"I feel like Satou has limitless potential and is a crazy athlete so I’m super excited to see how good she becomes," said Holly Winterburn
Friday 14 August 2020 07:59, UK
The winner of the WNBA Rookie of the Year race is almost guaranteed a great career, which is something that is not promised to many players.
The limited number of league roster spots means that it is difficult to secure regular contracts, but a look back over the award winners suggests a long, successful career.
Recently, the names of Napheesa Collier, A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, Jewell Loyd, Chiney Ogwumike and Elena Delle Donne show champions and MVPs. And going back even further sees even more success: Nneka Ogwumike, Maya Moore, Tina Charles, Angel McCoughtry, Candace Parker, Seimone Augustus, Diana Taurasi, Cheryl Ford, Tamika Catchings, Chamique Holdsclaw - all these have, and some are still building, great legacies in the game.
So is the award something Satou Sabally and her fellow Dallas Wings rookie are thinking about?
"Not at all. I’m not having any discussions about that," she said. "I don’t think it’s important to think about that and as a team we have other rookies that think the same, so that’s why it’s not coming up. We’re going to focus on the fact that we want to win. If we play well then certain things might come, but no."
Sabally is currently the third leading scoring rookie so far in the first quarter of this season. Sitting at number two is Sabrina Ionescu, who suffered an ankle injury that should see her sit out at least half the season, so her candidacy for the award has largely disappeared.
The current ROY favourite, and the top offensive first-year player by a big gap, has been Chennedy Carter - the Atlanta Dream guard, who should be entering her final year in college in a few weeks.
The common denominator among these players is that they play on three of the youngest teams in the league. Ionescu is one of seven rookies on the New York Liberty, Carter is one of three rookies on the Dream, along with one second-year player. And the Wings have three rookies, four sophomores and nobody with more than four years experience.
So each team is very much on the shoulders of this young trio. Sabally, however, has the benefit of support from another great young player. Second-year guard Arike Ogunbowale is second in the league in usage, while Sabally also sits in the top 20.
The rookie has the potential to explode offensively but she doesn’t need to. Ogunbowale is averaging 20 points per game, but a 23-point, 17-rebound outing against the Indiana Fever shows Sabally can show out.
Her issue so far has been efficiency, especially from distance. Through the first seven games, she shot just 36% from the floor, but it’s not that she’s taking bad shots: half of her attempts were within eight feet of the rim, where she shot 53%, while nearly a third of her shots were from beyond the arc, where she hit 12.5% in her first seven games.
But this is an area that should improve as Sabally continues in her career. During her three years in college with the Oregon Ducks, she averaged 38.6% from distance and had the confidence of her team-mates from that range.
Former Ducks team-mate Holly Winterburn, who is now returning to the UK to play for the Leicester Riders again, said: "Satou will figure her shooting out. I played with her everyday and she was one of the best shooters on our team. I have full confidence in her.
"I feel like Satou has limitless potential and is a crazy athlete so I’m super excited to see how good she becomes."
Sabally knows she has a lot to learn in the pros, and it’s difficult to do that without any veterans to teach her, but the Wings coaching staff is conscious of the team’s youth.
Assistant coach and WNBA legend Crystal Robinson said: "I think for us as a group it’s about learning things. We’re going to compete every single game but we’re going to be learning how to execute defensive schemes and be tough enough to get the shots we want when the opponent tries to run us out of our offense."
This has borne out so far as the team has shown flashes of good defense, but without consistency, and has occasionally been shaken out of their offense. This is to be expected from a young group but they are outperforming the other two teams.
Robinson continued: "We have to judge our team on whether they're getting better or not. We have three really good rookies who were ready to come into this league and be effective.
"Now it’s about learning how to be effective, to play through pain and adversity, learning how to bounce back when you don’t play well and making sure you don’t stew in it. Those are the kinds of things that are going to make us a good team."
Between the youthful rosters on the Liberty, the Dream and the Wings, the latter are having the most success. This is perhaps because the first two are so heavily reliant on Ionescu and Carter, respectively, while Sabally, and the other rookies in Dallas, have more of a team-first approach.
Wings rookie center Bella Alarie said: "All of us have really big goals for ourselves, and that brings out the best in us and makes us competitive. There’s no fighting at all in practice.
"We’re always supporting each other and want to see each other succeed. Because when we succeed, our team is going to be better."
While it’s perhaps too early to determine who the leader is of this group is, Sabally is a strong voice. Not only is she a well-spoken and charismatic person, her enthusiasm to be one of just six players on the WNBA’s Social Justice Council shows that she is thinking bigger than herself off the court.
But on the court, Sabally was keen to highlight the good work of her team-mates.
She said: "Katie[-Lou Samuelson] has helped on the defensive end. She’s really vocal and leads by example by defending the best player on the other teams and I personally can learn a lot from her.
"Since I live with Arike, I can learn a lot from her and she’s been helping me on the offensive side and calming me down, and I’m really close with Astou Ndour.
"I’ve been able to learn a lot from them because they’re amazing people who want to teach me. It’s an amazing combination.
"But honestly everyone is doing a good job of sharing their experiences and what they think in the games we really have good communication - even though we are so young."
Whether or not Sabally is the best rookie this year, she is doing enough to ensure her career is a lengthy one. Her presence in the league is further evidence that the WNBA is in an incredibly strong position to continue the Say Her Name and Black Lives Matter campaigns beyond this season - and she is a great, eloquent person to help market a growing league.
On top of all that, the Wings are ready to take flight, with Sabally and Ogunbowale leading the formation.
