Last season’s WNBA Eastern Conference champions, the Chicago Sky, are in essentially a five-way race for the conference’s four playoff spots.
But the defending East champs seem to face their most serious competition for supremacy from the New York Liberty. The two sides have faced off twice in five days with the Liberty winning both games convincingly, including an 84-63 win on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
What makes the Liberty and Sky such an intriguing matchup is they represent the polar extremes of the league. The Sky lead the league in offensive efficiency, with 104.8 points per 100 possessions. A primary reason for this is Elena Delle Donne, the versatile forward posting the third-best season in WNBA history so far, as measured by Player Efficiency Rating.
But the Liberty present a defensive challenge seldom seen in league history, paced by a young defender in Kiah Stokes, who may win the league’s Defensive Player of the Year award as a rookie. The Liberty entered Tuesday night allowing 90.9 points per 100 possessions, good for not only best in the league this year, but the best by any team since the 2007 Indiana Fever, paced by the five-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year, Tamika Catchings.
“I know right now we are, our track record has proven such,” Liberty coach Bill Laimbeer said when asked if his team can be one of the best WNBA defensive teams in league history. “There’s a long way to go.”
So in a league that simply hasn’t provided an answer for Delle Donne, the Liberty stand poised to give the Sky their fiercest challenge in the battle to return to the WNBA Finals.
According to Laimbeer, that team identity came from a general answer to the direction of the league, rather than a challenge to Delle Donne in particular.
“We talked at the start of the year, and [Liberty president] Isiah [Thomas] was talking about the league and everybody is moving towards an open, faster-paced game, quick shooting,” Laimbeer said during pregame shootaround Tuesday night. “And I basically said ‘No, that’s not who we are. We’re structured this way. We’re gonna perfect who we are with the structure we have and see if that’s good enough.
“I think our team is based on team defense, first and foremost. We’re significantly ahead of other teams in opposing field goal percentage. We’re number one team in rebounding, so we limit second shots and possessions. We do a really good job on help defense across the board. That’s how we do business. And it so happens that Delle Donne is out there, and we take care of business on her. She’s gonna score, the key is to make sure she doesn’t dominate the game.”
A big reason for that has been Stokes, whose 88.3 defensive rating is tops in the league, better than even the defensive stalwart Brittney Griner. Earlier this season, she blocked eight shots in a game to set a Liberty team record. The blocks are down lately, with opposing players prefering to avoid that fate, but the altered and challenged shots have pushed the Liberty to the top of the league in field goal defense not only around the basket, but now out to 10 feet.
“There’s a difference,” Stokes said Tuesday, of how teams approach her. “But that’s what’s gonna happen. People scout, and they learn tendencies, what you like to do. So if I like to block shots, they’re going to try and go away from me. But I try to be a presence in the lane, bother them, hopefully they’ll miss.”
The combination of Stokes, acquired in a draft-day deal, and Laimbeer, who played on and generally favors teams with a strong defensive identity, is a logical one, as both player and coach pointed out. So it is Stokes who draws the assignment of covering Delle Donne when both are in the game, though the Sky star missed Tuesday night’s game with an ankle injury suffered in Sunday’s win over the Mercury.
“She is a glue player defensively,” Laimbeer said of Stokes. “She may not block everything, but she changes a lot of shots. And they now pull up and no longer take the shot they want to.”
The challenge for the Liberty is less about defending, and more about making sure they can limit turnovers and find enough scoring on the offensive end. And the recent play of Epiphany Prince has supplemented the All Star campaign of Tina Charles, who entered the night at 17.9 points per game. Prince scored 30 against the Sky Friday night on 11-of-14 shooting, and put up 23 Tuesday night as well, with Charles suffering a rare off night offensively. It’s the type of setback that would have sunk the Liberty early in the season, when Prince was overseas playing for Russia in Eurobasket, or as Laimbeer likes to say, “impersonating a Russian”.
“Piph is more of a complementary scorer,” Laimbeer said. “She isn’t egotistical about wanting to score. She’s able to play in a pick-and-roll environment. But I think there’s no question she’s our number two scorer, and she can be our number one scorer some nights.”
As for Delle Donne’s Sky, with offense and pace – the Sky lead the WNBA in possessions per game and are second in fast break points – the two keys, it may come as a surprise to hear Sky coach Pokey Chatman stress defense. But for Chatman, that defensive improvement is the key to maximizing what the Sky do best.
“It goes back to – we’re a team that gets 20-plus points a game in transition,” Chatman said prior to Tuesday night’s game. “So it’s about getting stops, rebounds and get out on the run, get it to Cappie [Pondexter] or Elena or Allie Quigley. But if we don’t, that immediately stalls our offense. It’s one of those things where, we’ve shown we can get out and run. We want to play at a certain pace. It’s a lot more difficult to do if you’re taking it out of the net, giving them a second or two to get back. I think that is key.”
Watching how unstoppable Delle Donne is when she gets going downhill in transition, and Chatman’s point makes sense. Then again, Delle Donne managed to win a game in Washington recently in a halfcourt set, streaking down the lane and through a trio of Mystics defenders, including a pair of all-star bigs, Stefanie Dolson and Emma Meesseman.
Laimbeer insists the gameplan to stop Delle Donne is a simple one, though try telling that to Brittney Griner’s Phoenix Mercury, who allowed Delle Donne to score 33 points, many of them after the first-half ankle injury that kept her out Tuesday.
“She’s more of a perimeter player, she’s not a solid post-up player,” Laimbeer said. “You always want somebody on her at all times. That’s what happened to Phoenix. They just lost her. You can’t lose her, you need somebody in her space at all times. And when she tries to drive, you force her to her bad hand, which is her right hand. Let her bring help. And there are other great scorers on that team, you can’t ignore them.”
Once Delle Donne returns, a pair of defensive additions should make a difference for the Sky down the stretch. Recently-acquired center Erika de Souza has a career Defensive Rating of 95, while perimeter defender Tamera Young, still getting into form after missing most of the season with a thumb injury, also allows Delle Donne to perform more as a roving shot blocker and general stopper. And Jessica Breland’s improved rebounding allows Chatman to flip Delle Donne and Breland at the three and four, depending on matchups.
It’s produced the kind of results that produced a 14-7 record against the rest of the WNBA. So far, though, the Sky are 0-3 against the East-leading Liberty. When it was over, Stokes, standing in front of her locker, said it was a little easier to see where the Liberty wanted to go, after beating the Sky twice in rapid succession, than it was five days earlier.
“We’ve got something special going on,” Stokes said. “But it’s not going to happen overnight. And we have to keep our focus, because team’s are going to come for us now.”
