Alex Lawson’s WNBA Whiparound - Rookie Recap

The WNBA might have the steepest learning curve in all of sports. The season starts in May, a few short weeks after the EuroLeague Women’s final and the NCAA National Championship Game. As expansion is still underway and slow-going (and rosters are capped at twelve), there are at most 144 spots in the league, and the tryout process, compressed between the draft and preseason—which also coincides with graduation for most of the players stateside!—leaves only a couple weeks for new players to make enough lasting impact to stick around for the regular season. Most draftees won’t even make rosters, so the potential impact for rookies to make is often quite limited. The star-studded 2024 draft class entered the W with a ton of fanfare and expectations that would be hard to meet; however, these ladies across the board have made strides to compete as starters and everyday players across the league! Almost a month into the season, let’s take a look at the top five or so rookie performances thus far. If I had to vote an All-Rookie Team today, this would be my ranked order, but there’s a whole summer of play to come before consideration begins—so much can change in the interim. For now, a small snapshot…

Caitlin Clark:

Most of the fanfare surrounding Caitlin Clark’s play on the court concerns her otherworldly skills putting the ball in the hoop. And for good reason—at Iowa, she did score more points than any college basketball player ever, routinely getting buckets at the rim and from well behind the arc. It’s no surprise Christie Sides’s offense has quickly abandoned the more Aliyah Boston-centric offense of last season to funnel through Clark. She’s 7th in the league among qualifying starters in usage rate and currently leads all rookies in points per game, but just as impressive as her scoring is her passing acumen. Her ability to get her teammates even before they know they’re open has her leading rookies in assists by a healthy margin: only Julie Vanloo and Sevgi Uzun (both debuting in the WNBA this season after each played professionally overseas the last decade) are remotely close on the rookie leaderboard. Among all players, she’s fourth, trailing only vets Alyssa Thomas, Jackie Young, and Natasha Cloud. Coming off of four years in the black and gold, her Hawkeye teammates learned to always be ready to catch a pass—no-look, behind-the-back, or otherwise. However, she’s only been in Indianapolis a couple weeks; compounding that, the Fever have also played the most games of anyone in the W, leaving her team precious little time to actually gel as a unit, even compared to the rest of the league. As a result, Caitlin Clark leads the league in turnovers per game—many of which are passes that slip past her teammates’ outstretched fingers—and her Fever are once again favorites in the Paige Bueckers lottery sweepstakes. (Whether Indiana should invest in yet another guard considering their problems in the post is another story.) Turnovers were a problem that has followed her from Iowa City—one that 31 points a game helped assuage in college, yet one she’ll need to curb in the W. Nevertheless, in a league featuring the best basketball players on the planet that started play a few short weeks after her Hawkeyes fell to the Gamecocks in the NCAA Championship, she’s just ahead of the pack in the Rookie of the Year race. 

Cameron Brink:

The Los Angeles Sparks’ consolation prize for the ping-pong balls not falling their way last December has been a godsend for a team playing well above their preseason rankings. Dearica Hamby’s rejuvenation and transformation into a bonafide All-Star and dark horse All-WNBA First Team candidate in her second season in the City of Angels has propelled the Sparks into the playoff hunt, but their defense is anchored by the second overall pick. From her first tip against the Dream in Long Beach, she’s quickly slotted in the LA rotation under the rim on defense swatting shots and all over the floor on offense, scoring in the paint and from three-point territory. She showed potential at Stanford that she might become a two-way star, but it certainly wasn’t a foregone conclusion she’d be an everyday starter and an All-Defensive Team candidate, already top-five among rookies in steals per game and top-five in the W in blocks per game just a few weeks after graduation!

Any player that deigns to try Brink near the cup is liable to get stuffed—she’s trying to get her fingertips on every ball anywhere near the rim. However, her passionate play often leaves her in foul trouble: she’s leading the league in fouls per game, most of them coming on shot contests. She can’t impact on the game from the bench, and her team suffers greatly when she’s on the pine, especially on the defensive end. As she grows into the league, she’ll learn to play smarter, picking and choosing her aggression so she can be on the floor more. 

Angel Reese:

A key cog of Kim Mulkey’s dominant Tiger team, the Bayou (née Baltimore) Barbie came into the league as a prospect with questions as to how her game might translate to the pros. She was a force in the post in College Park and Baton Rouge, but at only 6’3”, she projected to be an undersized five in the W, as her shooting away from the rim, still a work in progress, presently prevents her from sliding down to the four. Hence, she slid all the way down to pick number seven last April, the Sky doubling up with Reese after taking Kamilla Cardoso third overall. After a preseason injury to the reigning national champ and Most Outstanding Player of March Madness against the Lynx, Angel made her way into the starting opening day lineup of the Sky, and Chicago hasn’t looked back. She leads her team, all rookies, and currently ranks ninth in the league in rebounds per game, demonstrating every night a couple inches of height can’t replace her tenacity on the glass. 

However, some of the holes that showed up in her prospect profile have been replicated in her first few WNBA games. She leads the league in offensive rebounds per game; on the other hand, she ranks near the bottom of the league in effective field goal percentage. Her shots not falling was a problem for LSU during both her NCAA Tournament runs with the Tigers—as she had LaDazhia Williams and Flau’jae Johnson stuff the score sheet in college, she can count on Marina Mabrey and Chennedy Carter to put up points when the Sky need it. Now that she plays in a tougher conference than the SEC, Angel will need to develop as a scorer and shot-creator if she’s going to help propel Chicago into the playoffs. As for now? She’s way ahead of schedule. 

Julie Vanloo and Aaliyah Edwards:

Let’s address the elephant in the room. (And unfortunately, as the room in question is Entertainment & Sports Arena in Congress Heights and not the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, we won’t be speaking with Ellie.) The Mystics have an Elena Delle Donne-sized hole on their roster—it’s no surprise that Washington is bringing up the rear in the standings. Despite their still-ongoing pursuit of their first win of the season, most of their games this year have been surprisingly close, including bouts that came down to the wire against the league leaders in the Connecticut Sun and the New York Liberty. Ariel Atkins and Karlie Samuelson have shined in their larger roles this year, but the brightest stars on this rebuilding team are the two rookies in Washington’s rotation: Julie Vanloo and Aaliyah Edwards. 

Vanloo finally realized her longtime dream this spring with her WNBA debut after fifteen years of professional basketball abroad. Although she’s an undersized point guard standing at 5’8”, she’s been a bright spot in the Mystics’ offense. Sixth in the W in assists per game and second among qualifying players in assist percentage (measuring how often made field goals come from a given player’s assists) to 2023 MVP runner-up and 2024 MVP hopeful Alyssa Thomas, Vanloo finds her teammates open looks to jump-start what can often be a stagnant Washington offense. The Mystics would love her to become more of an efficient scorer to help outweigh his being a net negative on defense—Eric Thibeaux diminishing her playtime in the second half as the game grows tighter might be why the team’s offense puts on a third-quarter disappearing act every game. 

And perhaps their offense will continue to improve as Aaliyah Edwards becomes more and more of an everyday starter. In the last few games, she’s gotten more and more of a chance to play after injuries to Brittney Sykes and Shakira Austin—and she has seized that opportunity with aplomb. She held her own matched against Brionna Jones and Dewanna Bonner against the Sun on Tuesday before dominating in the paint on both sides of the court Thursday against Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso, and the Sky. Her game last night marked the first 20-point, 10-rebound game for a rookie this season, and she is the sixth rookie ever to drop 20 points, 14 rebounds, and 4 blocks in a game—following Yolanda Griffith, Cheryl Ford, Candace Parker, Tina Charles, and Teaira McCowan. Ideally, Thibeaux and the staff of the Mystics will keep giving Edwards the opportunity to start and succeed on the court moving forward, but as the season progresses, long-term goals like maximizing their lottery odds might throw a wrench into the rotation and see her minutes dwindle. But her current stretch of play rivals any of her rookie peers—hope to see it continue tonight as Washington hosts the Fever!

Kate Martin:

What a whirlwind of a few weeks! Two months ago today, Martin was a Hawkeye, playing the Gamecocks in Cleveland for a national championship. As the clear number two to a ball-dominant star in Caitlin Clark, her WNBA prospects were muted going into the draft, and after the first round came and went without her selection, her chances of making an opening-day roster became impossibly slim, let alone seeing any playing time. Her selection by Las Vegas at pick eighteen was seen as a shot in the dark—one with little risk, as the reigning WNBA champs were already well-stocked favorites going into this season. However, Martin quickly fell into Becky Hammon and her fellow Aces’ good graces, earning a key spot in the rotation of the best team in the league only a couple of weeks into the season because of her defense. She has the second-best defensive rating of qualifying rookies, trailing only Angel Reese and ahead of defensive stalwarts in Kamilla Cardoso and Cameron Brink. For her to keep playing consistent minutes on this team, she’ll need to be the efficient scorer she was in Iowa City—certainly a tall task, as the Liberty are a little bit better than Holy Cross. But for a team with deep playoff aspirations, Hammon and Vegas’s rotations are still very much in flux, providing Martin an opportunity to break into the closing lineup by September. 

Honorable mentions include Rickea Jackson, Sevgi Uzun, and Kamilla Cardoso—as the year progresses, I hope all these rookies get more chances to play and shine. Alissa Pili and Jaelyn Brown have both played impressively despite only getting short bursts that might turn into rotation spots by July or September. Tonight, Clark and Edwards will face off in the nation’s capital in a rematch of the national semifinals a couple months back, as will Martin and Nika Mühl as the Seattle Storm visit Sin City. Looming over both games is another UConn Husky—Paige Bueckers. The Fever, Mystics, and Aces (by way of the Phoenix Mercury) are all in the lottery hunt—more likely than not, one of these three teams will be drafting first overall this coming April. When playoff hopes fade, fans and general managers will quickly turn to the crystal ball to find their next new on-court additions from across the pond or the college ranks. But long-term success for rebuilding teams like Indiana and Washington will only come as the rookies currently on the roster continue to develop. And if Las Vegas lands Paige Bueckers because the Mercury miss the playoffs, Diana Taurasi might break another door or two.