The Connecticut Sun's historic win streak is showing no signs of slowing down, Jonquel Jones is powering the Las Vegas Aces into contention and the reigning champion Seattle Storm will have something to say in the playoffs. But which big three contender is taking home the 2021 title?
Friday 10 September 2021 17:10, UK
The run that the Phoenix Mercury are on behind the elite play of Brittney Griner is not to be disrespected. The success that the Minnesota Lynx are having with a healthy Sylvia Fowles should be applauded. And the Chicago Sky's new pieces still have the potential to put something special together.
But none of them are winning any championships this year. There’s only three true contenders in the WNBA Championship race for 2021.
You can feel it in Connecticut. The Sun have been rising through the regular season and the solstice is approaching. If they can get a win over the Phoenix Mercury on the weekend, they could secure the first top seed for the franchise since 2006, when they were coming off multiple Finals appearances.
It would also mark their 12th consecutive victory - tying the franchise record set in 2006.
The person leading the charge is MVP favourite Jonquel Jones. When she was out representing Bosnia & Herzegovina at EuroBasket, it was the only stretch of the season so far that Connecticut have struggled. They were 8-2 to start off, then managed a 2-3 record while she was away. Since her return, the Sun have lost one regular season game.
In this final stretch, they face a handful of sub-par teams, so they should be able to sew up the top seed ahead of the Las Vegas Aces.
When the team was being put together a few years ago around Chiney Ogwumike and Courtney Williams, they had real potential. Ogwumike left but they made it to the 2019 WNBA Finals, when the true stars began to emerge in Alyssa Thomas and Jones. Despite this, they proved inexperienced against the Washington Mystics.
Jones didn’t play in the Florida 'wubble' last year, but the team brought in DeWanna Bonner and made a hard push towards another Finals without their best player - falling just short in the penultimate round.
This season, Thomas has been out, but Jones and Bonner have led the charge, with Brionna Jones also developing into an All-Star. They might have the most underrated guard rotation in the league, with veteran Jasmine Thomas, emerging star Natisha Hiedeman and rookie DiJonai Carrington showing what they are capable of.
There is also discussion that Alyssa Thomas might return for the playoffs, which would put them at full strength and at their highest point in the sky in terms of potential. If this team is going to make their first championship run in franchise history, there is no better time than now.
The Las Vegas Aces made it to the Finals last season with a roster that might as well have been constructed out of random service staff at the campus in Bradenton, Florida. The team started the season without Liz Cambage and Kelsey Plum, lost Angel McCoughtry halfway through and then Dearica Hamby in the playoffs. But they still had A’ja Wilson during an MVP campaign.
Wilson put together a heroic effort to get past the Connecticut Sun team and face off against Seattle, but the Storm proved too colossal to take down and the MVP started to tire.
This season, they have every piece back, as well as adding Olympic gold medallist Chelsea Gray, former All-Star Riquana Williams, and witnessing the growth of Jackie Young into one of the most underrated guards in the league.
With all this deep guard rotation, there is never any let up in pace, and they average more than 81 possessions per game - the best in the league. In terms of bigs, they have the horses to finish on fast breaks with Wilson and Hamby, and with Cambage back and leading the team in points per 36 minutes, they have a player who can receive the ball down low and finish strong when Wilson is out of the game.
Every Aces player that regularly gets minutes is strong enough to fight anyone on defense, quick enough to punish turnovers and with the coaching savvy of Bill Laimbeer, they are all put into positions that avoids the overlapping talents getting in each other’s way.
The question will be how they will cope when the game slows down in the playoffs and match-ups and adjustments come into play during a multi-game series.
Yes, the Seattle Storm have been slipping recently, but if there’s one thing this team is not going to do, it’s panic.
Last year was the most chaotic season in WNBA history - starting late with a shorter schedule at a single location without fans. But nobody can prepare a team for an unprecedented situation like Sue Bird. Her leadership ensured the team got out to an incredible start and built up momentum and cohesiveness. Because she’s 40, she then suffered a niggling injury, but the team started out the season scorching hot with an 11-1 record.
From there the Storm kept success ticking over, and while they slowed down the winning ways towards the end of the season, they finished a joint best 18-4 and with a fully healthy roster ready to roll through the playoffs.
It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
This year, they started out 12-2 before seeing a few teams the second time around and easing off slightly. Then came the Olympic break, during which the Storm sent five players to Tokyo. Despite all of them playing until the final few days with USA and Australia, respectively, and battling jet lag, Bird, Breanna Stewart, Jewell Loyd, Steph Talbot and Ezi Magbegor returned and played significant minutes in the Commissioner’s Cup - embarrassing the well rested and highly prepared Connecticut Sun.
Since then, Seattle has dropped a handful of games and there is a feeling that the team has taken their foot off the gas. During the first 14 games, they averaged 88 points with a pace of 97.4 points per 100 possessions, but in the second set of 14 games, the Storm managed just 81 points with a pace of 95.5 per 100 possessions.
Over the past two games, they picked up the pace again to 97 and scored 95 points per game. It’s the time of year when they start focusing on the task in hand, and the most recent games are evidence of this. They have just two left in their regular season - a winnable one against the LA Sparks and a tough task versus the Phoenix Mercury - before the real work begins and they can aim to become the first team to win championships in back-to-back seasons since the LA Sparks in 2001 and 2002.
Earning a top-two seed would be ideal to secure a double-bye, but that fate is not necessarily in the hands of Seattle with only two games left and two teams ahead of them in the standings. If a third seed is as good as it gets, a single bye should be enough.
With Seattle’s multiple championship experience, and the fact that Loyd, Stewart and Bird could all be unrestricted free agents this off-season, according to Richard Cohen at Her Hoop Stats - not to mention that Bird could retire at any point - this might be the last season the big three play together.
They will be motivated, and have proven they can flip the switch when they need to against anyone, so don’t be fooled bye a handful of losses. This team will turn up when it needs to.
