Happy Monday, Ball-Knowers!

We are inching closer and closer to the start of the WNBA regular season and this gorgeous morning in the southern Appalachians kicks off our daily team-by-team previews. Each afternoon on YouTube, Tyler DeLuca and myself, along with the occasional Greer and Chauny cameo, will be breaking down the ceiling and floor of each WNBA franchise heading into the year.

This week, you can expect to see these previews on YouTube. If you’re part of the paid subscription tier of Ball-Knowers, you’ll also get these in podcast form. All you have to do is log in to your Beehiiv profile and there should be a tab that says ‘podcasts’. When you click, that should give you access to our private RSS feed and the opportunity to take our quick-hitter videos with you, in audio form, wherever you go.

Just another way that Beehiiv is helping build the machinery behind the creator collective revolution that’s just on the horizon.

Since we’re also firmly in routine following March Madness and the Free Agency period, you can expect the following from us…

For Free Subscribers…

Monday: Five Out (Newsletter) , Portland Fire preview (YouTube)

Tuesday: Newsletter, Luxury Tax Podcast (with The Ringer WNBA Show’s Seerat Sohi), Toronto Tempo preview (YouTube)

Wednesday: Newsletter, Connecticut Sun Preview (YouTube)

Thursday: Newsletter, Ball Up Top: A WBB Podcast, Seattle Storm preview (YouTube)

Friday: Newswire, Chicago Sky preview (YouTube)

Saturday: Golden State Valkyries preview (YouTube)

Sunday: WNBA Top 30 Players of All-Time (YouTube)

The extra for the Ball-Knowers (click to upgrade your subscription below and get full access to all of this exclusive content and more!)

Wednesday: Style Sessions: A WNBA Fashion Series

Thursday: Monthly Mailbag

Saturday: Sticky Notes

Now, onto the column!

I’ll be the first to say that I’ve made this mistake with the New York Liberty before. After Belgian superstar Emma Meesseman came to the WNBA midway through last season, I jumped on YouTube and opined if this was the most loaded starting five in league history.

You’re never going to bat 1.000 on your takes but that one, to maintain the baseball analogy, was me swinging at a clear ball outside the zone on a 3-2 count.

Bad take, bad process, egg on my face.

While I’m not all in on the Liberty from an on-paper standpoint just yet, I was intrigued by what I saw in the opening two quarters of their first preseason game this past week. Usually when I’m watching these types of matchups, I look at a couple things. First, how individual rookies look from a comfortability standpoint. It’s not about how much they score or what they do in the stat sheet, but do they look like they’re picking up a new system? Are they a clear step faster, slower or in line with WNBA speed?

The second thing is how offenses and defenses run when the starters are in. Are we seeing new wrinkles with a certain team? How are they setting up in the half court? Is this a far departure from what we saw last year?

In New York’s case, their consistent movement and structure in the preseason opener showed me that head coach Chris DeMarco’s teachings are starting to take hold with his superstars. It’s a bit anecdotal after one game but there seems to be a bit more clarity with roles and substantially more off-ball movement. The former Warriors assistant said in preseason that simplifying things is what the 2024 WNBA champion needs.

While there still seems to be a bit of work to do in learning the system, I did like seeing a bit more rigidity and clear-mindedness in how New York was getting into their half court sets. That’s likely to change a lot as more players come back from injury and the Euroleague, but if that simplicity manages to become a plus then the Liberty might have a chance to live up to their lofty expectations as one of the deepest and best rosters in the WNBA.

Put aside the statistics here.

I guess that’s kind of what we always say about Raven Johnson, but in this case it’s genuinely true.

The former South Carolina Gamecock looks ready for the WNBA in just about every way. If you were someone that always believed in her, then you aren’t surprised. If you’re one of the many that seemed to give her credit as a player but maybe not a lottery pick, your take is right on the edge of aging poorly. If you believed that Johnson wasn’t cut out for this level, then get a towel so you can wipe that egg off your face.

From a speed, positioning, IQ and EQ standpoint, Johnson can play at this level and looks like she has the potential to do so at a high level. In the Fever’s preseason matchup against New York, the point guard flew around on defense, showcased some nice offensive possessions and generally was always in the right place at the right time.

It’s always been hard to quantify her impact, especially as we become more numbers-obsessed in sports. But when you look at the great true point guards of old — from Sue Bird to Courtney Vandersloot — they never really lit up a box score with regularity Caitlin Clark-style. They just ran a potent offense, distributed the ball and played their role as floor general perfectly. With Clark seemingly looking forward to getting a break or two in game, Johnson slots in as the perfect person to keep the trains running while still having the ability to score herself.

What that means come the regular season is another discussion entirely, as all the other factors that define success in this league come into play. But as far as the tangible and intangible controllables — where she is on the floor, knowing the offense, when to cut, when to help on defense, etc — Raven Johnson has aced that first test. Alongside Ty Harris, this guard room for Indiana suddenly looks really potent behind Clark and a bevy of combos like Lexie Hull and Sophie Cunningham.

The early returns on the Chicago Sky are in and…they’re kind of fun! It was really interesting to see what the team looks like when Kamilla Cardoso is the sole frontcourt player running pick-and-roll possession-to-possession. Already, it seems that there’s a nice rapport developing between her and new acquisition Skylar Diggins. Rickea Jackson looks renewed and confident, a welcome change for a player that could really just use some deserved peace in her life (on and off the floor) for once.

Tyler and I argue about this on YouTube constantly (and will again this week when our ceiling-vs.-floor video on the Sky releases) but I’m genuinely impressed with the job Jeff Pagliocca has done. While their core leadership structure can’t ever resist putting their foot in their mouth to the press, the actual basketball product looks good and they do deserve a measure of credit for retooling the roster to mitigate the potential damage of those pick swaps from the 2025 Ariel Atkins trade.

What is going to take a little while is how good Chicago can be on the defensive side of the ball. Cardoso and Jackson looked out of position on multiple possessions, the communication is still a work in progress and it looks like simple things like switching on defense are indecisive at best. That’s going to take some time and a lot of work by head coach Tyler Marsh as well as his new assistant and defensive specialist Latricia Trammell. If it manages to work, there is no reason to believe that this Sky team can be a top five unit in the WNBA. But based on what I saw on in game one, there’s some fundamentals and just raw defensive IQ stuff that has to be either learned, relearned, or built upon.

If we see improvement over the next month in that area, watch out. If we don’t, then we’ll still see a pretty fun team. It just might be one that loses more than a few games in track meet fashion.

I really enjoyed this Mike Vorel story in the Seattle Times about Dominique Malonga and her plan of attack regarding her second year in the WNBA…

The piece touches on how Malonga’s pace of play has quickened, informed largely by her playing in Unrivaled this past offseason. The 3-on-3, 18 second shot clock was, by her account, the quickest she’s every had to play and motivated her to start playing with a similar urgency.

Imagine Dominique Malonga, at 6’6 with her wingspan, dunking ability and defensive prowess, leaning into the idea of getting out into the open floor more. Then combine that with Flau’jae Johnson, the Storm’s rookie guard who very much loves getting out in transition and hasn’t had an elite big to play off of in that manner since Angel Reese left LSU (Aneesah Morrow was technically a forward, but at 6’1 is not a true big). We haven’t even gotten to Awa Fam, who is still not stateside yet, and Jordan Horston, who is nearly back after a knee injury cost her most of last season.

The idea of a Flau’jae/Dominique Malonga backbone is the same type of foundational structure that past Storm champions were built on. Whether it was Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird or Breanna Stewart and Jewell Loyd, the spine of Seattle’s best cores have been a versatile big/speedy guard tandem.

It will surely take time and this Storm team may look like the 2025 Connecticut Sun or Washington Mystics in the sense that the foundation is there, they’ll be a fun team to watch on WNBA League Pass, but won’t have the wins to back up the vision just yet.

But if Malonga starts to lean into the pace, creating more and more matchup problems for her opponents as she matures physically, emotionally and intellectually as a WNBA player, Seattle may just start coming in ahead of schedule.

I discussed the Natasha Cloud situation a bit in last Wednesday’s newsletter, which you can find here. Frankie De La Cretaz, publisher of the great queer sports newsletter Out of Your League, wrote a fantastic column about the subject this weekend, which you can find here. Additional reporting came from the New York Times’ Annie Costabile over the weekend, which you can find here.

So think of it this way…

You’ve got one of the league’s pre-eminent newsbreakers bringing you the information from what fans would consider to be the league/front office side.

You’ve got one of the most plugged-in queer sports reporters in the country, who has a totally different collection of sources from other walks of life.

And then you’ve got me, with some sources of my own from a variety of backgrounds in and around the W.

That should probably tell you something, shouldn’t it?

Even Natasha Cloud herself alluded to the fact that this is about money instead of politics last night on Threads.

While I wouldn’t be shocked if her outspokenness was part of the calculus about not thinking she’s worth the high salary she wants or the attention she may bring, I doubt it is the thing.

What has been losing me lately is the comparisons to Colin Kaepernick. Not only are they misguided but they also do something more damaging: they flatten and reduce the importance of Kaepernick’s civil disobedience and how much it cost him to do.

What some may argue about Cloud is that the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s situation and framing around his alleged blacklisting from the NFL was also rooted in the fact that he was older, a little worse for the wear and asking for starter money when he wasn’t a starter anymore. Those comparisons are already flimsy, at best, but they pretty much end there.

Cloud’s former General Manager, New York’s Jonathan Kolb came out with a glowing endorsement of his former point guard and laid out a pretty good case for why someone should take a chance on her. Contrast that to 49ers GM John Lynch, who apologized to Kaepernick over sources in the building that told Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King that the quarterback seemed more interest in social justice than playing football. And it’s worth noting too: Kaepernick’s kneeling lasted the entire NFL season and was a containment-breaking topic nationwide.

That’s not to say Cloud hasn’t paid a price for her advocacy, evidenced by the threats she’s received online and general backlash. But the cost that was incurred by Kaepernick, the scope and scale of how he did it and when, it’s just a completely different type of civil disobedience. Especially now, when celebrities of all sizes are becoming more vocal about condemning the Palestinian genocide. While we can look back and lament the lack of forward momentum from his protests in 2016, there was undoubtedly a backlash among the league and ownership. They didn’t exactly shy away from it, either anonymously or on record.

So while we can understand and appreciate the delicate nature of Cloud’s situation, acknowledging that there are other factors and her activism or politically outspoken nature could be one, I also don’t want us to flatten one of the most impactful athletic protest moments since Tommie Smith and John Carlos in hindsight.

Colin Kaepernick deserves better than that.