ARLINGTON, Texas — When it comes to professional athletes and creating a championship team, role establishment is paramount to team success.
When it comes to specific roles for the Dallas Wings, it’s kind of up in the air as to whether roles will be similar to last year or not. Factors like having a new coach, players requesting trades and the WNBA draft approaching will all play a part in the official establishment of roles within the team
The Draft
With the WNBA draft eighteen days away, it’s time to laser focus on women’s college basketball more than ever. This is the time of year where anything can happen. Players have opportunities to break out on the biggest stage or break down. It is necessary to take note of advanced levels of play in the NCAA tournament. For head coach Brian Agler, the decision is not an easy one. This year has a great class of college players coming out and Dallas has many needs. With the Liz Cambage trade still not complete, it leaves the team stuck in a rut. It makes the draft decision that much harder and if the Wings draft before the Cambage trade gets done, they’re giving themselves less control over who/what they can get in return. If they draft a guard, but post-draft they trade Liz and the best they get is a guard player and future draft pick in return, then you have a need for height and rim protection left to fill right before the season. Dallas doesn’t need to find themselves in this position if they want to make noise and snag another playoff spot this season. The role to come with whomever they draft will be very specific to the player and their fit within the team.
Breakout Season
This year for the Wings, the breakout potential is through the roof! Dallas has a bevy of opportunities available without Skylar Diggins-Smith, Karima Christmas-Kelly and a trade looming for Cambage. It opens the door for Allisha Gray whose scoring per game went down by four points (9.2ppg) from her rookie campaign when she was Rookie of the Year compared to her sophomore season. Gray has the best opportunity for that breakout this year as she will likely be worked back into the offense with her biggest role on the team yet. Another player who can had a breakout last year, but has the door open for even more improvement and that’s Kayla Thornton.
The breakout I’m speaking of from last year can’t been seen on the offensive end, although she did improve on offense as well, it mainly came from her defense. She was a lockdown defender in the 2018 season and somehow did not make the first or second WNBA all-defensive team. The first two times the Mystics, who just went to the WNBA Finals, came to play Dallas in 2018 Thornton was assigned to guard superstar Elena Delle Donne and she held her to just 14 points in two games. She was a definite snub from the all-defensive team and also proved she’s been working on her shot as she garnished career highs in field goal percentage (44.7 percent), three-point shooting (35.5 percent) and free throw shooting (86 percent).
Azura Stevens is one more player to be on the lookout for a breakout from. Stevens last year seemed to perform her best when she was inserted to the starting lineup, which happened just nine times last season. She was the sixth highest scorer for Dallas last year at 8.9 points per game and the two just above her tied for fourth in scoring last year are none other than, Allisha Gray and Kayla Thornton. Leaving a lot of scoring to be spread around and presumably mostly led by these three players. Be on the lookout for scoring to be spread around similar to 2017 when five players were scoring 10 or more points per game for Dallas.
The WNBA season is now just two months away from tomorrow, it’s time for an interesting ride before this season begins. Lots of additions and subtractions coming in the next couple of months so Wings fans better get ready.
