Happy Wednesday, Ball-Knowers!

Without any games last night, most of what we will discuss today will be either previews, reviews or things that have been talked about online. I try my best to have an understanding of TV window, travel logistics and all of the moving pieces that go into maintaining a proper basketball schedule. But I’m still human, and I still find myself pulling up ESPN and wondering “Five games on Wednesday and zero games on Tuesday? What’s that about?”

But thankfully, there’s always something to talk about and this grey and dreary Wednesday in Chattanooga is no different. So let’s talk some ball and get you ready for tonight’s matchups.

Onto the newsletter!

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Tyler’s WNBA power rankings are out…

Noa Dalzell joined me on Luxury Tax this week…

And in podcast form in case you want to hear it there!

Juste Jocyte, the 20 year old Lithuanian star who was drafted by the Golden State Valkyries in 2025, made her long awaited debut in garbage time of the team’s win over Connecticut on Tuesday. In just a few minutes, it was pretty clear that the former eastern European prodigy has the goods to play at the WNBA level. Granted, this was a tiny sample size and against a Sun team that appears committed to tanking the season ahead of their move to Houston.

But personally, I feel that every possession matters. This is a player who received a call-up by the Lithuanian senior national team when she was just 16 years old and has always been considered something of a phenom by Europhile women’s basketball fans.

In just five minutes, Jocyte finished with five points and two assists. Almost immediately, she hit a quick baseline catch-and-shoot from the midrange and then knocked down a quick catch-and-shoot three a few minutes later. Her passing was on display, with a nice one hander to Ashten Prechtel who got the bucket with ease.

There’s a lot of time left in her career and much more sample data for us to get to see if she has the makings of a star at this level, but that was an intriguing vignette into the type of player she can be. Primarily a ball-handler by trade, if Jocyte can make her bones as a catch-and-shoot player that commands some gravity (more on that in a second) in a Valkyries offense that can already punish you in a multitude of ways, we might have to once again recalibrate our expectations of Golden State.

So let’s talk about gravity. It’s a relatively novel statistic that Amazon unveiled in January of this year when the tech giant bought the streaming rights to the NBA and WNBA. It’s been a term in common basketball usage for awhile, usually as a colloquialism for guys like Steph Curry who require a defensive presence next to them constantly. CJ McCollum once said it best: “[Steph’s] a galaxy, he’s a planet, he’s a solar system. Everything revolves around him.”

That led to the creation of an actual statistic, the latest in a long line of advanced analytics like DARKO, LEBRON, RAPTOR and more to try and better quantify a player’s impact on a game. Here’s how to break down Amazon’s gravity metric…

Effectively, it’s trying to measure what players can shift defense focus and strategy.

When you look at this initial leaderboard, and look at the actual list of who leads the league in gravity, what do you see? I see a lot of shooting guards that are, to be clear, very very good All-WNBA caliber stars. But these are players that are generally commanding a lot of off-ball attention due to their prowess with putting the ball in the hoop off the catch.

There’s a small set of sample data so we can’t draw conclusions yet about whether or not the statistic is fugazi but we can already see, even in the NBA, how the metric might be imperfect. And that’s okay! Anyone looking for a catch-all, explain-player-value-in-one-number stat is a fool. That’s not the purpose of advanced analytics. They’re meant to show you part of the picture, not give away the goose entirely.

But what has me a little skeptical of gravity is that it seems to weight perimeter off-ball gravity a bit more heavily than interior gravity, either on-or-off ball. If you’re doubling or rotating to a player from the perimeter, of course it’s going to be a bigger ask defensively. Instead of having to cover 3-5 feet of space like you would in the paint, you’re having to cover 5-10 feet along the three point line.

So what exactly does it prove if they’re not weighted equally? Already you’re seeing fans call out the metric because of how low players from A’ja Wilson (ranked below Kaila Charles in overall gravity) and Caitlin Clark (ranked below Sophie Cunningham) check in. While I think it’s a really interesting metric for perimeter players and shooting guards specifically, I’m not sure that it’s going to be a good way to define how much players influence defensive scheme as a whole.

Maybe we can make another stat for that. Call it HAUB. You’re welcome in advance.

I still can’t believe my life. The New York Knicks, who I was positive would never make the NBA Finals again, are back since the first time since 1999. When I tell you I thought I’d die before seeing this again, I meant it was because I’d be dying at the ripe old age of 97 and the Knicks would still be trotting out the ghost of Lou Amundson and Alexei Shved.

I was in the Garden for Kyle O’Quinn “M-V-P” chants in a mid-December 2015 blowout to the Charlotte Bobcats. We’ve been in these trenches.

Which is why I don’t understand (well maybe I do; misogyny) why Knick fans are choosing this moment to jump back on a years-old take from Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon about whether or not Knicks guard Jalen Brunson could be the centerpiece of a championship team. Her argument at the time was that diminutive guards in the NBA were such a rarity as the top option that she simply didn’t see it happening.

And when you really bare out the history, even with this Knicks run in tow, Hammon is completely right! Outside of Isiah Thomas, arguably one of the top three point guards in league history, and Steph Curry, who is a paradigm-shifting player in his own right, this hasn’t been a consistent occurrence. Hammon, for her part and to her credit, held firm with her take when talking with media this week.

I expect nothing less from a former New York cornerstone guard. You love a coach that stands by their take and, even better than that, a coach who isn’t going to be cowed by public opinion because at the end of the day, she was right on the historical merits! If Jalen Brunson and the Knicks win a title (which, Manhattan might legitimately sink into the sea if that happens) then it only confirms the astoundingly shocking nature of how they did and who they did it with.

All that to say, Becky Hammon is a legitimate gem. For whatever people want to say, and there are certainly critiques you can have, she really is an extension of Gregg Popovich in all of the ways a media member would want her to be.

Valkyries Report: Meet Juste Jocyte, the most anticipated Valkyrie by Marisa Ingemi, Valkyries Beat

The Dallas Wings are onto something — Azzi Fudd, Paige Bueckers, Arike Ogunbowale discuss Dallas’ fast start by Howard Megdal, The IX Sports

The Lynx Rebuilt Their Defense After the Offseason Exodus by Andrew Dukowitz, Zone Coverage

The Game with the Most Stakes…

Atlanta Dream (4-1) vs. Minnesota Lynx (4-2): 9:00 PM ET, USA

Minnesota nearly won the season opener against Atlanta were it not for an Angel Reese block on the final possession of the game. Now both of these teams find themselves at the top of the WNBA standings playing for something a little bit more real. Natasha Howard has been a revelation for the Lynx so far this year and has been excellent in Napheesa Collier’s absence. Can Atlanta continue to play with the same defensive intensity they’ve displayed lately?

The Ball-Knower’s Game of Interest…

Toronto Tempo (3-4) vs. Chicago Sky (3-3): 8:00 PM ET, League Pass

Marina Mabrey meets her former team and the Sky are suffering from a bit of an injury bug (Gabriela Jaquez is likely out tonight with a knee injury). While all of the attention has gone to the Portland Fire as the expansion franchise du jour, I’m interested in if Toronto can start to cook a bit and make their own fringe playoff case. As for the Sky, Kamilla Cardoso is making a legit All-Star case early in the year. That usage in pick-n-roll won’t go down anytime soon, so sit back and enjoy the show.

And be sure to subscribe to the newsletter (or have the Ball-Knower in your life subscribe) if you haven’t already!