Where the Mind Wanders

Immediately after the Aces game, I had to go on a walk. It has been a sweaty past few nights of betting the WNBA. Getting the best number and finding market edges (a term sportsbettors have overcomplicated and bullshitted about for years) has felt more critical than at any other point this season. If you are tapped in, you know what I mean. I will leave it at that for now.

I won both of my bets, but each one came down to a possession. The Sky-Sun game was definitely the more stressful of the two, even compared with Las Vegas and New York.

01The Chicago Sky Experience

I have so many thoughts about the Chicago Sky. I am not sure whether betting on them sends my emotions to another level, but I do not get as upset watching many basketball teams as I do watching Chicago.

It is easier to break this into the good and the bad. I was going to start with the bad, but let me start with the good for the sake of my own mental well-being: I really like their personnel. Chloe Bibby was a nice pickup who helps cover some of their forward depth, and their guards, as a whole, make up one of the better backcourt rotations in the league.

I also love Natasha Cloud at the four. She has the gifts of a number-one player and the ability to create her own shot, but she often seems reluctant to shoot. Sometimes it almost looks like she is afraid to shoot, which is not a fair description, but it is how it can feel while watching her. She is like Josh Hart out there, flying up and down the court and making momentum-swinging plays that change the entire dynamic of a game. She also presents a lot of similar geometry problems that Hart does because she can’t space the floor too well, making her most viable with the ball in her hand or her somehow involved in the action.

Cloud played a big role with the Liberty last year, and I thought she was perfect for that team. She was exactly the kind of player they needed, someone who did not need to shoot to shape the game. I always viewed her as the type of player who goes up a level when the talent around her elevates. Now she is on a Sky team that is still under construction; her playstyle as something of a super role player isn’t as viable because the Sky need less role-playing and more dominant creating. At the four, I think she really gets unlocked, and I’ve seen that lineup for the Sky not only be successful, but also really baffle teams on how to stop it.

Now for the bad. Cloud had to play the four because Kamilla Cardoso got into foul trouble, and I thought those fouls came from some unfortunate (I’ll refrain from saying bad for the time being) calls. Cardoso's impact is obvious. Just look at her plus-minus. When she struggles to stay on the court, though, Elizabeth Williams has to absorb more of those minutes, and that was a big trigger for my gambling rage.

I am only talking about Williams as a basketball player; I bet she’s very nice, and her Mic’d up before the game was sort of endearing. With that being said, she’s just not a serious basketball player. If you are seriously trying to win games, she can’t have that large of a role. I’m sorry. There were fumbled passes, repeated miscommunication, and moments when Courtney Vandersloot also appeared frustrated. I understand that Williams is functioning as a small-ball five so she is in theory at a disadvantage in this regard, but she has to defensive rebound better than she currently does. It’s not even her height though, which is why this is so infuriating. Her positioning and lack of focus on that side of the court gave me legitimate heartburn.

Chicago still came back and won, so for a team working toward something bigger in the long term than this year's playoffs, wins like that help. I also hate the way they stagger the minutes. Gabriela Jaquez needs to play much more because she’s a real player. I do not understand the inconsistency in how her minutes are handled. It’s considerate that Vandersloot sometimes takes herself out of games, which at least creates room for the rest of the backcourt talent to get on the floor. I’m not sure if the Sky coaches are still learning the players' names or don’t know how to send in substitutions, or if they are straight up trying to lose and send in bad lineups, but something is wrong with the rotations. The backcourt depth is a good problem to have, but I’m not sure if the coaching staff will ever realize what the true talent they have on their team.

02Aces vs. Liberty

The second game I wanted to talk about was Las Vegas and New York. From the perspective of holding Aces -4.5 for the entire game, I was able to relax about 60% of my brain for most of the game. Still, I had that feeling in the back of my head that I was never truly safe. For some bettors, that was absolutely the case. That is why you put in the work to get the best number.

The last Liberty game I watched was against the Sparks, and it is strange how this works in my head. This is going to sound stupid, but I thought the Sparks game was a bad win for New York, while the Aces game was a good loss. Stupid, right? In situations like this, I may need to let things play out instead of hyperanalyzing them, even though that is the entire point of having a blog.

In the larger picture, I think the panic meter can be dialed back a little. I had it at like a 7 and now it's at a 5 (funny how a good loss resets expectations). You can see the Liberty slowly putting things together. You also have to remember that they are missing Satou Sabally, Leonie Fiebich and Marine Johannès. As I mentioned earlier, I am not sure how much those additions improve the sustainability of the team, but those are still big pieces missing nonetheless. Oddly enough, New York was not as dependent on the three-point shot tonight as it usually is. Regardless, though, those three players are likely to return and take plenty of threes.

In regard to sustainable basketball, a fair criticism is that the playoffs only require you to win about seven games. You do not necessarily need the most sustainable system in the world. Despite everything we have seen, it is still far too early to disregard the Liberty as we move into the second half of the season.

I also want to say that they cooked with Astier. This roster has an embarrassment of riches. If everything is put together properly, New York will be a problem for anyone to beat. There is a new coach in his first year, and a lot of moving parts, but the championship pedigree and the bones of a previous champion are still there. That is formidable in any playoff series, and that alone is probably enough for them to be a top 3 team power ranking-wise.

03Just Say the Call Was Bad

The last thing I want to talk about tonight is WNBA commentary. I listened to all of the broadcasts, and for the most part, none of them were especially annoying. I hate when announcers overdo it. I hate when home announcers overglaze the home team, or complain about foul calls and overall just give too much attention to the home team. It’s the most direct form of sucking up to your boss. I also hate when I feel like I’m watching an entirely different game than the announcer. I’ve genuinely thought certain announcers are harmfully spreading misinformation. Thankfully, I did not get that feeling tonight.

My main gripe, especially while watching Sky-Sun, is simple: why can we not just say when something is a bad call? What is wrong with a commentator saying, plainly, that it was a bad call? What is wrong with being slightly more vocal and a little louder in disagreement? I watched plenty of phantom calls and head-scratchers tonight.

Some of it is understandable within the way games are being called and the effort to tone down physicality. You still have to hope those decisions are not the reason a game is won or lost. We should normalize saying, "Wow, that was a bad call." If you read more of my work, you will see that I care a lot about officiating. If there are rules, I believe they should be followed as closely as possible. I know Seattle Storm announcers have a justified fear of getting fired because even teenage girls courtside aren’t safe from getting harassed for having opinions, but it’s close to enough for me. If I were an owner, would I fire my announcer for having an independent opinion? Maybe it should be given that insecure WNBA owners won’t react the most rationally to the utilization of the one thing that truly makes our country unique, which is the 1st amendment. Regardless, can we all non-silently agree that WNBA officiating is a joke?

That perspective is also shaped by the fact that I gamble and tend to look at individual games in a vacuum more than other people might. Still, an official has just as much responsibility as the commissioner and the players to uphold the integrity of the game. When a player is performing poorly, that player gets pulled, hears about it from teammates or faces scrutiny on a much larger scale. Same with coaches and front office members (sometimes based on who in the WNBA media is deciding to work on that day). Why should officials be exempt from some of that same scrutiny? We should wonder why the furthest official away was the one who called the foul, or why the ref under the basket missed something all of the other officials caught. I know that the league probably records some of this, but fouls called should be publicly updated and reported per referee, and all of them should be subject to much more scrutiny. I always hear, “Well, being a ref is a hard job,” and I’m not fully denying that it is. I think we should just make AI refs since the job is allegedly so f***ing hard. But you know what else is hard: training all offseason, putting up hundreds of shots every day, and grinding for hours in the film room just for an unathletic human to incorrectly call your game and diminish all of the hard work you as a player have put in your entire life. I promise players train a little “harder” than the officials, so why can’t we do them the honor of making all third-party variables as efficient and accurate as the players?

If you watch enough WNBA basketball and look at the box scores after games, you notice the little tricks they do at the end of games to make the disparities less egregious. The WNBA as a whole is elite at these late-game fouls that seem to even out free-throw attempts to hide the large disparities that existed before those calls. Seriously, go see how many fouls get called in garbage time bonuses or how many 3-point shot fouls get called when the game is clearly decided. There was a particularly bad out-of-bounds call (that was only the result of Aja doing something very reckless) in the Aces-Liberty game, but I am not going to relitigate it here.

Back to my main point, what is wrong with saying, "That call was awful"? Maybe I am being a rules snob or going over the top, but nothing gets under my skin faster than bad officiating and the refusal to acknowledge it. I’m of the opinion that if rules are made, they should be followed to the millionth degree. Rules in general are one of the only things preventing complete anarchy, so when rules aren’t followed or honored, isn’t it fair to say that it's anarchy? So with that said, doesn’t that make 99% of WNBA games anarchy? It also infuriates me that the outcome of a game, which is the whole point of why we play the games, can be so drastically influenced by a third party such as an official. For the sake of my heartburn and mental health, I will end my officiating rant there.

That is the official comment from the unofficial spokesperson of the WNBA.