 2021 season that includes a full-strength Delle Donne-Stewart series.
Says here we’ll get one.
And remember, this is from the guy who predicted everything that happened in 2020.