Emptying the Notebook: Attendance, Assists, and Brink
I tried to make this intro about pasta, but all my noodling around was for naught.
- A few players have entered this season on fire.
- Caitlin is figuring some things out.
- And Aliyah got back to rookie Boston form.
- But Temi has been eye-popping early for the Fever.
- A’ja is elite at getting to the line and continues to break records.
- Napheesa is leading a great Lynx team in unprecedented fashion.
- What a start for Dearica.
Attendance
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: WNBA attendance is up.
Oh, you’ve heard it.
Well, let me break down just a few more attendance stats you probably haven’t heard so far this season.
- 12 of 31 games have posted an attendance of 10,000 or better. That’s 38.7% of games so far, on pace for the third-best mark in league history, behind only 1998 (48.7%) and 1999 (51.6%).
- For the first time since 2018 a team registered a new top-20 attended regular season WNBA game when the Los Angeles Sparks announced 19,103 in attendance for their game against Indiana on May 24. The Sparks best number still belongs to their August 27, 2017, matchup against Minnesota when they publicized an attendance of 19,282. The last 19,000+ regular season game came on August 5, 2018, when the Sparks hosted the Phoenix Mercury in front of 19,076.
- The Indiana Fever’s first two home games this season (17,274 each vs. Connecticut and New York) are tied for third-best home attendance in the franchise’s regular season history. The Fever have played in all five of the games this season that have an announced attendance of 17,000 or better, all five in the Fever’s top 10 (home or away) regular season marks.
Of course, all of these numbers are helped by (1) the highly-anticipated Fever being featured a lot to start the season, (2) the Las Vegas Aces playing their first four games at home at Michelob ULTRA Arena, which they consistently pack, and (3) the Atlanta Dream and Washington Mystics, who play in notoriously small arenas, playing just a pair of home games each so far.
What will continue to help the attendance numbers is (1) the relocated away games in Capital One Arena (June 6, WAS vs. CHI and June 7, WAS vs. IND), State Farm Arena (June 21 and August 26, ATL vs. IND), and T-Mobile Arena (July 2, LVA vs. IND) and (2) the (loud and) highly-attended camp games still to come.
Assists
At this point it’s cliché that the point guard is an extension of the coach on the floor.
There’s a reason Courtney Vandersloot has been referred to as the “Floor General” throughout her 14-year career. She’s the league’s active leader in career assists (2,734) and a seven-time assists leader, dominating that category over the past decade.
Recently, the only player to break through Vandersloot’s reign as assists leader was Natasha Cloud in 2022, when she averaged a career-high 7.03 per game to lead the league.
Two years later Cloud is in the Valley, having signed with the Phoenix Mercury as part of a overhaul under first-year head coach Nate Tibbetts, and she’s on pace for a new career-high in assists, leading the league through two weeks at 8.8 assists per game.
Part of that fast start included a significant move up the leaderboard during a double-digit assist outing for Cloud: on May 25, Cloud had a season-high 12 assists, passing longtime Mystics teammate and current Mercury Associate Head Coach Kristi Toliver (1,301) to move up to 19th all-time in regular season career assists.
Intra-squad leaderboard movement is always intriguing, but it was the names just ahead of Cloud now that jumped out to me.
| Rank | Player | Assists |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | Tanisha Wright | 1,423 |
| 14 | Temeka Johnson | 1,382 |
| 15 | Jasmine Thomas | 1,355 |
| 16 | Briann January | 1,340 |
| 17 | Teresa Weatherspoon | 1,338 |
| 18 | Dawn Staley | 1,337 |
| 19 | Natasha Cloud | 1,303 |
| 20 | Kristi Toliver | 1,301 |
Of these seven players around Cloud, you have two current WNBA head coaches (Tanisha Wright, Teresa Weatherspoon) and three former players currently on WNBA coaching staffs (Jasmine Thomas, Briann January, Kristi Toliver).
Not to be outdone, Temeka Johnson led the John Curtis High School girls basketball team to back-to-back state titles (2021, 2022) as head coach before accepting a job as assistant coach at Western Kentucky University. Of course, Dawn Staley, the three-time NCAA champion and Olympic gold medalist as coach of Team USA, is next ahead of Cloud.
Even further up the list is Becky Hammon, sixth all-time with 1,708 assists, who I’ll waste a few extra characters to unnecessarily remind you has gone on to break barriers coaching in the NBA and lead the Las Vegas Aces to back-to-back titles the past two years.
Just a couple spots below Cloud and Toliver are Katie Smith (former New York Liberty head coach and current Minnesota Lynx Associate Head Coach) and Vickie Johnson (current Atlanta Dream Assistant Coach and former head coach of both the Dallas Wings and San Antonio Stars).
Beyond just their seemingly translatable acumen, it shouldn’t be a surprise front offices go after some of the league’s great guards in their coaching staff hires. Since very early in the league, the results of the annual(-ish) GM Survey has indicated franchise front office leaders say they could make the best head coaches in the future.
In every GM Survey the question “Which active player would make the best head coach someday?” has been posed. Among the winners (including ties) are:
- Dawn Staley (4x: 2003-06), three-time NCAA Division I national champion as head coach at South Carolina and head coach of Team USA when they won basketball gold at the 2020 Olympic Games
- Kara Lawson (6x: 2007-09, 2011, 2013-14), current head coach at Duke and head coach of USA Basketball 3×3 when they won gold at the 2020 Olympic Games
- Katie Smith (2009), former New York Liberty head coach and current Minnesota Lynx Associate Head Coach
- Becky Hammon (2x: 2011, 2014), current head coach of the back-to-back WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces
She hasn’t been retired as a player for long, but most prominent among top answers to that question and even more prominently the league’s all-time assists leader (3,234) is Sue Bird (9x), who has said before she is not currently interested in coaching.
Somewhat unclear is if guards make better coaches or if they just get more opportunities, but what is certain is being an “extension of the coach” on the basketball court seems to help open the door to coaching, extending a player’s career on the court.
Brink
A team that makes two lottery picks can’t be expected to get off to a running start — unless you’re the 2011 champion Minnesota Lynx, apparently — and this year’s Los Angeles Sparks are no different. Other than a win over the also-rebuilding Washington Mystics, the Sparks have lost four of their first five, including three by single digits.
Their rookies have made an immediate impact, though. I’ll likely circle back to Rickea Jackson (the Sparks’ No. 4 pick this year) in the future, but for today I want to focus on No. 2 overall pick Cam Brink.
Even at Stanford there were two consistent prominent parts of Brink’s game: her shot blocking and her fouling. She’s, well, had no trouble carrying that over.
Her 22 fouls over five games is tied for 5th-most for a player in the first five games of their first season in the WNBA, just two off the record Margo Dydek set in 1998 (24).
Dydek is such an interesting comparison for Brink. No one in WNBA history has had the stature of the 7-foot-2 Dydek, but 6-foot-4 Brink has the mobility and length to impose herself similarly. Through just five games, Brink is averaging 3.2 blocks per game, which if it held would be second only to Dydek’s rookie record of 3.8 blocks per game in 1998 and just ahead of Brittney Griner’s 3.0 blocks per game in 2013.
With a 40-game season compared to Dydek’s 30, Brink has a good chance of surpassing Dydek’s rookie season blocks total of 114.
The bad news is Brink is currently outpacing Dydek in personal fouls, averaging 4.4 per game compared to Dydek’s 4.2 per game in 1998. Only Isabelle Fijalkowski in 1997 (4.61) is ahead of Brink among first-year players.
Fijalkowski played just two years in the WNBA, so there isn’t much to be gained from her career in terms of trends, but Dydek played 11. Her fouling did come down slightly, but it mostly decreased as her minutes dropped starting in 2004.
That’s not to say Brink’s path will be the same, but it’s no coincidence that the top four in WNBA history in blocks per game have also averaged at least 2.9 fouls per game; a good shot-blocker is especially inclined to try to block a lot of shots, and some of those attempts are going to translate to fouls.
| Player | Career Blocks AVG | Career Fouls AVG |
|---|---|---|
| Margo Dydek | 2.72 | 2.95 |
| Brittney Griner | 2.69 | 2.92 |
| Lisa Leslie | 2.26 | 3.85 |
| Lauren Jackson | 1.85 | 3.10 |
What stands out about Brink’s game is the offense she pairs with her defense. Through her first five games, she is averaging 3.2 blocks and 1.2 made threes. Only two other players have come close to those numbers over their first seasons in the WNBA.
| Player | Season | Blocks AVG | Made Threes AVG |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elena Baranova | 1997 | 2.25 | 1.43 |
| Lauren Jackson | 2001 | 2.21 | 1.38 |
| Cameron Brink | 2024 | 3.20 | 1.20 |
The 6-foot-4 Baranova and 6-foot-5 Jackson are pretty fair comparisons for Brink’s potential and not bad careers to try to match; Baranova is an Olympic gold medalist (1992) and European champion, and Jackson is a Basketball Hall of Famer, two-time WNBA champion, and three-time WNBA MVP, on top of her championships in Europe and Australia.
Both were arguably ahead of their time, too; before 2016, they were the only WNBA players to average 1.5 made threes and 1.5 blocks over a regular season. (Jackson did so four times, Baranova once.)
Since then, Elena Delle Donne (2016) and Breanna Stewart (2021, 2023) — you could argue they have been the forerunners of defining this time for their archetype — have matched those numbers. (Shout-out to Alanna Smith, who is currently averaging those numbers this year, and if she keeps that up, she’ll likely end up in one of these newsletters in more depth.)
Brink is just a shade outside those numbers, averaging well over that mark in blocks but through five games averaging 1.2 made threes, but there are facets in each of these players’ games you have to imagine Brink is trying to emulate.
And, again, it’s just five games (a statement that could be interpreted positively or negatively), but you also have to imagine Sparks head coach Curt Miller is looking to develop Brink along the path of a versatile big a la 2021 WNBA MVP and Connecticut Sun great under Miller, Jonquel Jones.
Jones averaged 2.0 blocks per game in 2019 and 1.6 made threes in 2021 but has never reached the “1.5/1.5” list I invented, but she fits right alongside Delle Donne and Stewart on the list of players who have helped normalize three-point shooting post players over the past decade in particular.
Where exactly Brink fits among all these greats of the game is predictably unclear two weeks in to her professional career, but putting up numbers that evoke their names is a great place to start.
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