Tankathon Check-in
To be clear, no one in the WNBA is currently tanking on purpose (at least, the players aren’t). That being said, let’s see where our teams are right now in the lottery standings and where they project to end up (chart vaguely organized by rightmost column). Las Vegas is technically the No. 8 seed right now, but I’m not believing an A’ja Wilson team is at risk of missing the playoffs at this point in the season.
| Team: | Games back in lottery1: | Games back of No. 8 seed: | Strength of schedule remaining (out of 13)1: | Likely finish: |
| Dallas | ——— | 4.5 | 3rd-strongest (11th-easiest) | No. 1 or No. 2 lottery odds |
| Los Angeles4 | 0.5 | 3 | 5 | No. 1 or No. 2 lottery odds |
| Chicago2 | 5 | 3.5 | 1 | No. 3 or No. 4 lottery odds |
| Golden State | 4 | -0.5 | 4 | Low playoff seed or No. 3 or No. 4 lottery odds |
| Connecticut3 | 17.5 | 6 | 2 | Worst lottery odds |
| Washington | 9.5 | ——— | 12 | Low playoff seed or No. 4 lottery odds |
2. Minnesota owns Chicago’s pick
3. Chicago owns the rights to Connecticut’s pick if the Sun finish worse than the Mercury
4. Seattle owns Los Angeles’ pick
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Atlanta Dream
Te-Hina Paopao is well on her way to being one of the greatest shooters of all time. Or at least being statistically recognized alongside the all-time great shooters.
Paopao last week became the 10th true rookie to make 14 threes in a four-game span, per Sports Reference, and did so on just 19 attempts — a 73.7% mark, by far the highest of anyone on that list. She is shooting 17-for-26 on catch-and-shoot 3-pointers on the season per Synergy, good for a 65.4% mark. That is not only the highest mark in the league, but the next-closest player with as many attempts is Kennedy Burke, 12.5 percentage points lower.
Connecticut Sun
Jacy Sheldon is averaging over her last eight games: 10.6 points on 57.4/51.6/100 shooting splits (FG%/3P%/FT%) — a 74.5% true-shooting — 1.9 assists against 1.0 turnover, 1.3 steals in 26.1 minutes.
The names of the other 30 players who have had such a strong offensive streak (double-digit scoring, incredible efficiency, more assists than turnovers), per Across The Timeline, are pretty notable: With only a couple of exceptions, all are or were plus offensive players for several years.
Is Sheldon at that point yet? Eh, probably not. Even for how good she’s been during this heater, she’s only sixth in shots for what is, per Her Hoop Stats, one of the worst teams in league history. She’s not good right now at forcing the issue off the ball and creating openings if they don’t present themselves.
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That being said, there have been legitimate steps forward for Sheldon. She is being far more decisive off the catch when she does get the ball, with a more efficient power transfer in her spot-up 3-point form and a stronger drive to get downhill (pun intended). She’s finishing at a rate above 90% at the rim, per Synergy, after barely sneaking above 50% last year. Defensively, she has been much smoother chasing over screens, and has looked more comfortable pressuring the ball and managing physicality both at the point of attack and going downhill.
Given her game at Ohio State, it’s probably not a bad bet to think those process improvements for Sheldon could continue to stick even after the shot comes back to Earth. Being so low-usage during such a streak isn’t encouraging for her ceiling, but there’s still room to slot in as the fourth- or fifth-best offensive player on a good offense.
Phoenix Mercury
The Mercury are 12-4, now second in the WNBA after beating a Liberty team that was missing Jonquel Jones and Leonie Fiebich. Their Pythagorean win-loss record, also referred to as “expected win-loss” or “second-order win-loss”, is 10-6. I won’t get into the math here, but the important point is that Pythagorean record leverages points scored and points allowed to output a stronger predictor of future results than standard win-loss.
Only a couple of other teams have outperformed their Pythagorean records by even one game — Indiana and Dallas have actually underperformed by multiple games. So, by a generally handy-if-surface-level metric, Phoenix is overperforming.
But that shouldn’t be taken as wholly predictive either. The Mercury’s net rating is over 5.5 points shy of New York’s, but their net rating in games Alyssa Thomas has played is 10.7, which translates fairly close to their actual win-loss. It’s also in the same zip code, but still not the same neighborhood, as the Liberty. Regardless, those two head-to-head wins are banked and may matter for playoff seeding.
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Washington Mystics
Shakira Austin over her last seven games: 16.1 points on 51.7/0.0/74.2 — 56.1% true-shooting — 8.4 rebounds (2.6 offensive), 1.9 assists, 1.1 steals, 1.3 blocks in 25.8 minutes.
Austin had one of the more impressive rookie seasons in recent WNBA history in 2022 before showing outlier offensive development in early 2023. The way her game was going, the sky was the limit. Then she suffered a hip strain and missed 16 games, came back for six games, and got shut down again for the rest of that season. She had surgery that offseason to repair a torn hip labrum, playing the first six games in 2024 before reaggravating the injury and missing 19 games. She came back for another six games only to lose the rest of the season to a left lateral ankle sprain.
Serious hip injuries take time to come all the way back from in basketball — just ask Sylvia Fowles or Justė Jocytė. As our Mystics beat Jenn Hatfield wrote last weekend, the team brought Austin along quite slowly and deliberately early this season, and it’s paid off both on the stat sheet and in her process, which, as she described, has slowed down quite smoothly. This has culminated in her averaging 20 points, 9.5 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.5 steals over her last four games, against the likes of Brittney Griner, Brionna Jones, Alanna Smith and A’ja Wilson.
If Austin can stay healthy, which is far from a given, this may be a continuation of the leap that was cut short two years ago.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the group that owns the Washington Mystics, holds a minority stake in The Next. The Next’s editorial operations are entirely independent of Monumental and all other business partners.
