The Seattle Storm and the Desperate Search for Talent

This post is a part of WNBA Week+.  During this stretch, I will release several blog posts related to the WNBA, including news stories, player discussions, and teams’ seasons.

 

While sports teams obviously care about talent, there is naturally a focus on how players fit with each other.  Teams across sports teams will naturally focus on both fit with playing style and chemistry both on and off the court.  This is something that occurs across sports no matter the strategy; for instance, a baseball team usually won’t have their 3 best players all be catchers, a soccer team want at least a couple players who can be strikers or offensive oriented (ironically, there was one year the USMNT had only one striker in the World Cup, and that player got injured in the first game), and a hockey team with an elite goalie won’t get another star goalie.  The same goes for basketball, as many teams will be nervous about playing multiple non-shooters on the court at the same time, multiple bigs who clog the paint, or several players who dominate the ball and don’t play as well off the ball.  While many would point to the Phoenix Suns in the NBA as the team who tried to ignore fit to favor talent (we all saw how the Kevin Durant-Devin Booker-Bradley Beal fit went), there is a WNBA team that I have considered as notorious is the Seattle Storm.  This year is the third season out of the last four where they tried making a move that focused on talent without worrying about the fit, while we saw it totally implode after their last two moves.

In 2022, Seattle signed Tina Charles after she was waived by Phoenix.  I thought it was a puzzling move because they already had Ezi Magbegor, who emerged as an elite defender, and I thought the Magbegor-Charles pairing would be unlikely to be successful together.  On top of that, I thought that what they really needed was another shooter, and not a high-level big.  Sure enough, they signed Charles and appeared unsure whether to start her or Magbegor, and the fit was a bit clunky throughout the season.  Ultimately, they made it to the semifinals and bowed out pretty quickly against Las Vegas, but the biggest thing was that it felt like signing Tina Charles was a desperation move in the final year of both Sue Bird (who retired) and Breanna Stewart (who signed with New York) in Seattle.

Prior to the 2024 season, Seattle made a couple of big moves after missing the playoffs by acquiring Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins.  I love both players and thought the two of them would pair very well with each other, but there were two issues that became apparent.  First, the pairing of Diggins and Jewell Loyd was not particularly smooth.  Neither of them are particularly good shooters or efficient scorers in general, but the bigger issue is that they are both great on the ball and not amazing shooters off the ball.  While Loyd played with another guard in Sue Bird and the team found success, it isn’t fair to compare anybody to Bird; on top of that, Bird was both an elite shooter and one of the most unselfish superstars on the court that I’ve ever seen play.  The other issue with Seattle in 2024 was that they had no shooting.  The only player who made more than one third of their 3-pointers was Ogwumike; while she is a great shooter, you don’t want her strictly behind the 3-point line due to her complete scoring pallet.  Needless to say, Seattle stumbled their way into the 5-seed while struggling after the Olympic break, largely due to shooting under 29% from deep, and were promptly swept by Las Vegas in the first round.  Despite Diggins playing well, the Diggins-Loyd fit was atrocious, especially with Loyd having the worst season of her career, making this felt like a desperate move.

This season was especially interesting since it started with a move that I liked; in the Jewell Loyd trade, they acquired the 2^nd pick in the draft, with which they drafted Dominique Malonga.  While the fit was clunky due to the bigs they have, Malonga is raw enough that allowing her to grow and develop off the bench was a good move.  All seemed pretty well for a while, as they were 14-9 at the All-Star break, and still 16-11 at the end of July, but after losing a couple more games, they made another talent-based trade by acquiring Brittney Sykes.  I have always liked Sykes due to her defense, playmaking, and scoring aggressiveness, though she is not a good shooter or off-ball player…sound like another player on offense who didn’t work with Diggins the season before?  When they made this trade, the only way I thought this would work would be if they had Sykes coming off the bench, but it would feel insane to trade for an All-Star to then make them come off the bench.  Even though Sykes has played well, the team has been in a rut, especially in close games, where they appear to be forcing the offense through Sykes (while Sykes has risen to the occasion in some of these games, they did have a winning record without her), and are now down to a .500 record at the time of writing.  With L.A. surging and Golden State hanging on, they are suddenly in a difficult spot with a chance to miss the playoffs entirely, which would be catastrophic.

I wish I could tell you why Seattle has kept focusing on talent over fit.  While I’ve wondered if they saw it work with Bird and Loyd, you really can’t say the fit would work with any guards since Bird is one of the best players in WNBA history.  On top of this, every time they make a desperate move, they appear to take more opportunities from Magbegor, who isn’t an elite offensive player, but proved that she has some interesting abilities inside the paint, especially when coming off of picks.  I genuinely don’t understand what their doing and are starting to wonder if we see something like the Phoenix Suns, who appear to be panicking after they missed the playoffs last season.

 

What do you think of the Seattle Storm?  Let me know in the comments!