How good is Ta’Niya Latson, Florida State’s freshman guard extraordinaire?

Put it this way: After the Connecticut Huskies held her to just 24 points, their acting head coach, Chris Dailey, couldn’t stop raving about the job her team did limiting Latson.

“We had our hands full, and I think we had to really work hard to even limit the number of shots that she did get,” Dailey told SLAM. “And then, her having fouls, that helped. But she’s tremendous, and she’s only a freshman, right?”

That’s correct. We re-learn that fact every single week, when the ACC announces its Freshman of the Week honors, and like clockwork, it is Latson. Each of the first six times the conference awarded that honor, it went to Latson, with a pair of Player of the Week honors thrown in for good measure.

It is the tremendous good fortune for Brooke Wyckoff, Florida State’s head coach, that Latson decided to stay in Tallahassee, even after she was recruited by longtime FSU legend Sue Semrau, who retired in March of 2022. Several other Florida State players transferred.

Not Latson. She’s up for any challenge.

“I remember that exact day, and I was so sad because Coach Sue was leaving,” Latson told us in mid-December at Mohegan Sun, a day before she showed UConn and a national television audience that it is impossible to stop her. 

“I know Coach Brooke had called me immediately and we were talking on the phone. I’d built a really strong connection with Coach Brooke, we [could] talk about anything. 

“But it was like, Ah, dang, everybody’s leaving, Coach Sue’s leaving, but I knew I had loyalty to her and I couldn’t see myself anywhere else…I feel like this is a position I can build something with. So, I’m just glad I stuck it out.”

So is Wyckoff, whose FSU team is 23-8 this season, despite a roster of just 10 players. And Latson is the easy answer why. Not only is she putting up massive numbers in volume—25 ppg through her first 14 college contests—she’s doing it as a constant, with at least 20 in 13 of those matchups, and 19 in the other.

She’s also, despite being the first name on the opposition scouting reports, scoring with unheard-of efficiency for a freshman—50-40-80 so far, exploiting matchups no matter who is guarding her. She’s 5-8, but her long arms and leaping ability make it impossible for smaller players to challenge her shot, while her speed and sense of the court allow her to get to her spots before longer players can bother her. Latson does, essentially, anything she wants on the court.

But her defense is, already, a differentiator. Connecticut raced out to a 23-point lead, but the Seminoles clamped down, ending the game on a 49-34 clip, with Latson grabbing 3 steals, something she’s done five times already this season. Her ability to read passing lanes and leap into them also gives her the chance to turn her defense into easy points at the other end.

“She’s a very intelligent player,” Wyckoff says. “One of the most intelligent players that I’ve ever coached. Just instinctively, knows the game and knows how to adjust…she understands as the game goes on, OK, this is what I have to do to adjust and get the opportunity to have the ball in my hands in a position to score, to make shots. And so, we’ve seen her do that, where she’s now reading the defense, which is attacking, understanding how to move around them to make shots. Today, it was turning up her defense and understanding that to get her going and getting the ball out in the open floor.”

“She’s got a natural three, and she has a pull-up, she can get to the rim, she can score at all three levels, which makes her very dangerous,” Dailey says. “She’s a nightmare matchup. And it takes a team to have to defend her.”

Wyckoff, her coach, summed it up even simpler: “I think the world saw the type of player we have on our hands here.”

On the men’s side, she’d be a one-and-done, with a WNBA talent evaluator telling me Latson would be a lottery pick in the 2023 WNBA Draft if she were eligible. But she’s not, so for the next three and a half years, college teams are going to need to figure out the impossible. 

We wish them luck. 

Photos via Getty Images.

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Smith is a 6-2 forward who plays bigger than that, with a wingspan that allows her to make life uncomfortable at the defensive end for 4s and 5s alike. Her ability to finish at the rim has been pro-ready since she stepped on the floor to replace injured teammate Lauren Cox and carried her Bears to the 2019 title.

But in Mulkey’s system, the many talents of Smith weren’t necessarily on display. Mulkey likes her bigs playing at the rim, period. The offense is simplified. And quite frankly, it worked well. However, NaLyssa Smith is capable of doing the kinds of things that make for superstars at the next level, not just the latest center to occupy space for Baylor. So the initial conversation she had with Collen—a tinkerer and players’ coach—reflected a new reality for the certain lottery pick.

“I remember explaining to her how I just want to spread the floor,” Smith says. “I want to spread the floor and make things more available for me, how I want to shoot the ball a lot more than I did last year. Because last year, I remember I was in the post, mainly. This year, I wanted to expand my game to the three-point line and the free-throw line extended.”

This was great news to Collen, whose free-flowing offensive schemes helped earn her the 2018 WNBA Coach of the Year honors with the Atlanta Dream, before an offer too good to refuse took her to Waco this past spring. Collen had an advantage coming in—she’d spent a lot of time breaking down film of Smith in her role with the Dream, knowing there was a good chance Atlanta would be in this year’s lottery. But even so, there were unanswered questions inherent in the system Baylor had been playing.

“I just really wondered, honestly wondered: How good can she be on the perimeter?” Collen recalls. “How good is her handle? Because you just didn’t see it. You saw these explosive moments. You’re on an alley-oop, you bought an offensive rebound on a turnaround pull up, like actions around the rim.”

So, armed with goals that not only would benefit the Baylor Bears but are set to change Smith’s trajectory, the two of them got into the gym for summer workouts. And that’s when Collen got a chance to get to know the real Smith, the one who has to be on any shortlist for 2021-22 NCAA Player of the Year, and whose season has WNBA talent evaluators dreaming of selecting her in April.

The good news is that playing the kind of versatile big role that the League demands is nothing new for Smith. In fact, it was a departure from her entire basketball life to get marooned in the paint for three years at Baylor. 

“I kind of played like the 3 for my whole life,” Smith says. “So back at AAU, I was bringing up the ball, shooting threes, free-throw line extended baseline jumpers. It’s nothing that’s really new to me, right? It’s just, freshman to junior year, I just wasn’t in that position…Coach Kim [Mulkey], she put me mainly on the block, because she felt like that’s where I could excel the most. So coming into this new offense, because of Coach Nikki, it’s more freedom.”

The daughter of Rodney Smith, who once played a versatile guard/forward role for University of Texas-San Antonio, and high school sprinter Nikki Smith, NaLyssa has always been the kind of player who can crush opponents in a variety of ways.

Usually, the story for collegiate superstars comes down to being asked to do it all. Smith, frankly, has a higher ceiling for how much she’s been able to accomplish already without getting the opportunity to show her entire repertoire.

The elite recruit came to Baylor for the 2018-19 season and performed admirably as a reserve big behind future pros Lauren Cox and Kalani Brown, averaging 8.4 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. Yet a better sense of her immediate impact comes in two ways: her rate stats, where she finished the season grabbing a higher percentage of rebounds than either Brown or Cox, and her performance coming off the bench in the title game against Notre Dame, scoring 14 points on 7-9 shooting in a contest decided in the final moments, after Cox left the floor in obvious pain.

Simply put, the Baylor Bears don’t win a championship without Smith stepping up, unexpectedly, when they needed her.

“I always feel like you’ve got to always be one step ahead,” Smith says, when asked how she was so prepared for the bright lights. “Like, you can’t wait until the day comes for you to want to shine. So I’ve always been in the gym, always working…transitioning from high school to my freshman year—that’s where I put in the most work I ever did in my life, because I just knew it was gonna be a big transition. So I just knew I had to be ready for that moment. When the moment did come, I feel like I was ready for it.”

All of which speaks to how effectively she’s navigating this transition, too. Collen is asking her to do a lot more, but it isn’t affecting her efficiency one bit. In her first 10 games, her overall shooting percentage actually rose from 56.1 to 57.1, and that understates the work she put in—hitting trail threes, stretching opposing defenders out along the baseline, with a touch inside 15 feet that Collen said compares favorably to any big she’s ever coached.

Nor is it affecting the other major goal that Smith and Collen set out in their first meeting: averaging a double-double.

“The points are going to come,” Smith says, “but the rebounding is really where I feel like, that’s where I’m going to take it to a new level this year.”

She’s not wrong. Smith averaged 8 rebounds as a sophomore and 8.9 as a junior. Through her first 10 games this season, she’s checking in at 13.2 rebounds per, leading the country in rebounding—again, with an offense that often pulls her away from the hoop. Well, grab 30.5 percent of the defensive boards, and you can make up for it, although she’s improved on her offensive rebounding numbers, too.

There’s leadership skills here for Smith, some by example, like the effort it takes to be such an elite rebounder, and other, less box score-driven ways.

Take Sarah Andrews, a sophomore guard and elite playmaker, who’s become close with Smith. Not a day goes by, Andrews says, when they aren’t on FaceTime together, talking basketball and life.

It’s allowed Andrews to flourish Andrews said she decided she wanted to go to Baylor the night Smith took over the 2019 championship game. Andrews figured she’d rather be on Smith’s team than have to play against her.

“I think you just see Lyss handling the ball more overall, like, you see in our game, just flourishing,” Andrews says. “And, you know, it’s something that I do enjoy to watch. I see her developing her game fully for the next level, honestly.”

That’s the part that’s always been on Smith’s radar, too: finding ways to become the best—in high school, in college, and then, she hopes, the top overall pick in 2022. 

There’s competition for that spot: Rhyne Howard of Kentucky was the early leader among WNBA talent evaluators, and both Naz Hillmon of Michigan and Mississippi’s Shakira Austin have their supporters as well. All of which makes Smith’s evolution this season—or really, her return to what her game has always been, now with professional refinement—so important. It’s essentially a one year head start with a WNBA coach in her corner. You see it in moments like her game against Maryland, one of the elite teams in the country with future pro Angel Reese in the middle. Maryland won, but Smith was the dominant force in the  game with 30 points and 15 rebounds.

“I think she’s showing and having moments where you say, Wow!” Collen says. “I don’t think anyone could watch the versatility of her game against Maryland, and not be like, OK, that looks like a number one pick. So I think she’s gonna show moments of it. It’ll be when she shows the consistency of it. Then there will be less question marks on whether she’s one or two in my mind.”

That is the final set of markers the duo laid down. Collen, at Big 12 Media Day, called her, flat-out, “the best player in the country.”

So as Smith envisions what that moment will be like next April—all dressed up, her parents and her brother, Rodney Jr, by her side, her future laid out before her and a WNBA team’s hat handed to her—she sees it as that final, unequivocal answer to everyone who ever questioned her.

“I probably won’t even sleep that night,” Smith says. “Because when something big happens, it’s hard for me to sleep. So I know the night before draft night, I just know I might not sleep because I’m gonna be so anxious…I feel like draft night, that’s when it’s really going to hit me—that my time is coming, finally.” 

Photos via Getty Images.

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When we think about the greatest players in the history of the WNBA, it can get overwhelming pretty quickly. A crowded field gets tagged with the GOAT label, something that’s only going to increase as players like A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart keep building their résumés.

A greater complication still is the nature of that greatness varies widely. Among those who I see as undervalued within the all-time list are Tamika Catchings, who has a very strong case for best ever, Sylvia Fowles, a center in a positionless world, and Katie Smith, a precursor for so much of the modern game.

A stat I love to use to cut through the arguments and organize my own personal list—with the understanding, even the pleasure in seeing, that others vary—is win shares, a stat you can find at the great Basketball-Reference.com. 

And at the very top of that list isn’t Diana Taurasi or Sue Bird or Lisa Leslie, all greats to be sure. It is Catchings. And the battle isn’t close.

Catchings was worth 93.66 win shares in her storied career with the Indiana Fever, which is not just the highest mark in League history, it laps the field. Lauren Jackson is second at 73.03. No one else is above 70. To put that in perspective: it means Catchings isn’t just better by this metric than anyone to ever play in the WNBA, she is nearly 29 percent better than her closest competitor.

I am, full disclosure, obsessed with this number. No other sports league has such a disparity. So it pleased me to no end to get to ask Catchings herself what she thought it meant.

“I think from my standpoint, you would just look at the type of player that I was, not necessarily a single-focus player,” Catchings says. “And a lot of that came from [Catchings’ collegiate coach] Pat [Summitt], really learning how to become a better defensive player and a well-rounded player.”

Catchings is right, specifically in that defense is her separator. She was, let’s not forget, a fantastic offensive player, and her offensive win shares reflect that—57.14 place her second all-time, behind Diana Taurasi.

But on the defensive end, she was good for another 36.52 win shares. Only Lisa Leslie cleared 30 among all other players, and Catchings did it at 6-1.

“There’s a lot of words that you could use to describe Catch,” recalls current Indiana Fever head coach Marianne Stanley, who coached against Catchings for years and now works with her in Indiana. “I would say, relentlessly competitive. And, indomitable—no matter what, she’d show up and compete, and believed that she could win.”

She did plenty of that—no team that Catchings was part of missed the playoffs from 2005-16, including trips to the WNBA Finals in 2009, 2012 and 2015, with Indiana winning it all in 2012. Catchings consistently elevated her teams above the general expectations for the group, with players who often didn’t defend nearly as well before or after their time in Indiana finding another level next to Catchings. 

And lest you think that doesn’t show up in the box score, well: she finished her career with 1,074 steals. No one else has 1,000. Or 900. Or 800. Second is Ticha Penicheiro with 764. The active leader is Sue Bird, who entered the second half of the 2021 season at 681. If Bird maintains her current steals-per-year pace, she’d pass Catchings sometime in the 2032 season, when Bird would be 51.

For a player who debuted in 2002, Catchings was every bit the vital, compelling figure in the League by the time she retired on her own terms in 2016, an Olympic Gold medalist and once more, a part of a playoff team. 

Now she’s a general manager, looking for players “that are willing to play and give everything that they have on both ends of the court.”

Sounds familiar for anyone who saw Tamika Catchings play.

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She’s got her memories, too, and the League’s preeminent defender remembers one scorer who gave her more trouble than anyone else.

“When people ask me who is the toughest player you ever played against, for me, it’s Katie [Smith],” Catchings says. “I never played a good game against her. She was tough. And, you know, one of those players that—not necessarily the quickest, fastest, whatever, but she just knew how to use her body.”

Smith also understood the value of the perimeter shot, and her 906 made threes was a record for the WNBA until first Taurasi, then Bird passed her. But many of their attempts from beyond the arc have come during a period when the WNBA is taking many more threes as a whole, while Smith, who debuted in 1999 after starring in the ABL, was ahead of her time.

Smith was 5-11, but a strong 5-11, and a defensive problem when she’d post up just as much as when she’d flash outside. There’s a reason her 59.77 win shares rank her eighth on the all-time list, ahead of luminaries like Bird, Candace Parker and Sheryl Swoopes.

“You know how now they’ll call [someone] a bucket?” Stanley says. “Katie was a bucket. A certified bucket.”

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But if her offensive game presaged what was to come—the current WNBA of four-out and five-out—Sylvia Fowles is reminding everyone that true greatness transcends the trends of the League.

Fowles ranks fourth on the all-time list in win shares with 67.38, just behind Diana Taurasi and ahead of all other WNBA players. But while Taurasi is 39, Syl is still just 35, and well on her way to not only another season as good as she was throughout her 20s, but better. This comes despite an offensive repertoire that doesn’t take her far beyond the restricted area—her lone three-point attempt, which she made, came back in 2010—but a combination of brilliance in the paint and defensive prowess that has her among the favorites to win Defensive Player of the Year in 2021 has her Minnesota Lynx in championship contention once again.

Stanley remembered trying to gameplan for Fowles back in college, when Stanley was on C. Vivian Stringer’s staff at Rutgers, and the Scarlet Knights faced Fowles and LSU, a program that reached the Final Four in all four of Fowles’ collegiate seasons. It was an impossible task to stop Fowles back then.

“But from that moment forward, she has, every year, just gotten better,” Stanley says. “And when she started in Chicago, I think she was still in the early stages of becoming what she was to become once she got to Minnesota. And there hasn’t been a more dominant center in the game.”

Despite their very different skill sets, Catchings sees much of what made her great in Fowles as well, a teammate of hers overseas, and her rival in that 2015 finals that went Minnesota’s way.

“I think it’s really been a testament for her to be able to continue to grow, not necessarily at just the center, but to be able to grow as one of the leaders in our game,” Catchings says.

She urges her own young center, Teaira McCowan, to watch everything Fowles does, and take it in.

This, too, will blur the lines of greatness. Fowles is still playing. Catchings is a GM. Smith is an assistant coach with the Lynx. WNBA royalty is part of shaping the generations of greatness that follow. 

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She can stick around at Texas for her senior season next year, anchor a team under head coach Vic Schaefer that will add a hugely talented incoming class to a group already building toward Big 12 contention this season, and set some records at her home state school. Schaefer has a propensity for turning players into pros, as his stars at Mississippi State, Victoria Vivians and Teaira McCowan, can tell you.

Or, as someone turning 22 years old in the 2021 calendar year, Collier is eligible to forego her senior season and hear her name called early on in this spring’s 2021 WNBA Draft.

A consensus is building around the idea that Collier’s name could be called first overall, meaning this telegenic personality with designs on a broadcasting career could be Brooklyn-bound, now that the New York Liberty have won the top pick in the draft lottery for the second straight year. That would mean Sabrina Ionescu would be the one feeding her the ball.

No. Bad. Options.

When decision time comes, Collier will sit down with Schaefer and her mom, Ponda, to figure out the best course. If and when WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert calls her name first, those words will echo what her father, the late Elliot Carter, always told her. 

The two spent endless days and nights on the Collier driveway, her father unafaid to block her shot and challenge her to keep getting better. Still, his words of encouragement to her, they never stopped.

“He would tell me, You’re going to go No. 1 in whatever you do,” Collier says. “And crazy—I was number one coming out of high school, now they’re saying I’m number one going in the draft. So that definitely drives me.”

Collier enjoys the gift of genetics when it comes to hoops—Elliott started at Montana State-Billings, and Ponda played at Southwestern University in Texas. But she understands that the gifts are where the work begins, too, a lesson Elliott hammered home to her. He’d know: he was a walk-on in college before he was a starter.

There’s been no danger of that for Collier, who experienced a long recruitment, getting her college scholarship offer back in middle school, from the woman who eventually became her first college head coach at Texas, Karen Aston. At Aston’s summer basketball camp, she took notice of the seventh-grader who didn’t look much like a middle schooler.

“We were just shocked at the things she could do at that age,” Aston recalls. “I mean, from a skill perspective, I remember very directly thinking I haven’t seen kids, even a lot of older players, make post moves [like her]. It was obvious that she was going to be really special.”

Even so, Collier did not find stardom in her freshman year, starting just one game on a team with a crowded frontcourt that included Jatarie White and future New York Liberty forward Joyner Holmes. Aston knew the moment she sat down with Collier for her end-of-season meeting that next season would be different. As she laid out the things the rising sophomore needed to work on, she saw Collier immediately process it, accept it and then want to get right to work.

“She just has this way about her,” Aston said. “It’s always, What’s next? It’s always, How do I attack and be better?”

Collier challenged herself the same way she did during every driveway session with her father, and by next season, she was ready. She started every game as a sophomore, averaging 13.1 points, 10.5 rebounds and shooting 35.4 percent from three—a stat line that has WNBA talent scouts excited to add her to the League and, until then, the first name on college scouting reports when Texas comes to town.

North Texas knew they had to stop her, but their game plan to slow down a preternaturally smart Collier, who now sports a next-level physique that allows her to bang with the biggest collegiate centers, can only take them so far. 

Forty-four points later—on 14-17 shots—she registered the fourth-highest scoring game in Texas history.

let ’em know #TexasFight x @CharliC_14 pic.twitter.com/p00dLbIYcc

— Texas Women’s Basketball (@TexasWBB) November 30, 2020

There’s a reason Collier was Vic Schaefer’s first call when he took the head coaching job at Texas. What he’s learned in the months since he got there speaks volumes about her work ethic and long-term goals as a player.

“Her work ethic and how hard she goes even when she’s the only one in the gym is really apparent to me,” Schaefer says. “So you confirm what I thought I knew going into the whole deal. She has a chance to be really special for us.”

She has a vision of becoming a pro like Candace Parker, one that dates back to the first time she put on a CP jersey as a young girl. To get there, she sets daily goals that she tries to accomplish.

For instance, she spoke with frustration about her performance against Texas A&M—a desire to recognize the double- and triple-teams faster, and to find her open teammates sooner.

When it was pointed out to her that she still had double figures by halftime—she finished with 14 and 12 in the game—she laughed. Stopping Charli Collier is a relative term. Even so, she wants to get better at facilitating from the wing, getting more time at the 4 along with the work Texas needs from her at the 5. It’s less a Candace Parker profile, game-wise, than an A’ja Wilson one. 

The 2020 WNBA MVP. 

No wonder all her career choices are good ones.

She’ll make the right call based on those bigger life questions, but she’s not immune to the lure of checking out the mock drafts, either. This past summer, Collier found herself sitting in her room, reading them with her name at the time, imagining what her father would say about it. Her eyes shimmer, and her hands gesture at the camera for emphasis. The future broadcaster is making a point about herself.

“When they say ‘Charli Collier,’ and they say, ‘No. 1,’ that to me is just speaking into existence what me and my father talked about.”

It’s just a matter of when, not if, for Charli Collier. 

—

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Picture courtesy of Texas Athletics.

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—

Aliyah Boston, 6-5 freshman linchpin of the dominant South Carolina women’s basketball team, has always been ahead of the pack when it comes to her decision-making.

A native of St. Thomas, she played and excelled as the lone girl in a boys (ages 9-11) league, but it became obvious that she needed a larger challenge. AAU provided that, but it meant moving to Massachusetts as a 12-year-old, along with her older sister, Alexis, then 14.

So when she sat down with her parents, Cleone and Algernon, they hesitated to send their younger daughter hundreds of miles away. Aliyah, though, didn’t pause for a moment.

“So my mom was like, ‘Oh, would you guys want to move?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, why not?’” Boston recalls. “I don’t think I really was affected by the move initially as my parents were. Because they’re letting their daughters move to the States, and we were just 12 and 14. But I was fine. I was excited. I was like, This is cool.”

She’s certainly made herself at home, though it’s important to note St. Thomas is a US territory: by this past summer, she was a starter and key player on USA Basketball’s U19 team that won gold at the U19 World Cup. No one would be surprised to see her debut on the senior squad before her collegiate career is complete. The USA Basketball head coach, after all, knows a little about her game: it’s South Carolina’s Dawn Staley.

If there’s a throughline in Aliyah Boston’s career so far, it is a maturity beyond her years. She’s a freshman big who uses an ability to see the floor like a veteran point guard to dominate. She’s a young player whose voice carries as a leader on a senior-laden South Carolina team. And even as she’s just begun her collegiate career, she sees where her game has to go to turn her into what she visualizes for the future: a star in the WNBA.

“Something I’m really trying to work on is my outside game,” Boston explains. “I’m starting to shoot midrange jumpshots a lot better and a lot more. That’s what I’m going to continue to work on. And then I just have to continue to get stronger in the post, that battling through contact.”

It is an astounding thing, the idea that Boston is merely scratching the surface of how efficient she can be offensively. Through the end of the regular season, Boston has made 61.4 percent of her attempts from the field, good for 22nd in the country. A thing every South Carolina superstar until the end of time will have to deal with is getting compared to A’ja Wilson, but Boston doesn’t seem fazed, having already exceeded Wilson’s field-goal percentage (54.2 percent).

Boston’s offensive mastery has surprised even Staley, who knew she’d be great, but not this quickly.

“I did not think Aliyah could score as efficiently as she has,” Staley says. “I did not, because when I saw her play, I saw her miss a lot of layups. I mean right at the basket. So I’m like, Oh, we’re going to have to work that, going to have to get her more efficient down near the block. I really underestimated her ability to shoot from the outside.”

It’s been that kind of production that reinforced the eureka moment she had with the media early in her freshman season. Staley recalled the shocked faces from those who cover the team when asking Boston about Wilson.

“She said, ‘I want to be better than A’ja Wilson,’” Staley says. “Those are her words. ‘I don’t want to be A’ja Wilson, I want to be better than A’ja Wilson.’ And those are really strong words around these parts.”

It’s not hard to argue that Boston’s on track to do that already. The WNBA has a different set of rules for early entry than the NBA. Players must turn 22 the year of the WNBA Draft to leave early. Otherwise, it’s four full seasons from their high school graduation. Accordingly, with a December 2001 birthday, Boston will be in Columbia for four years.

Every WNBA talent evaluator I spoke to said if Boston could be a one-and-done player like in the NBA, she’d get chosen in the first round. One GM even said if a team needed a big, Boston could be the first overall selection among a crop that includes Oregon’s Sabrina Ionescu and Satou Sabally, Baylor’s Lauren Cox and Princeton’s Bella Alarie.

“I’m super happy, encouraged, blessed to know she can’t leave early,” Staley notes wryly.

From a matchup perspective, Boston isn’t simply a scorer either. The maturity of her game manifests itself across the box score, something Purdue head coach Sharon Versyp saw up close earlier this season in an 85-49 loss to the Gamecocks. Boston finished with 10 points, 6 rebounds, 4 blocks, 4 assists and 2 steals.

“The level of maturity is what stood out most,” Versyp said afterward. “You’d never know she was a freshman. Her mind, her motor, the level of things she can bring to the game…and she doesn’t force it. Just extremely impressive.”

This was no one-off performance, either. Her rebounding percentage of 19.2 ranks 50th in the country heading into conference tournament season. Her block rate is 8.9 percent, 41st in the country, and she’s managed a 2.5 steal percentage playing out of the post—making signature deflections and stepping into passing lanes with a defensive understanding beyond her years.

The blocks come not from the typical freshman production—overt athleticism overcoming limited understanding—but rather from patience. She logged 10 blocks as part of a triple-double in her very first game this season, a triple- double against Alabama State, and the blocks often came from waiting—waiting for the right moment, and then striking with that scary wingspan.

“It’s patience,” Boston says of how she gets her blocked shots. “I just wait. I just watch, and then when I know that they’re going up, then I go. A lot of them come from helping, or if they’re directly one-on-one in the post, I just read their body and how they’re going, and then I just follow them.”

It’s nothing like bragging when Boston says it, but she doesn’t shy away from either her goals or her confidence in reaching them. It’s something Staley pushes her on, too.

One of the reasons Staley believed Boston would be not just one of the best, but “by far, the best” of any freshman in this national class was how much she was talking with her teammates, communicating on both ends of the floor, in high school. In her first week of practice with South Carolina, though, Boston wasn’t that same boisterous figure.

“So then I’m like, Aliyah, let’s go, let’s go!” Staley remembers. “Talk about what you’re seeing out there. And from then on you hear her the loudest. Not just in drill work. You hear her in shooting drills, you hear her while we’re getting water, you just hear her! If I had any quality that I could give to a young person it is that. The ability to communicate what they see.”

As Boston puts it, “Once I started to talk during the drills, I just never stopped.”

That communication extends well beyond the court as well. Staley’s Gamecocks have, for this season and the next three, a coach on the floor. 

It’s just Boston’s MO. She didn’t want to be Wilson, but she grilled Staley over what her relationship with Wilson was like, to know how she can pattern her time in South Carolina after the pathway Wilson paved. And there’s no such thing as too much information for Boston when she’s preparing for opponents.

“We have dialogue with our scouting reports and she can recite everybody,” Coach Staley says. “Everybody from the point guard to the fourth person off the bench. She knows all the personnel, all of it. Everybody. And she knows it in the game. She knows what people are going to do…[She knows] the little integral details of somebody always wants to go, left-hand drive downhill, she knows that. She knows if a post player likes to shoot with heir left hand over the right shoulder. She’ll get a headstart on knowing that is what their strength is and she takes that away and she’ll wait for it. She’ll be patient and wait for it, and then, she makes incredible plays. Honestly, I’ve never been around a young person that is that intelligent.”

Even for the lone opponent to defeat South Carolina this season, Indiana, the key wasn’t finding a way to stop Boston. It was to get her off the floor.

“One of the keys for us was getting Aliyah into foul trouble,” Indiana head coach Teri Moren said. “I think early in the season, that’s when you want to catch a team like South Carolina. South Carolina’s a terrific team, a Final Four kind of team. But we’re quite proud of being the lone one to knock them off.” Moren said she thinks it set the stage for their entire season. And Boston hasn’t played as little as she did that day, 14 minutes, in any game since. She played a season-high 37 minutes in a win over Connecticut.

That’s right, a win over Connecticut. Just another way Boston’s managed, already, to best Wilson’s remarkable legacy at South Carolina. And she’s just getting started.

“I’m glad that people think so highly of my game, but I know that I can’t just stay at this level,” Boston says. “I have to just continue to work on different aspects so that I can continue to get better.”

—

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Photos via Getty and South Carolina.

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LIVE FROM MADISON STREET: Zach LaVine Talks Playing in Chicago

ALL OF THE LIGHTS: REMEMBERING 1988 ALL-STAR WEEKEND IN CHICAGO

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Few people have greater insight into the basketball madness set to descend upon Chicago for February’s NBA All-Star Game than Allie Quigley. After all, Quigley is the defining basketball player of this Chicago generation.

A Joliet, IL, native, Quigley has blossomed in her pro career thanks to two facts. First, an ability to sink long-distance shots—she has two WNBA three-point contest titles to her name and is the WNBA’s active leader in three-point accuracy at 39.9 percent. And second: Allie Quigley, for her entire life, has been Chicago basketball. 

Joliet Catholic Academy. DePaul University. And now, the longest-tenured member of a Chicago Sky team that reached the playoffs in 2019 and has championship aspirations in 2020.

It’s all pretty improbable, especially considering Quigley’s early professional path: A second-round draft pick who struggled to stick on rosters in a variety of other WNBA outposts—Phoenix, Indiana, San Antonio and Seattle.

“I mean, especially because my first couple of years were either overseas, or in Phoenix, or Seattle, San Antonio,” Quigley says. “I just thought that was going to be my life and that was that. I never really imagined that I’d get to be so close to my hometown every single summer. So I’m definitely lucky, I know not a lot of players get to do that.”

Accordingly, Quigley has enjoyed a lot of time to figure out the quintessential Chicago question: Where do you get the best deep dish pizza? Fortunately, you have the Allie Quigley seal of approval to choose either of two elite options in town.

“You definitely have to try some deep dish pizza if you’re from out of town, at either Uno’s or Due’s downtown,” Quigley says. “Either of those is fine with me.”

Quigley won’t be eating at either one of them come NBA All-Star Weekend, however. During the WNBA offseason, she plays overseas along with some of the best players in women’s basketball. 

She’s giving her advice from the airport, about to fly back to Russia, where she suits up for a powerhouse UMMC Ekaterinberg team with her wife and Chicago Sky teammate Courtney Vandersloot, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner, 2019 WNBA Finals MVP Emma Meesseman of the Washington Mystics, Connecticut Sun franchise player Jonquel Jones and many others.

The result is the loss of an opportunity to showcase the WNBA through the ultimate Chicago player. Quigley will return this spring, though, and after a heartbreaking last-second loss to the Las Vegas Aces, she and the Sky represent one of Chicago’s best opportunities to celebrate a championship in 2020. It’s not lost on her that a Chicago product can help lead the city to greater glory, either.

“I think we’re always trying to grow the women’s game and at the same time just have Chicago notice us and notice our success,” Quigley says. “But mainly, I think we’re just thinking small picture, just about our franchise and how far we’ve come, and we’re trying to do something special, something that we’ve never done before.”

As for Quigley’s legacy, it’s already secure. There will never be another. She followed the WNBA from the very birth of the league and has shown an entire city that girls can grow up to hoop—not just casually, but professionally, at the highest level.

“I just hope that I’m a player that helps Chicago do things that they’ve never done before, in terms of the Sky, helping us get to our first ever playoff appearance, hopefully getting our first championship ever,” Quigley says. “Just helping the program go in the right direction. Just positivity, good chemistry, interaction with the fans. I just hope that’s what people remember.”

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Photos via Getty.

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But Taurasi’s best advice so far for the 6-1 wing centered less around what she needed to learn, and more on reinforcing what she already has.

“You’ve been playing this game ever since you were a kid,” Cunningham recalled Taurasi telling her during training camp. “You know how to play. I have seen you. You know how to play, so just go out there and have fun.”

And that’s just what Cunningham has done every day since the Mercury made her the first pick in the second round (No. 13 overall) of the 2019 WNBA Draft.

The on-court comparisons are difficult to find. She’s got the height of a wing, but during a four-year career at Missouri that included four trips to the NCAA tournament, her assist percentage never dipped below 20. And despite serving as the first entry on every opposing scouting report, she shot better than 56 percent from two and 40 percent from three as a senior, while grabbing rebounds and steals in bunches.

“When you’re a senior in college you know the ropes,” Cunningham says. “You know what you’re supposed to do. Your confidence level is at an all-time high the whole time because you know you’re the best of the best. I think something that I’ve learned is, I just never want to stop learning. I want to grow, I want to be a sponge and keep learning from BG, keep learning from Diana and Sandy [Brondello].”

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That level of comfort on the court comes as no surprise to anyone who saw her push her Missouri teammates to be their best selves at all times, motivating them (and aggravating opponents) with a win-at-all-costs mentality that drove plenty of comparisons to Taurasi.

“I totally prefer the games more than practices because, I mean, games you can just go out there and show what you got and win a ball game,” Cunningham says. “I love to compete. Even though our practices are very competitive, in games you have fans, you have so many people either cheering with you or against you and so, to compete in that environment is just awesome.”

It is the day-to-day that Cunningham says presents the biggest challenge: Bouncing back from a difficult practice, keeping up with the speed of the league, the quick turnaround between games.

But Cunningham isn’t stressing it. She’s relishing it. “I’m trying to keep the games simple and I’m getting paid to do what I love,” she says. “So it can’t be that rough of a life, right?”

—

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Photos via Getty.

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He can picture himself at 10 years old, watching the Serbia national team win the 1998 FIBA World Championship on television in his house—“Come on, make free throw!”—as Dejan Bodiroga led his country to its first gold medal in the event. He thinks back with admiration on how that group was like movie stars—Bodiroga, Sasha Danilovic before him, built up on television and in newspapers, predating the social media that’s contributed to turning Marjanovic into an international phenomenon—and remembers his goal wasn’t, at first, to play with them.

“I remember that time when I was sitting in front of TV and I was like, Man, this is amazing,” Marjanovic says, his long 7-3 frame folded into an office chair, overlooking the retired numbers at the Philadelphia 76ers training facility between bites of his beet salad. “You know. Amazing sport. Amazing players. I wish one time, not like I can play, more like—I wish one time I could meet these people. Nobody can touch them because they’re on TV.”

This was how it started for Marjanovic, growing up in Boljevac, population 3,332. A childhood with deprivations Marjanovic says will make a great book someday, inspirational reading, “Like, you know the Rocky films? I want when somebody read my book and say, ‘Man, I want to work out. This is like amazing story.’”

Because for Marjanovic, it’s always been a struggle. Imagine a childhood in a small village where you cannot hide, 6-10 by the time you’re 14. He remembers how it’s always been entering a room, seeing himself through the eyes of others. “There’s nothing easy because I’m tall guy, different than everybody,” Marjanovic says. “When you look at a person—my hands, my ears, my nose, you know, like, how I walk. It was like, Man, this guy is not the same. There’s something wrong with him or he has like some disease, sickness.”

And yet there’s been this duality to how Marjanovic is viewed. The clichéd story is that the too-tall, gangly presence off the court turns into the sought-after talent on the court. This wasn’t the case for Marjanovic, not right away, and really, not even until the Sixers brought him in, along with his best friend Tobias Harris, in a deal earlier this season meant to turn the Philly roster into what general manager Elton Brand hopes is its Finals-winning form.

Basketball was simply another part of his childhood, at least at first, something to do after coming home and asking his older sister, Vesna, for help with his homework. He asked his father to take him to basketball practice at his school because his friends were going one evening. There was little indication, he says, that a future international career and NBA star was born that day.

“We come there,” Marjanovic says. “We just start to have fun. Basically, first practice, nobody can practice like this. Most [of us] start to run or throw the ball. Like, who can throw the highest. How that shot feels like from the knees or from the chest.”

There were no thoughts of agents, or draft position, or flying across the world to play basketball as a profession that night in Boljevac.

“You know, I’m supposed to ’cause kids have dreams, but my first thing, I want to be with my friends and have fun,” Marjanovic says. “And this is like basketball, the game. We want to have fun on the court. This is how everything got started. Now the kids play for the money. They play for the celebrity. [I] played just to have fun because my friends were there. The ball was there. We try to have fun. This is my first thinking when I step on the court.”

Marjanovic preserved this mentality, and it’s come in handy, as he’s worked hard to prove himself, again and again, amid doubters. There’s been this disconnect between what the numbers say he is on the floor—an elite, efficient scorer around the basket the likes of which has rarely come along in NBA history; a defender maligned yet consistently leading his teams to better defensive numbers when he’s on the floor vs. off it; a skilled player whose skills are somehow blocked out in the view of coaches, media and fans alike by his frame; his big personality—and what people think he is. He smiled earlier the day of our interview when a reporter asked him in a group session about his two assists against the Heat the night before, as if passing was some revelatory new part of his game. He’s not mad, he’s actually happy he got the question. Marjanovic is used to people missing the parts of his game that make him special, relishes the chance to fill in the blanks.

“Oh, I can pass,” Marjanovic calmly explained. “You already see that. I can pass the ball like this. I think you must born with that. You cannot learn how to pass the ball. You just have or not have and I can pass the ball.”

It’s true, he can: assists in six of his first seven games in Philly, part of a second straight season with double digit assist percentages.

This is the Boban Marjanovic story: gently, firmly showing, telling the world what he can do, even as they doubt him, even as they discount his successes and focus on what everyone is certain are his flaws, the ways he must be out of step with the modern game.

And so, it was the case that after he signed with an agent, he stayed overseas for the end of the Serbian League in 2010, and no NBA team even drafted him. Two years later, he remembers sitting in an office in a Russian outpost midway through the 2011-12 season, as an executive with BC Nizhny Novgorod told him he wasn’t even good enough to play for the team. He thinks about it sometimes, still. It is his Rocky music.

“They basically tell me, ‘I cannot see you play basketball anymore. You can go in your village,’” he says.

He did, and returning to Serbia, promptly won Serbian League MVP, continuing to work on his game, trying to attract the attention of the NBA, until he did—Gregg Popovich brought him over to play for the Spurs, with another group of stars he knew from TV. He was married by then—he and Milica had their first child, Vuk—but there was no question they needed to go to San Antonio.

“Like Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Aldridge, David West, Boris Diaw, Kawhi Leonard, Danny Green, it was the team of your dreams,” Marjanovic remembers telling his wife. “You know, just think and they already have the best coach and I was like, Man, let’s do it.”

Success followed, enough of it that the Pistons made Marjanovic an offer so good—three years, $21 million—Popovich insisted Marjanovic take it. Still, consistent playing time has remained elusive. So on nights his coaches have decided he is the wrong matchup, Marjanovic just remembers the feeling that first imbued him with joy on the school court back home. He takes pride in cheering for his teammates, always among the first off the bench after a big play.

And he’s always ready to contribute, knowing that he’s going to maximize his five minutes, or his 30. Around three hours before game time, he finds that acceptance of the night ahead.

“I know my body,” Marjanovic says. “At that time, I make my mind ready. My mind is ready with me. I am thinking about nice stuff. If you want to play a game, [you should] have fun. I just relax my mind. No overthinking.”

In coach Brett Brown, he has a long-time admirer, someone who sees beyond what everyone has decided are the things Marjanovic can’t do. Finally, in Philadelphia, where so much of NBA conventional wisdom has been upended these last few years, Marjanovic is in a place where the opportunity may match the way he’s always seen himself, the way the numbers measure him no matter how many naysayers come along to dismiss them.

“He is so unique to our league, he’s very different to our league,” Brown says of Marjanovic in late February, a day after Boban took on the understudy role for Joel Embiid and Brown’s Sixers didn’t miss a beat—19 and 12 for the center, another win for Philly. “And some of the things that we’re seeing we sort of identified. I saw him play 10 years ago. And how we now use him, now that he’s mine, now that he’s ours, is exciting.”

In Brown’s eyes, the paradigm is finally about what advantages come with Boban Marjanovic, rather than getting blinded by what it is assumed he cannot do.

“Make him a real target, a focal point,” Brown says. “Because I think it would be pretty cool to have rim protectors like Joel Embiid and Boban chewing up 48 minutes. That would work if the other teams would let us type it up. And I’m excited to continue to grow Boban and see how we can best use him.”

So now he’s here, in the very city of the Rocky movies, just a short drive from the famous Philadelphia Art Museum steps. He’s on the cusp of free agency, another chance for 30 teams to see him, really see him, and he’s already won the hearts of Philly’s faithful, who pack the Wells Fargo Center and stand and cheer him when he enters the game, a useful and vital component of a Sixers team that looks poised to complete The Process.

And none of this is a surprise to Boban Marjanovic, hero of his own story. That duality continues as well, with a fuller appreciation for the father of two now, devoted husband, open-hearted man of the world now on display for all to see.

“Like, they see the size but I think they see something more [now],” Marjanovic says. “A couple days ago, someone told me something nice, a compliment. He was like, ‘You’re big, but you’re not just big. Your heart is so big and people know that. People more like you for that and you’re likable, like a friend and like a person.’ I have two kids. I want, one day, somebody to tell them what this person tell to me. I want somebody to come to them and tell that same story.”

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Photos via Getty.

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Each of the past two seasons, the Los Angeles Sparks and Minnesota Lynx have battled in the WNBA Finals after finishing with the two best records in the League by far.

But dynasties, even concurrent ones, don’t last forever, and among several rising WNBA squads, the Connecticut Sun are first among those aspiring to overtake the Lynx and Sparks some day—perhaps as soon as this season.

“I think we’re trending very positively,” Sun head coach and general manager Curt Miller told SLAM when asked about that goal. “And I think we overachieved last year, so we got to do it without a lot of pressure and a bulls-eye on our back. This year the expectations are higher.”

The numbers bear out Connecticut’s status as the next WNBA title team in waiting. While the Lynx finished first and the Sparks second in both offensive and defensive rating, respectively, only the Sun also managed to grab a top-four spot in both metrics last year. The Sun finished 21-13, and as Miller pointed out, they did it without franchise big Chiney Ogwumike, who missed the season due to an Achilles tendon injury. That opened the door to a starting five that presented opponents with endless matchup problems.

At the 5, Jonquel Jones built on a strong rookie season by blossoming into an All-Star, finishing fifth in the League in player efficiency rating, third in win shares and first in rebounding percentage. Next to her was Alyssa Thomas, whose work as secondary facilitator at the 4 (her assist percentage of 24.3 trailed only point guard Jasmine Thomas’ 24.9 among Sun rotation members) and defender earned her an All-Star bid as well. Courtney Williams combined elite athleticism with a knack for the big shot at shooting guard, and the veteran among the group, small forward Shekinna Stricklen, shot 41 percent from three to stretch the defense.

Stricklen won’t turn 28 until July 30. Not one expected rotation member is going to be as old as 30.

If anything, Miller’s biggest problem coming into 2018 isn’t figuring out where he’ll get production at both ends of the floor. It’s determining what his best lineup will be, working Ogwumike back into a group that looks like it has ample room to grow. Miller has a little time to get it right, saying Ogwumike has told him, “I want you to be patient with me,” as she returns to the League, but a healthy, talented Ogwumike is a player no team wants to waste on the bench, either.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Alyssa Thomas guarding a 3 and putting the length of JJ and Chiney on the floor together is exciting to us defensively, but we lose the spacing and scoring and shooting of Stricklen with her off the floor,” Miller said. “But if Alyssa’s out of the game and you’re playing Chiney and JJ together, if you’re down the stretch with a lead you have better foul shooters. You keep a really good foul shooter like Stricklen on the floor, you keep the spacing, but you may not be quite as good defensively.”

That doesn’t even take into account a frontcourt stalwart like Morgan Tuck, third overall pick in the 2016 draft, who drained threes in droves playing overseas this past offseason and appears ready to take on the facilitator/perimeter work that allows a 4 in Curt Miller’s offense to shine. Nor does it mean regular time right away for the Sun’s first-round pick, Lexie Brown, a capable two-way point guard out of Duke who will need to battle Jasmine Thomas, Courtney Williams and super sub (and former All-Star herself) Alex Bentley just to get on the floor. Miller did not sugarcoat that to Brown.

“He told me I might be a role player for a little bit and if I could handle that,” Brown said shortly after getting picked. “Absolutely I’ll be able to handle that.”

Ultimately, Miller believes the path to a championship comes more from how much better his top eight can be than the enviable depth he has 1-12 and beyond entering training camp. He wants Jones to supplement her diverse offensive game and unparalleled rebounding with better rim protection, and thinks Ogwumike lineups will help on that score.

Miller had been thinking 2018 would be the playoff breakthrough for the Sun. It came a year ahead of schedule, before the Sun lost a one-game playoff to the Phoenix Mercury. Can a championship run show up early, too?

“Getting back to the playoff was a start,” Miller said. “We now understand that pressure. So I’m not saying we can’t, but we all know there’s still growth and there’s still steps that a lot of this team has hasn’t experienced yet.”

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

Photos via Getty Images.

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“No, no, no, and I have to get used to that,” Latta says, with a smile that suggests she’s not going to mind the process. “I’m so used to somebody running at me. And a couple of times I caught the ball, looked around, and, Oh shoot, I’m wide open! What? And then a teammate shouting, Shoot it! Well, OK!”

Latta’s experience was hardly unique. And it’s vital to understand that the acquisition of Delle Donne does more than just give the Mystics the hope of reaching the highest level the franchise ever has in its checkered history. The Mystics now have an opportunity to reinvent the offensive ceiling for WNBA teams.

“It feels and seems new and different,” Delle Donne says of the Washington attack while sitting on the bench as the crowd, heavily influenced by Delaware residents who traveled a short distance to watch the Wilmington native, files into the Verizon Center before a game. “I’m used to having that set called, so this is new and different. It’s very much what Geno [Auriemma] had us doing with USA Basketball. So you need to have that high IQ, trust in your teammates. I think there’s going to be some growing pains, but once we get it, I think it’s going to be really hard to defend.”

The biggest reason for this is Delle Donne, of course. She is 6-5 and shoots with elegance and efficiency. And her size, frame and dazzling array of moves, either in the post, penetrating down the lane or simply shooting over people in the midrange, make her impossible to stop.

From the time Chicago took her with the second pick in the 2013 Draft, the Sky’s game plan revolved around Delle Donne’s offense, most effectively during a 2014 run to the WNBA Finals. In 2015, the Sky posted the best offensive rating in the League, and Delle Donne posted a player efficiency rating of 32.75—the third-best single season total in the history of the WNBA—en route to MVP honors. So even before she forced her way to Washington this offseason by threatening to sit out the upcoming season if she was not dealt, Delle Donne had been an offensive force the League had never seen.

There simply isn’t a weakness in her offensive game. She can score from anywhere, against any defender. Foul her, and she sinks free throws at a 93.8 percent clip, best in League history (Mystics head coach Mike Thibault says there is a $25 fine for any player who commits a lane violation when she’s at the line). Her strength and handle make reaching in a foolish endeavor, anyway—her 6.2 turnover percentage is also, yes, the best in League history.

And the aesthetics of it all are just remarkable. Watching her drag two, three defenders with her down the lane as she goes to the basket is an exercise in absurdity. She’s playing a different game than everybody else.

In 2016, 15 WNBA players had at least 30 possessions in isolation, per Synergy. EDD finished with 1.206 points per possession, by far the best in that situation of anyone in the League. She had 97 such possessions. The next highest total? Atlanta Dream forward Angel McCoughtry at 64.

Delle Donne simply had to carry her Sky team offensively, one heavy lift at a time.

“I don’t think it was good for her game to be put in—Hey, go to the elbow in the fourth quarter and try to score every time down or we can’t win,” Thibault says of Delle Donne’s time in Chicago. “Now she knows if she gets double-teamed, and she swings the ball, there are going to be people who can make shots. And she knows the ball will come back around. If you give the ball up, it’s not going to die in someone’s hands. It’ll come back.”

But it doesn’t have to—that’s the remarkable thing about the roster Thibault’s built around her. Consider that three of the top four three-point shooters from last season all play for Washington now. Emma Meesseman, a top-20 player in her own right, led the League with 44.8 percent. Delle Donne was third, at 42.6 percent. And Kristi Toliver, the combo guard who helped the L.A. Sparks to a 2016 title, shot 42.4 percent.

Those stats are eye-popping in isolation. But consider that each of the three did this while playing on separate teams. Now, after Delle Donne and Toliver joined Meesseman in Washington, all three are on the floor at once, spacing, creating impossible choices for opposing defenses to make.

“I mean, there were moments where Elena was inside, and there was nobody,” Meesseman recalls after the opener. “And we’re going to have to get used to that. Because everybody can shoot, everybody can drive. So it’s amazing that there are so many options.”

It’s something fans will appreciate once in the door, but the person who will bring them there is Delle Donne. The reality is that despite 20 years in the League, the Mystics have never broken through either on the court or in the crowded DC sports landscape. A pair of decades without a WNBA Finals appearance is part of the reason why, but only a part.

The franchise, at long last, has a marketable star to build around, an undisputed giant of the game. An Olympian, a former MVP and someone in the prime of her career. Moreover, in Delle Donne, the Mystics have a Nike athlete and someone with the understanding of how the branding game works. She’s represented by a well-respected agency; she’s worked closely with The Players’ Tribune; she can rattle off the marketing statistics and challenges the WNBA faces more easily than the League’s own marketing department.

Delle Donne is sufficiently talented enough to force DC to take notice of her, and savvy enough to take advantage when it does.

And that’s without taking home court advantage into account. Emma Meesseman is a great player, but former Vice President Joe Biden didn’t take the time to write her a letter, the way he did to Delle Donne when the Mystics acquired her. Part of that is their shared Delaware roots.

“I knew the Delaware faithful would travel,” she says. “Mother’s Day, doesn’t matter, that’s my crew, my family. I mean, literally a home game. Delaware doesn’t care that it’s two hours—it’s a home game.”

But the accomplishments Delle Donne has piled up by age 27 are the primary reason for all the attention.

Now, she has a supporting cast to help her reach what she said is her foremost goal: a WNBA title. As Meesseman said, these are multi-faceted offensive talents, particularly Meesseman and guard Tayler Hill. The court awareness of the group has already made quick work of the concern in some corners that the team lacked a true point guard. In their first game, seven players collected assists, and Meesseman, essentially playing the 4 most of the time, led the team.

“Their basketball IQ is so high,” Delle Donne says about her teammates. “Kristi will see things and make a quick alteration in the middle of a play, and it makes such a difference. So to be able to play with people like that is super exciting. Coach doesn’t really have us running set offenses. He is just putting us in places and making reads.”

There is another side to the game, of course, and that’s at the defensive end. Thibault is of two minds about it. He’s been pleased by how quickly the Mystics are catching on to his defensive scheme and believes it will all come together eventually. But he also believes to contend for a championship, the Mystics cannot simply outshoot opponents. Since 2010, every WNBA champion has finished in the League’s top-three in defensive efficiency.

Thibault said that Delle Donne and Meesseman will share rim-protection duties. EDD regularly ranks top-10 in the League in block percentage, though Thibault said he doesn’t want to waste her energy by consistently forcing her to guard physical centers. He’s convinced that collectively, it will be enough, and it has to be.

“I think we’ve still got to be a top half of the League defensive team,” Thibault says. “I don’t think you win in the pressure of playoff games if you don’t have that mentality. It helps to have more weapons on offense, but you need to have a field goal percentage difference between offense and defense if you’re going to be that team.”

There is a model that argues otherwise: Diana Taurasi’s ’09 Mercury managed to land last in the League defensively, but deployed four three-point shooters at 40 percent or better (Taurasi, Tangela Smith, Temeka Johnson and Penny Taylor) en route to a trophy. Whether that can work in a league where both Minnesota and Los Angeles perform at elite levels on both ends, no one can say, though it seems unlikely.

But like Taurasi in her prime, the Mystics have a featured star to call for the ball in big moments. And she isn’t alone.

“When you have four, five people on your team that aren’t afraid of the moment, then you’ve made that transition,” Thibault says. “I don’t think you’d have Elena here without others who already weren’t afraid of the moment. Tayler’s not afraid of the moment, Kristi’s not afraid of the moment, Ivory’s not afraid of the moment. They’re willing to take big shots and live with the consequences.”

The postgame locker room after the 89-74 win over San Antonio was as giddy as you’ll see, a group that believes its ready to do what no DC team ever has: reach the WNBA Finals, let alone win it. The Mystics scored more than 88 just five times last season, and Thibault and his team rightly believe their first game was a mere baseline, not close to the peak this group can reach.

Still, in action, as her fianceè, father, brother, niece and collection of Delaware natives who think of her as family all watched, Elena Delle Donne was feeling like she’d put herself precisely where she wanted to be.

“I knew this team had great chemistry, but when you get here and you feel it and you experience it, it’s even better than what I had imagined,” Delle Donne says. “It’s so fun to play with so much talent and so many options and never feel like you truly have to force because that next pass is better than forcing something. It’s exactly what I was hoping for and even more.”

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Howard Megdal is a contributor to SLAM. Follow him on Twitter @howardmegdal.

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“I feel partly responsible for aligning Kyrie and LeBron,” Vogel said after a recent Magic shootaround, a big smile on his face. “[James] was a Miami Heat member back then, and I take pride in being the first one to put them in the 1-3 pick-and-roll. It helped us come back and win—we were down in the fourth quarter, and that helped us come from behind.” Vogel’s East All-Stars won, 163-155.

Vogel is joking, of course, and even fatalistic about the whole thing: “That was some good action with some very talented guys. It worked against me. All it did was just get him in my division.”

But while Vogel and many other players and coaches point out at every turn that the game itself is little more than a gathering of greatness, with celebration the goal rather than victory, it leaves coaches of the game in an odd position: Just what are they to do with themselves?

Steve Kerr, coach of the 2015 West All-Stars, had his staff assemble a set of video clips that included each of his dozen stars that year.

“We tried to do some creative stuff, connect with the players,” Kerr said prior to a game in Brooklyn earlier this season. “It was entertaining. But it’s not about the game, it’s about the accomplishment. And I think it’s about reminding the guys of what a big accomplishment that is.”

And that dovetails with the way the players view it. One of Kerr’s current mainstays, Kevin Durant, experienced him as an All-Star coach more than a year before Durant made the choice to join him in Golden State.

“I’ve been around, from Coach Pop to Phil Jackson to Steve Kerr,” Durant said in Brooklyn in December. “They’re just all insightful and recognize how important these moments are for the players. I don’t want to say they ‘coach,’ but to see them and how they operate, how much we all enjoy it together as a group, that flies under the radar, how important it is to some players, to be recognized as one of the 24 best players in the League.”

Note that caveat from Durant: “I don’t want to say they coach.” That’s trickier than it sounds. After all, the men chosen to coach the NBA All-Stars spend every waking moment, and much of their dreams, scheming, creating and determining ways to make their teams better.

Suddenly, presented with the best rosters they’ll ever have, they are expected to do…nothing?

In Tyronn Lue’s case, the experience came with more than the usual amount of baggage. Lue was gifted the East coaching gig in ’16 thanks to a first-place record the Cavaliers compiled largely under David Blatt, who was fired on January 22. Lue wasn’t even sure he’d accept the honor at first, but ultimately said he found peace with it, mostly because he knew how much he’d enjoy the chance to be around so many great players.

“It’s great to see their personalities and how they all get along,” Lue said of his East team. “So just great to be part of that, the best players in the NBA. But it was kind of a mixed honor, between me and Coach Blatt.”

But did he learn anything from what was, after all, his 12th game as a head coach?

“In the All-Star Game? Nothing,” Lue insisted.

Kerr agreed, even with a Warriors team that is the closest the NBA has ever seen to a literal All-Star team.

“It’s really fun to be in the company of the best players in the world, seeing them all in front of you,” Kerr said. “There’s zero coaching involved, at least I didn’t draw up a play. It’s not about what offense or defense you’re going to run—it’s about a bunch of guys having fun, displaying their skills in front of the world. But it didn’t affect my coaching, or anything about how I approach my team.”

For Vogel, it wasn’t quite so hands-off. He kept it light, but he did design some out-of-timeout plays. He’d sketched out the rotation minutes ahead of time, making certain that every player received comparable minutes for the honor, and all 12 of his All-Stars saw double-digit minutes of playing time. The well-known defensive taskmaster even delivered a halfhearted pep talk geared toward a slight improvement on that front.

“Yes, we joked about it a lot during timeouts,” Vogel said. “I said, I know what the spirit of this game is, but we can try a little harder on defense. We don’t have to go nuts, but we can try a little harder.”

Still, beyond the careful arrangement of minutes on the court and bringing friends and family to the arena—Vogel made sure his wife and children got to live through this career highlight with him—the All-Star coach’s job comes down, effectively, to smelling the roses.

Or as Kerr sarcastically put it when it was pointed out to him that his West All-Stars won, 163-158, with a stellar fourth quarter: “I think it was coaching down the stretch. I remember handing the ball to Chris Paul seven straight times and turning to my assistants and saying, Man, what a phenomenal coaching job that was. Nobody else could’ve thought of that.”

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For Kent Bazemore, it wasn’t that deep. He just wasn’t good enough. Not yet.

“It was never anything about not being seen,” says Bazemore, standing in front of his locker before an early season game in Philly. “If you’re talented, they’ll find you. But there were big holes in my game. Obviously, shooting. I was a great defender and great athlete, but I hadn’t put it all together.”

The journey Bazemore took from that player to a starter and key contributor on this Hawks team, one with legitimate designs on an Eastern Conference title, began with a promise to himself. He sat quietly among family and friends at his uncle’s restaurant, Bazemore’s Country Kitchen in Kelford, NC, the night of the 2012 NBA Draft. He wasn’t surprised when name after name got called, and his phone remained silent, except for the occasional updates relayed by his agent—a Summer League invite here, a training camp invite there. As he put it, “I like to live off evidence, and at that time, there really wasn’t any NBA buzz, so I just wanted to continue to work and get better.”

He agreed to sign with a team in the Ukraine but didn’t really want to go. Instead, as the draft broadcast ended on the restaurant’s 28-inch TV and he turned away, he vowed to become a better player, one capable of proving himself if given the opportunity.

A broken foot the summer before his senior year had kept him from getting to work on his shot and limited his athleticism for much of his final college season, as his three-point percentage dropped from 40.8 percent his junior year to just 32.1 percent his senior year. He was an elite defender, but that qualifies as only one half of the three-and-D identity he’d need to stick in the League.

“We had people come from the Magic, the Celtics,” Bazemore says. “And they’d just say to keep working on your shooting, on your body. So I knew it would be an outside chance, but it would be up to me to seize the moment. And five years later, here I am.”

If it seems unfathomable that the senior at Old Dominion with a bum J is now a critical starter for the Hawks, then the series of serendipitous turns of events that brought him here are borderline impossible.

Happenstance No. 1 came on the night of February 21, 2014. At the time, Bazemore was shuttling between the Golden State Warriors—playing sparingly for the burgeoning superteam—and their D-League affiliate in Santa Cruz. Fourteen separate times, Bazemore was assigned or recalled from Santa Cruz during his two seasons with Golden State. Despite the mental and physical toll all that yo-yoing took on him, he remained steadfast in his routine.

“I worked so hard every day,” Bazemore recalls. “The first year-and-a-half, two years, every day: I showed up early, stayed late. Showed up early, stayed late. Worked with Joe Boylan, who’s now with Memphis, doing a lot of pick-and-roll, using my athleticism and shooting. So many shots every day. I mean, it was a lot, to the point I’d ice my shoulder, ice my elbow.”

Then came the deal—at the trade deadline, Bazemore and MarShon Brooks were shipped to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Steve Blake. In a trade that hardly registered in the larger NBA consciousness, it was everything for Bazemore—something he realized as soon as he spoke with his new coach, Mike D’Antoni.

“They were having a down year,” Bazemore says, “and he said, ‘We’re going to have a lot of minutes for you.’ He had a lot of wing scorers, but not a lot of guys known for their defense. So it was an opportunity for me. I didn’t really put a lot of pressure on myself, saying, This is it. But I did know it would be a lot of playing time for me.”

His first Lakers game was on national TV: a Lakers-Celtics matchup on ESPN. Bazemore had been in Santa Cruz a little over a week earlier. He’d been averaging 6.1 minutes per game when he was with the Warriors. But that night at the Staples Center, before a national audience—and Jack Nicholson—Bazemore played 33 minutes, the most of his career. He scored 15 points, added 4 assists, 3 rebounds and 2 steals. He played, in other words, a vintage Kent Bazemore game.

In the storied history of Lakers-Celtics games, that one probably won’t be remembered by many fans. The Lakers won to improve to 19-37. The Celtics fell to 19-36. Bird-Magic, it was not.

But it launched Bazemore.

“Playing down the stretch of an NBA game and winning it, that’s where players make their names,” Bazemore says. “Lakers-Celtics, on ESPN. Defending Jeff Green. It was a great night for me. Defended well, made some good passes, made my free throws. I showed some stuff. And it was a testament to everything I did before that. All those days, crawling into bed, crawling out of bed, crawling to the gym, working out. Just wanting to get better.”

It paid off for Bazemore in his 23 games—including 15 starts—for the Lakers.

“He’s terrific,” D’Antoni recalled during a recent visit to Madison Square Garden. “I knew he could play right away. He seized the moment, took it and ran with it.”

With L.A., Bazemore averaged 13.1 points per game, shot 37.1 percent from three, locked down opponents on the defensive end, and hit the free agent market as precisely the kind of player the Hawks have been cultivating during the Mike Budenholzer era.

“We knew when we signed Kent, and were able to add him to our program, that he was an elite defender, and an elite competitor,” Budenholzer says. “So I think defense and that competitiveness was there from day one. And we felt like he could grow and mature offensively. He’s been doing that. The first year was off the bench, the second year as a starter, and the third year, hopefully, he’ll continue to grow. He’s a great worker, he’s got a great heart. He’s the type of guy we want to work with.”

The Hawks gave Bazemore a two-year, $4 million deal in 2014. It was the kind of contract that made sense for both sides. For Atlanta, it limited the risk if Bazemore’s Lakers production was a mirage. For Bazemore, it put him squarely into the free agent pool by the summer of 2016, when the salary cap was already expected to balloon, meaning that if he could prove himself, there’d be a huge reward for him.

“Coming here, I still really hadn’t cemented myself,” Bazemore admits. “Still the question, Can he do it over 82 games? Because it was such a small sample size. So for me, I came to a very loaded team to play defense. I’d play five minutes a night, 20 minutes a night, whatever they needed. But still working on everything.”

In his first year with Atlanta, the Hawks won 62 games, and Bazemore contributed in precisely the ways the team needed him. Bazemore played virtually the same number of minutes per game, shot threes at a 36.4 percent clip, and Budenholzer threw him at opposing teams’ best wings again and again.

Still, there came another opportunity to prove himself late in the year. Facing the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals, the Hawks lost Kyle Korver to an injury and needed Bazemore to start. Not only did Bazemore hold his own—though the Hawks lost, Bazemore scored in double figures during both games and averaged more than 38 minutes per contest—he impressed the Hawks so much internally that the team let DeMarre Carroll walk in free agency, making Bazemore the starter in Atlanta three years after he watched guys like Thomas Robinson, Fab Melo and Jeffrey Taylor get their names called instead of his on draft night.

As a starter, Bazemore continued to improve last season. His free throw percentage improved dramatically, from a career mark of 60.5 percent entering the year to 81.5 percent in 2015-16, part of the payoff from a reconstructed shooting stroke. His midrange helped nudge his two-point shooting percentage up over 51 percent, while his three-ball held steady at 35.7 percent. He remained a key cog in what was the NBA’s second-ranked defense by efficiency.

So when the Hawks went out and drafted Taurean Prince this summer with the No. 12 overall pick, it wasn’t to supplant Bazemore. It was to learn from him.

“He never wastes time,” Prince says of Baze. “If it’s something that isn’t going to help him get better, he’s probably not going to do it. And you can tell that’s what got him to where he is. He just flies around. He doesn’t get screened, and the rare times he is, he doesn’t let one play affect the next. And that mental part, that’s what separates the good from the great.”

Greatness no longer feels like an unreachable goal for Bazemore, whose goals for this season include a 50-40-90 season offensively and a spot on the NBA’s All-Defensive Team. And with a new contract in tow, he’s got all the confidence in the world to go after his goals.

The first day of NBA free agency happens to fall on Bazemore’s 27th birthday, July 1. This year, he decided to spend the day by himself, on the golf course, to ameliorate the stress of the unknown. He recalls speaking to his agent, Austin Walton: “I just wanted to stay in Atlanta.” That night, the call came. Four years, $70 million. He celebrated by proposing to his girlfriend, and the pair are set to be married next June—late June, just in case his Hawks reach the pinnacle.

Bazemore knows he’ll be under a microscope, just like all the free agents who signed this summer and whose deals appear to be inflated. But he’s no longer worried about whether he’s good enough to realize his basketball dreams.

Through the first 11 games of the 2016-17 season, the Hawks are tied with the Cavaliers for the best record in the East (9-2) and Bazemore is averaging 11.5 points, 3.3 rebounds in 28 minutes per game as a starter, plus career-bests in assists (3.1) and steals (1.6).

“That may not make sense now,” Bazemore says of his new money, “but there will come a day where it’s, ‘This kid earned everything he got.’”

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