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I apologize, Gabby Williams, I was not familiar with your game.

Last year when the Seattle Storm signed Williams, my opinion was that she wasn’t likely to make a big difference in their lineup. That take was based on the first five years of her career, which were underwhelming in comparison to her draft status and college career at UConn. She had never scored more than 8.4 points per game and only once shot better than 43% from the field. From 3-point land, Williams was particularly inefficient from 2018 to 2023, shooting 28.6% in 2020 and 25.7% in 2022.

This year, she has been a completely different player. Williams is averaging 15.2 points per game on 51.5% from the field and 22-for-45 from 3-point land. She also has made 81.8% of her free throws and has added 3.6 rebounds, 1.8 steals (93rd percentile) and 4.0 assists per contest (89th percentile). All of those numbers are career highs.

Williams’s emergence in her seventh season and on her second team is impressive, but it’s not uncommon in the WNBA. In 2024, Lynx forward Alanna Smith went from a journeyman backup big who spent time with Phoenix, Indiana and Chicago with a career high of 29.4% from 3-point land to a key starter for Minnesota with an elite 39.8% 3-point percentage. Just four years ago, Smith played nine games for the Fever and averaged 12.8 minutes per game and 4.3 points per game.

Every year there seems to be a great development story from a player that struggled early in their career and emerged with another team than the one that drafted them. Names that come to mind include Brittney Sykes, Natasha Howard, Marina Mabrey, and Erica Wheeler.

Are these players outliers, or does the common nature of draft picks finding their way with their second, third, fourth franchises say something about the WNBA? Should teams be more patient with players than they are typically? Even if you look at the 2024 WNBA draft, the fifth overall pick Jacy Sheldon was moved and the ninth and 18th picks were unprotected in the expansion draft and taken by Golden State. From the 2023 draft, the fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth and 10th picks are either out of the league or not with the team that drafted them.

In the future, it seems that expansion will allow for more second chances. If players are willing to stick with it, either in Europe or pop-up leagues, they are likely to end up with more bites at the apple. Shouldn’t we wonder why so many teams are willing to put young players on the chopping block rather than seeing if something is there? It is difficult with limited roster sizes and pressure to win but we routinely see teams adding bounce-around veterans that do not add much to rotations sitting on the bench in favor of developing players.

It makes you wonder who might be next. Could former No. 2 overall pick Diamond Miller, who currently is stapled to the bench, eventually emerge for Minnesota? Or will she have to try somewhere else? Will it come together at some point somewhere for Haley Jones, who was released by Atlanta and played a couple games with Phoenix before getting let go?

We will find out in the coming years. One of the benefits of expansion is giving players more chances to latch on somewhere. Players should also be pushing hard for expanded rosters in the next CBA. That would make it easier for teams to give developing players a chance to grow on the back end of the bench.

Seattle statement

Speaking of Gabby Williams, the Storm had a statement win against the Minnesota Lynx on Wednesday night. Everything worked against one of the league’s elite defensive teams as they finished the 94-84 win with a 56.5% field-goal percentage.

Seattle’s roster is starting to gel in similar ways to the Lynx and the Liberty where many players are contributing in different ways rather than one or two stars driving their success. A significant development from the game was No. 2 overall pick Dominique Malonga going 4-for-5 from the field in 13 minutes and adding four rebounds and two assists. Doing that against Minnesota is a really good sign for her growth and the Storm’s depth. Suddenly, they are a difficult matchup because few other teams have the frontcourt size to take on Nneka Ogwumike, Ezi Magbegor and Malonga, especially if they want to play them all at the same time occasionally.

Erica Wheeler had one of the best games of her career with 20 points and nine assists. If she continues her resurgence, Skylar Diggins can move without the ball and shoot in rhythm rather than having to create her own shot constantly, which she did so often last year.

Seattle’s star power is dangerous. Their growing chemistry is scary for the rest of the W.

Welcome back, Paige

The Dallas Wings are a hot mess but they are a hot mess with a No. 1 overall draft pick who just showed everything she can be in the WNBA. Paige Bueckers scored 35 points on 13-for-19 shooting against Phoenix in her first game back from concussion protocol and illness. In her first few games as a professional, Bueckers deferred to her teammates and racked up a decent amount of assists, but against the Mercury she was playing with the same type of scoring aggressiveness that we saw in her senior year at UConn.

It was almost like she heard Candace Parker’s advice for Angel Reese earlier this week when Parker suggested that Reese try to find her sweet spots on the floor and go there over and over. Bueckers took eight midrange jumpers that were either from the middle of the floor or driving to her left side and rising up over her defender. She made six of them.

With Bueckers’s size and ability to make contested jumpers consistently, she is nearly impossible to guard for backcourt players. If teams try to blitz her, then she is going to find passing outlets and punish them. Bueckers has started to prove that she can just forgo whatever offensive system the Wings have been poorly attempting to play and just score at will.

Dallas still lost the game because they got basically zero contribution from the supporting cast. The Wings have reached a breaking point with Arike Ogunbowale, who is playing the worst basketball of her career. She went 2-for-10 with four turnovers on Wednesday. It’s time to find a trade partner. Also, the NaLyssa Smith experiment looks like it’s reaching its conclusion. The former top draft pick has faded after a promising first two seasons in the W and has been relegated to the bench for the second straight year.

The Wings have to find a way to surround Bueckers with some shot makers and passers. Seeing Natasha Cloud and Erica Wheeler’s impacts on Sabrina Ionescu and Skylar Diggins, respectively, should give them a blueprint. DiJonai Carrington is an energetic player with elite defensive traits and grit, but she doesn’t have the level of offensive gifts that are going to maximize Bueckers’s talents.

These are probably things that are only actionable for the following offseason but they should already be looking around for ways to acquire more assets and players who might be able to highlight their budding star.

Phoenix vs. Indiana with missing stars

On paper, Indiana should be better than Phoenix as both teams have dealt with injuries to their leading scorers. The Fever have proven veteran players in Natasha Howard, DeWanna Bonner and Sophie Cunningham along with former top draft picks who have been quality WNBA players in Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell, yet they are being outperformed by a club that has survived without Kahleah Copper for the full season (and Alyssa Thomas for a stretch) and with just Satou Sabally, undrafted free agent Lexi Held, two 29-year-old rookies in Kathryn Westbeld and Kitija Laksa and a 24-year-old rookie Monique Akoa Makani. Make it make sense.

In a blowout loss to Atlanta, Boston scored just seven points on 3-for-9 shooting and the Fever went 5-for-24 from 3-point land. The Fever have lost three out of five games without Caitlin Clark and only scored 80 or more points in two of the five contests. It’s certainly tough to run an offense that was built entirely around Clark’s skills with veteran backup Sydney Colson and journeyman Aari McDonald running the show, but you would not have guessed they would lose games to Washington and Connecticut and then get blown out by the one good team they have faced during Clark’s absence.

The question is whether those projecting the Fever to compete with the Liberty and Lynx overvalued them going into the season. Clark’s injury has exposed that they aren’t actually very deep or if they just need to build chemistry over the next three-quarters of the season. It’s probably a little bit from Column A and Column B. Clearly, Mitchell and Boston are better versions of themselves when Clark is in the lineup because she draws so much of the defense’s attention and has elite passing talent. But Bonner is contributing much, much less than would have been expected (7.1 points per game), and players like Cunningham, Howard and Lexie Hull tend to run hot and cold on a given night. The stretch without Clark has shown the roster’s vulnerability, even if we should still expect them to be a highly competitive team when she returns.

Is it just that they have streaky players though? Something that can’t be denied about the Fever is that they are under a different level of pressure from every other team in the league. It’s worth wondering how that impacts them.

Phoenix, on the other hand, should be pumped. With the emergence of players that had never played in the WNBA before, they now look like a team with trustworthy depth. Three weeks ago you would have said they were the most top-heavy team in the W. On Wednesday, Thomas returned and they scored 93 points, 11 of which came from Westbeld, 14 from Laksa, 11 from Held and nine from Makani — all of them shot at least 50%.

When they get Copper back, the Mercury should have rotating players from the bench who can hang with most teams’ second units. In the meantime, Thomas has a group of players who can put the ball in the hoop when she gives them a chance with her playmaking skill. It doesn’t look like a coincidence that Phoenix stacked up with shot-makers around their two (and eventually three) All-Stars.