Let's go back in time for a moment. The year? 2023, which is, admittedly, not very long ago, which means it shouldn't be hard for you to remember it.
The WNBA Draft was approaching. South Carolina center Aliyah Boston was the consensus No. 1 pick, but the draft felt wide open beyond that. I was personally convinced that there was one player who stood out above the rest as the second-best player in the class, though: Stanford guard Haley Jones.
WNBA general managers clearly didn't agree with me, because Jones wasn't picked second. Or third. Or fourth. She fell out of the lottery and ended up going No. 6 overall to the Atlanta Dream, who then cut her after two seasons. The reason why seems clear in retrospect: Jones does a lot of good things on the basketball court, but she doesn't shoot the ball at a WNBA level.
It's a problem, but I still believe in Jones, and her recent hardship signing with the Dallas Wings should give her the best chance she's had to showcase why she belongs in the league, even with the scoring concerns.
Haley Jones should get a chance to shine in Dallas
The Wings have lost their primary backup point guard, Tyasha Harris, and backup wing, Maddy Siegrist, to injuries. Harris is out for the season. Siegrist will be out for a while still.
This has made for a rough bench situation. In Tuesday's win over the Golden State Valkyries, Kaila Charles — who the team cut and then brought back on a hardship after the Li Yueru trade — played 23 minutes and rookie Aziaha James got her first WNBA start. Meanwhile, Paige Bueckers played all but 1:30 of the game.
James struggled with her shot, and it wouldn't be a shock to see some of her minutes go to Jones soon. James is shooting just 25.0 percent from the floor this year; if you're going to give a non-shooter wing minutes, why not give them to Jones, who brings ball-handling skill to the floor as well?
Not that the Wings need more ball-handlers. The best thing for Dallas is to have the ball in Bueckers' hands. But with defenses having to zero in on the backcourt talent of Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale, there should be open space for Jones to work off the ball.
Here's the thing with Jones: She's struggled to shoot the ball in the WNBA, but there's some reason to think that on a team with better spacing than she played on in Atlanta, she can figure something out. Yes, Jones is a career 22.4 percent shooter from 3-point range, but she did have one solid shooting year at Stanford before falling off a cliff beyond that. In a lower-usage role with the ball out of her hands, could Jones give Dallas something close to average shooting? No one's saying she needs to be great. If she can improve to, let's say, the 40th percentile as a shooter, there would be some upside there.
Even if there's no reason to think that actually happens, the Wings have won two games! Experimenting with various combinations and seeing who might work beside Bueckers is the most important thing this team can do, so they should definitely be trying to figure out if Jones can be someone who sticks around on the bench in the future.