WNBA Notes: Sonia Citron debuts, Kelsey Plum is the offense

Indiana Fever

When we last checked in on Aliyah Boston, she had rapidly developed the kind of processing speed needed to make her a force in ball screens with Caitlin Clark. This decision-making would allow the duo to vary their timing and angles (both of the screen and the roll) to effectively guarantee that either two went to the ball or a switch was forced.

Consider this our final check-in on that aspect of Boston’s game (barring some kind of historic improvement or extreme backslide in this regard). She’s not averaging over three assists like she was for a long stretch in 2024, but that’s both because defenses are respecting Indiana’s off-ball threats more this year, so there are fewer reasons to pass. Also, Boston is making over 60% of her shots.

In mathematical terms, the only reason for Boston to pass out of any one-on-one is to a great shooter who is already open. She demolished the Liberty defense yesterday (27 points on 19 shots, 13 rebounds (six offensive) and two assists). While the stats are impressive on their own, it’s the speed of her processing that creates these opportunities: slipping high pick-n-rolls at just the right moment, keeping the ball on possible dribble handoffs, or just generally making solid decisions when her scoring gravity does its work.

Boston so far has nine assists and just three turnovers on the season. No one has ever had a 12% assist rate and 5% turnover rate in a qualified season, per Sports Reference.

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Los Angeles Sparks

For the first time in nearly a decade, Plum Ball is back. The closest comparison for Plum Ball is “the closest thing women’s basketball has had to how Stephen Curry plays” — outside of the second half of Georgia Amoore’s junior season at Virginia Tech — because of how Kelsey Plum’s constant movement and 3-point threat both on and off the ball are leveraged together. It’s also something completely unique, because Plum is a walking paint touch.

These features of Plum’s game were what Mike Neighbors built the Washington offense around during her undergrad years, and her collegiate career 32.5% usage rate frankly undersells just how much she was moving. The Sparks have adopted that framework, and the surrounding cast has held up its end of the bargain enough to make this work to some extent. It’s true that injuries to Rickea Jackson and Rae Burrell have hurt the offense, as has Odyssey Sims’ inability to make two-pointers. But the arrangement is working for Plum, who is working at a combination of volume and efficiency matched only by the best offensive players in league history. It’s also working for Dearica Hamby and Azurá Stevens, who are having the best offensive seasons of their careers and probably will continue to do so even after they stop hitting threes at well-above-career-average rates.

In the coming weeks, I’ll get into the mechanics of how Plum’s scoring gravity and motor bend each possession to create a league-average offense in spite of having only a couple capable shot-creators (Plum and to varying degrees Hamby and Jackson) and a roster that even at full strength has only five or six established WNBA-caliber contributors. In the meantime, keep an eye on Plum’s pull-up shooting; she’s always been capable of being this kind of heliocentric player, but only a couple times has she been a good enough pull-up shooter to have that translate to consistently efficient offense. An offense built around her ability to hit from anywhere whenever she wants means she has to actually hit those shots at a high level.

Phoenix Mercury

I cannot get over this one possession from what was an excellent Mercury-Storm game on Friday. There is Satou Sabally, against the defender (Gabby Williams), whose game, more than anyone in league history, appears designed in a lab to guard her — especially at the point of attack. There is Nneka Ogwumike not hard hedging, which renders Alyssa Thomas’ slipping the screen mostly useless when Williams goes over. There are 14 seconds left on the shot clock.

And in spite of all that, Sabally just stops and pulls up with Williams’ hand in her face from 27 feet. An absolutely unreal player.

In other news, the following is a list of players in the past 15 years to have at least 20 points, five steals and three 3-pointers across their first three career games, per SR:

Lexi Held seems to be a good WNBA player, which is frankly surprising given what was very good production but nothing approaching the usual thresholds for being a legitimate pro from a mid-major, either on tape or on paper. It’s hard to imagine Nick U’Ren and his team were even looking directly for her when they did their international scouting this winter — unless they were casting a far wider net than I could possibly imagine.

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Given how international scouting usually goes, the story of Held getting to Phoenix likely stems from the Mercury front office looking at Kathryn Westbeld, who made significant strides in her game in recent years, and caught her game against Held in the Hungarian League. Held had 22 points on 9-for-17 shooting in that game, including four 3-pointers, plus four assists and four steals without a turnover. Two weeks later, she was on the Mercury.

I’ll look at the other Mercury role players next week and how they’ve built a shockingly good team out of what, as of now, is two stars and a bunch of mostly little-known role players.

Washington Mystics

Boy, does that Ariel Atkins trade look even better for Washington in hindsight! It seemed a bit steep at the time, given that Chicago was giving up a probably useless pick swap in addition to a 55 FV prospect at the No. 3 pick¹ for a player (Atkins) on an expiring deal who is herself a role 55. At best, it’s trading only four cheap years of a slightly worse player² for one expensive year of the slightly better player. At worst, it’s giving up four cheap years of a better player for one expensive year of the worse player, plus a lottery pick in exchange for a mid-first round pick.

The worst-case scenario may not happen — it’s a long season that we’re three or four games into and who knows which of these teams, if either, makes the playoffs — but the best-case scenario definitely isn’t happening. Citron is already hitting the higher end of the career outcomes spectrum as a scorer, having scored over 60 points on 51/47/88 shooting splits (FG%/3P%/FT%) while ranking 15th in the WNBA in turnover rate, per Her Hoop Stats. The list of players to even score 50 points on 50% from the field and 40% from three in their first four career games is:

Not that this says much, besides the idea that of the limited numbers of players who started their careers this well, you have likely future Hall of Famers, a solid role player who was limited by circulation issues, a 14-year W player, and an ABL star. The list of players who’ve hit those statistical marks at any point in their rookie seasons is around 80 names, but the vast majority of them were very good role players for many years.

Defenses will adjust to Citron, as they haven’t been running her off the line or forcing her to deny ball screens. Both will present issues, but they’re not big enough to likely change her game so much as force more passing out of a rep.

Citron will almost certainly never be the kind of point of attack defender that Atkins is, but she’s already shown some of the defensive ability that was obvious at Notre Dame. And thanks to her size and cutting, Citron’s offensive usage can be more varied than Atkins’.

Now that’s taken care of and I will try to avoid comparing these two extremely different players again.