The narrow window for the Seattle Storm — Dan Hughes talks WNBA past and present

Basketball Wednesday

Presented by The BIG EAST Conference

Similarly, the teams peaking at the right time — New York, Minnesota, Indiana — are changing, in real time, what it will mean to face them in the playoffs. A season of data is a lot less important today than how a team is playing right now, or more precisely, just a little past right now.

Which brings us to the Seattle Storm. Noelle Quinn‘s team enters Wednesday night’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks all but settled in their immediate postseason destiny. Barring some truly unlikely outcomes, the Storm will either finish with the fifth seed, meaning a first round series against the Las Vegas Aces, or the fourth seed, meaning a first round series against … the Las Vegas Aces. The Fever dug themselves just enough of a hole to likely cap their ceiling at sixth, while Connecticut righted their ship and settled into third or higher.

In just 11 days, this will culminate in a first round series chock full of star power, one that will result in an unpalatable early exit for the loser, while the winner gets … the Liberty, who look like the best team in the league right now.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing to me about the Seattle Storm is that, up and down the roster, there are players who know what it takes to win it all, Nneka Ogwumike and Jewell Loyd among them, while Quinn is a brilliant basketball mind with championship pedigree as a player. Adding Gabby Williams in-season has been a challenge, but as Storm assistant Pokey Chatman told me, laughing, “I’ll take that challenge anytime!”

So it was fascinating, if not surprising, to hear Quinn discuss what she saw as a gap between where the Storm were and where they needed to be, when she met with the media last week in New York.

“They’ve never played with each other before,” Quinn said of her Gabby-included group. “They have no reps together. As good as each of them are individuals, it’s about trying to find chemistry and comfort and all those things. And that doesn’t come overnight. That doesn’t come with a few games. It doesn’t even come with practice. It comes with time … . what we had, it’s not going to happen right away, but it’s happening right now. And I think that our rhythm is pretty good — to see some confidence, some chemistry.”

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However you slice it, there’s still space between the Seattle Storm and the top teams this season. Their net rating of 5.8 ranks fourth among all teams, just ahead of the Aces, and in solid contender category — but much of that damage was done in the middle of the season. The Storm, in the past seven games with Williams, have a net rating of just 1.1, seventh in the WNBA over that span. Their net rating peaked in July, when Seattle was at 13.4 (best in the league), before dropping precipitously in August to -5.3.

The reason why was pretty simple: in July, the Storm were hitting their shots. They haven’t really done enough of that since, and it’s particularly glaring from the perimeter. Diggins-Smith hit 41.9% of her threes in a span from late May to mid-June when Seattle won seven of eight games, but she’s well below 30% on the season. Outside of that eight-game stretch, Seattle’s record is just 14-13. It’s not totally out of character, as Diggins-Smith’s accuracy from deep has varied widely throughout her career. But it suggests that, without defenses needing to worry about her 3-point shooting, the entire offense has a lower ceiling, even for all of Diggins-Smith’s freelance brilliance.

The real shocker is seeing Loyd shooting 28.3% from deep in 2024 (she was at 37.2% from 2020 to 2023) and Sami Whitcomb, a career 36.2% shooter from beyond the arc, shooting just 28.9%. As a team, Seattle is last in the WNBA in 3-point shooting, at 28.1%. Can a team win a title at that level from deep? Hard to imagine. I’ve spent the whole season assuming they’d normalize, and they still might! But right — the playoffs are almost here.

Both Quinn and New York Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello talked about the time it takes for a group to come together, with Brondello noting that her Liberty were in a similar spot a year ago. The problem for this Seattle Storm team is they really aren’t built for the long-term. Diggins-Smith is 34, as is Ogwumike, who is a free agent following this season. Diggins-Smith and Loyd are only signed through 2025 (like almost the entire league). So while building a team takes time, the Storm may not have much of it.

Seattle Storm general manager Talisa Rhea, Chatman and company absolutely made the right play — add talent around the ‘Hall of Famer who stayed’ in Loyd, and take another shot at winning a championship. The window to do so is pretty narrow, though, and may well be measured in weeks, not years.

Stathead Stat of the Week

Breanna Stewart is the first player in WNBA history to have 38+ points and 18+ rebounds in any game, regular season or playoffs.

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This week in women’s basketball

Great stuff from Kareem Copeland on the long tail of the 2024 WNBA Draft.

Technically baseball, but: Billie Jean King was named Executive Producer of the women’s baseball documentary See Her, Be Her and I am awfully excited to see it.

Watch the trailer here.

Thoughts are with Lisa Fortier, wishing her nothing but good health from here.

A tough news cycle for commissioner Cathy Engelbert. It’s hard to know how to solve the cesspool of social media abuse (and my heart aches for every player who needs to be on social media for brand-building purposes but has to hear from the raw sewage humans who spew racist/sexist/homophobic garbage) but the tone in Engelbert’s follow-up tweet, leaving no safe harbor for it, is the right one going forward.

Angel Reese was an all star despite shooting 39.1% from the field. That’s a feature, not a bug, when you’re talking about a rookie who is likely to get even better (and told me that’s her major focus this coming off-season). Get well soon, Angel.

The Mystics are already looking ahead.

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Five at The IX: Dan Hughes