Being a good defender doesn’t matter if

[u/campoole82]

You don’t thrive in other areas

Kiah stokes is not an offensive factor but she brings other factors rim protection, rebounding, physicality, etc

Naz hillmon is a good defender but there is nothing else in her game that justifies her playing 30 minutes.

She’s not blocking a bunch of shots, shes only giving you 4 rebounds in 32.5 minutes and offensively it feels like you’re playing 4v5 on offense because she’s not skilled enough offensively to make a difference.

GS is putting very intense pressure on Angel, rhyne and lish because naz isn’t a factor.

I’m not saying she’s the reason we lost obviously the jacking 3s was

but this GS team is just too good defensively to have to carry her weight on offense.

I think if we don’t play Bonner or Okot soon we are in danger of being swept

[u/Jreal2013]

Lost 1 game so it’s time find a scapegoat , and you pick (checks notes) Naz Hillmon ? Rhyne Howard been shooting tour dates all post season where’s the smoke for her ?

[u/rambii → u/Jreal2013]

If Rhyne Howard dosnt shoot as much defending Atlanta team will be very easy via X&O.

You need the spacing and for her to take as many shots for defense to rotate and respect it.

But its hard to explain if you are looking for some1 to blame for a loss game, even tho Howard is top 3 wing in the league right now and every team will love to her as 2 way player.

Howard steals /defense allows for a lot of points on the other end, as well as her spacing being a shooter, the issue is you dont have a spacing big and a real 6'4 + paint protector who can also shoot that would increase Howard % makes by a lot and she will take far less shots that are low quality.

[u/campoole82 → u/Jreal2013]

Cause I mean i already know we not gone do shit about rhyne

[u/Ribrep → u/Jreal2013]

Rhyne Howard has genuinely shot yall out of games it’s unfortunate to watch.

[u/Due-Sheepherder-218]

Tht ATL offense works well when Naz is getting touches in the high paint and keeping the ball moving. She is going to look useless when Jordin and Rhyne are playing hero ball.  

Naz is also their most versatile defender. She is not just good, she can guard 1-5 if needed and it's not a losing matchup. Maybe they could have won if she played closer to 40 minutes vs 30. She was +7

I do think that foul on CZ was a big momentum swing 

[u/Kennisgoodman]

Angel Reese had a few turnovers. Her worst was throwing that lob pass interception on a poor attempt to hit her man down court for the cherry pick. What was that?

And they really wanted Howard to hit at least a couple more of her shots. No points until 5 minutes left in the half and just finishes with 3-14 shooting… Gray didn’t shoot much better but finished with 19 still.

The game was pretty close overall. Atlanta usually finishes here but I guess Valkyrie defense is a thing!

[u/juoea]

idk she had a few good looks but couldnt knock them down. but its not like DB had a better game than hillman.

okot's minutes have been way down ever since bonner acquisition. im not so sure that shed make a big difference, yes in the season series she was big but both teams have developed a lot since then. but regardless i wasnt a fan of cutting okot's minutes, and obviously a consequence of that is it is harder to rely on her now bc they didnt give her minutes down the stretch.

to me the keys in this game were that the dream lost on turnover margin and also lost on the glass. the one key area where the dream won is drawing fouls and getting to the line, without that the game prob wouldnt have even been close. for most of the game there was a pretty tight whistle which i think favors the dream? and since its the finals i would generally expect a tighter whistle, but i also was surprised the whistle wasnt tighter in the semis so who knows. anyway u certainly dont want a specific style of officiating to be something u plan to rely on

the dream cannot expect to be successful in this series if they cannot at least keep the turnovers and rebounding close. and idk it wasnt my perception that either of these were primarily on naz. the whole team needs to improve in these areas

[u/campoole82 → u/juoea]

But Bonner is at least a threat

Hillmon isn’t a player that’s gonna get you 15+ unless she’s at her most perfect game

[u/juoea → u/campoole82]

i mean hillmon has def had games with 15 points but yea shes not generally gonna be a primary scorer. neither is DB?

i dont have a problem with playing db a little more and naz a little less, probably a good idea if for no other reason than to keep everyone fresh. but idk what u think is gonna be different offensively with one over the other, they are pretty similar rly they will take threes if u leave them open and they can slip to the basket off screens (hillmon is probably the better of the two in this area) but neither of them are going to be heavy ball handlers beating defenders off the dribble etc (maybe DB is slightly better here but not enough to the point where u would run anything for her)

it may often feel 4v5 on offense against gsv in the halfcourt but idk what it was hillmon was or wasnt doing that u think contributed to this. the valkaries double ball handlers all the time, its not a thing they only do when theres a player they dont consider a threat or whatever. i think the dream did a reasonably good job of moving the ball around to get a better look, including from naz she j didnt hit them today. there were a few possessions where the dream took a shot that was probably ill-advised and it got easily blocked as a result, so theres still room to improve here. i dont think hillmon took any of those ill advised shots tho unless im forgetting one, and her decision making generally tends to be quite good, so idt this rly was on hillmon. but when it comes to "not playing like its 4v5 on offense", thats all about ball movement and even if u for whatever reason think db is a bigger offensive threat than hillmon, its still all about ball movement regardless of who is on the floor.

[u/dogpownd]

I’ll take Kia’s 9 points. 

[u/joe_dirty365 → u/dogpownd]

Playoff MVP at least for the Valks.

[u/FeltIOwedItToHim → u/joe_dirty365]

ummm… Gabby is scoring 24 ppg (on a team that often scores less than 70 total in a game) and basically iced out Paige Bueckers, then Jackie Young, and now Rhyne Howard.

[u/rando5star]

I think the Dream's bigs generally need to slip less on their screens. It feels like they slip their screens like 90% of the time. Constantly slipping let Kiah get away with playing drop throughout. They already aren't a good shooting team but then that also gave the space for the GSV guards to recover over the top and make the pnr nothing more than cardio. They didnt get anything off their picks and sets, especially in the 4th. They rarely get the switches that they can take advantage of either inside with the mismatch or forcing Kiah to guard their scorers in space on the perimeter.

Just getting contact on the pick to force the switch would probably give them some more scoring juice inside for Naz and Angel but also off drives for Rhyne and Allisha. Or at least force them to fight over the screen. Otherwise youre banking on 3s from a team we all know can't shoot it like that

[u/Sniffy4]

Kiah can roll to the rim, make putbacks and the occasional open 3. She's a defensive force in the middle.

[u/FeltIOwedItToHim → u/Sniffy4]

make *some* putbacks anyway

[u/Ok_Grapefruit_6355]

The Valks really didn’t play that well IMO ATL just played worse and the coaching was abysmal. When your starters are standing around like a bunch of 3rd graders in PE staring at each other trying to figure out what to do next, you bring in your bench. He should’ve benched everyone but Canada going into the 4th and played his bench. Karl’s inability to know when to substitute is what had me calling for his firing earlier in the season and it’s sad to see that nothing has changed.

[u/Mr628]

It seems like the only player who got true pressure was Lish. Angel was a victim of Stokes’ rim protection and denial that we’ve seen all season and they didn’t mind getting beat by Rhyne because Rhyne isn’t going to beat anyone with her offense, she never has.

But to your original point, if a player is a good defender off switches and can guard 1-5 then they’re more than effective. It’s those positional defenders who don’t matter in the long run.

Naz Hilmon is a solid, sometimes good defender and really good hustle player who’s too big and slow to guard the perimeter but too small to rim protect and stop post ups. I was never high on her because of that. Maybe if she was a true knockdown shooter or had skills as a hub, you’d get more out of her.

[u/Mike_Hawk_Burns]

Karl needs to be using his bench more. It doesn’t matter that we swept Atlanta in the regular season. One of the Atlanta games in golden state showed a weakness that Atlanta could expose. We were dominating the starters but when he put Madina, Pao and Izzy in, they clawed back and almost won. It’s so secret that Madina’s size is a huge advantage to Atlanta but he doesn’t seem to trust his bench. I think having a rotation of Angel, DB and Madina or having 2 out of 3 of those names in together would benefit Atlanta massively

[u/TipHayesCropTop → u/Mike_Hawk_Burns]

i think smesko has cold feet with okot, izzy, and paopao bc they're young and don't have WNBA postseason experience, which matters a lot when you're in a tight playoff game. but i can't imagine him running such a short bench against gsv in a 7 game series. that would be a sadistic thing to do to his starters.

[u/FeltIOwedItToHim → u/Mike_Hawk_Burns]

if Madina comes in, we will see a lot of Gueye.

we didn’t have that combination of size/bulk before

[u/Mike_Hawk_Burns → u/FeltIOwedItToHim]

That’s what I’m scared of because Gueye needs more time to be a solidified piece. She’s really foul heavy due to her inexperience in the league and you can see that affecting her defensive sets. It would be an advantage to Atlanta to force that move

[u/Arcane_Spork_of_Doom]

Bri is out.

Naz is good but not great as a starter now and has some good secondary offense, but yeah, the defenders are way too good to let that manifest.

The Dream were getting cooked a few times by the Valks during the regular season. Each time they brought in Madina who methodically was scoring pretty much at will. Then, without much comment or fanfare, she'd go back out of the game. I thought Coach Smesko was putting her in the back pocket to unleash in the playoffs should they meet again.

This should have been that moment, especially late, especially since Golden State's best help defender was gimpy and all the doubles would have been late. Missed opportunity and I likely don't need to tell anyone how important game ones are in the WNBA Finals.

[u/joyjunky]

It should probably be Okot since we struggled against her size in the regular season. But Karl has not trusted her at all.

I don’t think Karl is going to change the starting lineup though. Just like I don’t think Nat will change the starting lineup.

Karl should probably use more of the bench even if he doesn’t change the starting lineup.

[u/chabiene → u/joyjunky]

Asking him to do that now is comical. I dont even know who else is on his bench, and he probably doesnt either

[u/joyjunky → u/chabiene]

Yeah, this always bites coaches in the ass tbh. They don’t utilize players in the regular season and now when they need them in the postseason, the players didn’t garner enough trust to actually play so the starters are just left floundering

[u/campoole82 → u/joyjunky]

Idk man I just don’t see us not losing this series with her playing 30 minutes she’s not good enough

[u/joyjunky → u/campoole82]

Nat never changes the starting lineup but she adjusts players minutes depending on how the game is going. KT was amazing in the Aces series. She was bad today so Kaila and LA got her minutes.

Karl needs to do the same thing. Even if Naz is still starting, he needs to adjust her minutes depending on the flow of the game. Same with Rhyne tbh. If they aren’t playing well, he needs to let them take breathers to regroup while utilizing other players. Nat always does that when Gabby plays like shit so she can come back extra motivated and close out games

[u/campoole82]

Now if she was switchable 1-5 then Id say ok but genuinely she isn’t fast enough to closeout on a shooter