Happy Tuesday, Ball-Knowers!

Five Out is here, and ready for awards season. With a couple of weeks until the FIBA break, players are jockeying to get in pole position for MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and All-WNBA teams with suddenly very important contract incentives.

We discuss it all here and have some more WNBA storytelling on the way this week.

Now, onto the column!

Candace Parker was enshrined in the Hall-of-Fame over the weekend. Check out our Legendarium installment on the 24 hours between her NCAA title and WNBA Draft night.

We also broke down how our feature on Makayla Timpson came together and what she can bring to Indiana in the stretch run…

And Five Out is available in video…

And pod form!

Every year, I wonder about having a WNBA awards vote. And then I log into any social media platform and remember why I’m glad that I don’t.

It’s fun debate fodder but it’s a power I wouldn’t particularly enjoy having. Once you start tying contract incentives — a player like Angel Reese, for instance, needs an All-WNBA nod to qualify for the newly-created EPIC max contracts — to the votes of media members, lines can get blurred and the jockeying becomes more apparent. When we’re just talking legacies and such, things are little more clean. All that to say, let’s keep this discussion fun!

A’ja Wilson is still at the top of the MVP ladder right now, at least to me. The issue with contenders like Olivia Miles or Caitlin Clark is that while they’ve had incredible seasons, the reigning GOAT hasn’t really done anything to surrender her lead on the award. When you look towards the WNBA’s companion league, the NBA, voter fatigue with Lebron James in the mid 2010’s meant some new faces took home MVP. But what we miss in that framing is that the winners really went out and took it.

Kevin Durant passed Michael Jordan’s consecutive 25 point games record. Russell Westbrook had to average a triple-double. Steph Curry was a scoring champion while averaging a 50/40/90 season. In many cases, the longevity and greatness of James was less about fatigue than it was about an outlier season that was too hard to ignore.

To me, that’s the big question heading into awards season: has any player had an outlier season to the degree that it would surpass Wilson, who leads the league currently in scoring and blocks and is third in rebounds on near 50/40/90 splits (she’s at 52.3/41.3/85.7)?

Olivia Miles has passed a number of milestones, including a litany of “fastest player to” stats. As Nekias Duncan of The Dunker Spot notes above, she has a legit case. There’s the efficiency, there’s her performance in the clutch and, perhaps most importantly, the fact that she effectively led a team undergoing a massive roster retooling without Napheesa Collier in the lineup and kept them as the wire-to-wire top team in the WNBA.

Caitlin Clark, meanwhile, is fully healthy and on a tear that feels reminiscent of Wilson’s MVP run last year. Since that 45 point, 10 assist explosion against Seattle in July, she’s averaging 26.3 points, 9.4 assists and 3.5 rebounds on near 50/40/90 herself.

Ultimately, at least to me, it’s not so much that Wilson is sleepwalking to a default MVP award. The Aces are third, already clinched the playoffs primarily on the back of her performances and some heroics from Chelsea Gray and Jackie Young. But there’s still a month or so left of games to play and two and a half weeks of off-time for narratives to potentially reset. If there was ever a time for Clark and Miles to keep pushing, it’s now. The only problem is, Wilson will be pushing too.

The WNBA has had positionless All-League voting since 2023 and this is the first year where the glut of talent is at the guard spot instead of at forward. Initially, I was interested in the race between the likes of Angel Reese, Breanna Stewart, Shakira Austin, Aliyah Boston and Natasha Howard. Yet as Tyler and I talked it through, I realized that he had a point: pretty much everyone on that aforementioned list outside of Howard should, more-or-less, be a lock for at least second-team All-WNBA.

It’s in the backcourt where things get interesting.

If I had a vote, my first team would be pretty cut-and-dried.

Olivia Miles, Caitlin Clark, A’ja Wilson, Paige Bueckers and Kelsey Mitchell. Then you have the likes of Stewie, Reese, Austin and Boston on the second-team.

With one spot left I’d be left deciding between Gabby Williams, Sonia Citron, Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Marina Mabrey and Jackie Young, at least.

We’ve had plenty of tough votes to make in past years but the backcourt revolution in the WNBA makes it even harder. This is as deep a stable of guards the league has had in about a decade, if not ever. Some players on this list — specifically Reese, Austin and Citron — can be eligible for the new EPIC contract with an All-WNBA selection. And with so few spots up for grabs and not a lot of space between players, it makes the end of the season even more compelling from a player perspective.

While reasonable minds can disagree, I do think Angel Reese has a second-team All-WNBA case on the strength of everything she does around the game. Does she still have a lot of work to do on her shooting efficiency, and is it fair to critique that it’s year three and this is still a prevalent issue? Yes. And yet even with those issues, she’s still averaging a double-double this season and has given the Dream plenty of 16+ point, 10+ rebound type performances. I can understand the fixation on the shooting, considering how in-your-face and visual it is. But don’t let that distract from the fact that Reese, much like Caitlin Clark in Indiana and Kamilla Cardoso in Chicago, has taken a lot of leaps in her third year in the W.

Here’s the rub.

Until the shooting gets figured out, Reese can’t fully be relied on to get the ball in the low block in situations like Sunday’s game against the Fever. Statistically, the best clutch (five minutes or less left in game and the score margin is five points or fewer) player on the Dream is Jordin Canada, whose presence was certainly missed in their most recent game. Two of the worst? Gray and Howard. Under the same statistical criteria, both Gray and Howard are shooting sub 37% from the field in the clutch. It’s a tricky and potentially slippery slope to start assessing what you perceive to be intangible traits and attributing them to production, but in sports I think some players clearly exhibit when they want the big moment and when they may not be as comfortable with it. Reese, for example, does have that ‘Dawg’ in her, it’s just a matter of fixing the mechanics and applying it to her game. Does Atlanta have that kind of player, in caliber of skill and mental makeup, in their backcourt right now?

A’ja Wilson is a superstar but she also has Jackie Young and Chelsea Gray. Aliyah Boston has Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell. Napheesa Collier now has Olivia Miles. In the past, Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles had Lindsay Whalen and Seimone Augustus. Lauren Jackson and later Breanna Stewart had Sue Bird while Brittney Griner had Diana Taurasi. The high-low has defined this league and while Allisha Gray and Rhyne Howard are certainly second-team All-WNBA talents, that killer instinct has been lacking at points this year. Some players just aren’t cut like that, and that’s okay. Not everyone is that player. But Atlanta is getting close to the end of their journey of finding out if they have a guard that can match Reese’s tenacity in crunch time. If it’s not with this group this year, then there may be some moves to make or players to poach this offseason.

Conversely, the Indiana Fever are learning from their late game miscues. Even in what Caitlin Clark termed a ‘B Minus’ performance on Sunday night, her crew managed to leave Atlanta with a win in the box score. That’s important, especially come October when the playoffs get harder, players get tired and you may only have enough for a B Minus effort on that night. After a point it becomes a mental marathon punctuated by the little moments where you’re asked to give everything for an additional inch or another bucket.

While Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell led the Fever to the WNBA Semifinals against the Aces last year, the only two teams in Indiana’s way this year (at least as far as I can tell) are ones with more Finals experience: Las Vegas and the Minnesota Lynx. At the start of the year, that mattered. Sometimes when young teams — which the Fever still are — make their first truly deep run together, they learn what it’s like to meet the moment. Usually that comes at the hands of an older, more seasoned opponent that’s been to the mountaintop or near it before.

For the first time all year, I’m looking at Indy and thinking “Maybe what they’re doing in the regular season will be all the mental reps they’ll need to get over the hump in a couple of months”.

Clark’s improvement specifically is a huge part of this. The third year guard played defense like her hair was on fire on Sunday and has been one of the three best players in the WNBA since early July. Maybe not coincidentally, that was around the time where she finally started to feel fully healthy. Funny how that works.

There’s still a lot of basketball to be played between the regular season and the playoffs and Clark will no doubt get some big minutes for Team USA at the FIBA World Cup in Germany in a few weeks. But I’m as confident as I’ve been all year that Indiana is a championship caliber outfit. Finishes like Sunday’s only prove that point further. You take the gift when it’s offered to you. That’s what the best teams are able to do.

I was glad when Dallas announced that they were hiring Jose Fernandez. After a messy campaign under Chris Koclanes, it felt only right that the Wings brought in a blooded and experienced coach who would tell the players like it was. I guess I just wasn’t expecting to be this extreme of an overcorrection. Instead of being a comfortable middle ground between a zen master and a taskmaster, Fernandez has shown at multiple points this season that he still seems to think he’s coaching in the American Athletic Conference where the only people really looking at him are us and a few other true hoop sickos and Ball-Knowers.

Early on in the year, Fernandez’ gruff and sometimes standoffish personality could be read as a fun curmudgeon in the same way Geno Auriemma was with Paige Bueckers at UConn. Unfortunately, not only does Fernandez not possess Geno’s resume to rationalize some of the snark but he also doesn’t seem to publicly exhibit the same warmth and charm that Geno uses to smooth over some of his rougher edges and insecurities.

And that can wear on someone over the course of a season. In this case, that someone appears to be newly-minted max contract player Alanna Smith.

Not great, Bibb!

My usual contention is that if player dissatisfaction is reaching the media then it has far past reaching a fever pitch internally. Even Paige Bueckers, who looks more passive and listless in the last ten games than she has all season, seems to be frustrated possession-to-possession. Making matters worse was a somewhat awkward press conference reaction by Fernandez about Awak Kuier, who has been one of the biggest bright spots off the bench for Dallas this year.

Steve Jones, of the wonderful pod Dunker Spot podcast with Nekias Duncan, made the point at the start of the year that you only have so many opportunities to use the tactic of calling your players out publicly or litigating issues in the media before it starts to fall on deaf ears. That may be happening now. Now, it doesn’t mean that Fernandez is going to get a pink slip anytime soon. The math and schedules favor the Wings over the ascending Portland Fire, so there’s a pretty slim chance Dallas misses the playoffs entirely But, at the very least, there’s going to be some soul searching this offseason.

Minnesota Lynx (29-7) vs. Golden State Valkyries (25-9): 10:00 PM ET, Peacock/NBC Sports Network

Olivia Miles has been a bit of a mixed bag against the Valkyries this year and is likely to face more than her share of blitzes, junk and 94 feet of hell-in-a-cell. Luckily, the Minnesota Magician has seen it all before. As the MVP calls grow louder, expect the rookie guard to respond in kind. Ballhalla is gonna be rocking, these are the best two teams in the league, Gabby Williams is herself making a DPOY push and there’s plenty to still play for even as both clubs are officially in the playoffs. Enjoy The Spectacle. Oh, and have fun watching the game too.

The secrets behind Angel Reese's legendary rebounding by Katie Barnes, ESPN

Rebecca Allen has always been ahead of her time by Jackie Powell, The IX

Alex Sarama’s Unique Approach Proves Fruitful for the Portland Fire by Jeff Brown, Storm Chasers & The Short Corner

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