Glance at the Washington Mystics’ place in the WNBA standings (5th, 20-14) and you may scoff when I call them a legit title contender, but don’t be fooled by their mid-seed position, this is a team no one will want to see in the playoffs.
The Mystics play a slow methodical offensive game, tied for 12th in pace and with an average offense according to Her Hoop Stats. However, Washington is built on the back of a the league’s best defense, and one of the better units in recent league history, sporting a Top 25 ranking in opponent points per 100 possessions since 2010. They grind teams down to a pulp, smothering ball screens, erasing drives, and creating a no fly zone of sorts in the passing lanes and around the rim.
The biggest thing to understand when assessing the Mystics’ title odds is their 4-7 record of Washington when star forward Elena Delle Donne rests. Delle Donne’s health is routinely a question and understandably so as she deals with the complications brought on by Lyme Disease, but if she’s able to play the full postseason schedule, Washington will have a great chance. The former MVP is still one of the best players in the league (top 10 or higher, in my opinion) when healthy and on the court — I’m still miffed that she wasn’t voted to the All-Star team this year.
Washington’s halfcourt offense can get bogged down, but with Delle Donne in, the offense has much more fluidity and purpose. That makes a great deal of sense when considering the roster is built around her scoring versatility. Barring health constraints in the playoffs, I’d argue their style of play can fit much better in a series where matchups matter more than in regular season games.
Part of what makes this Mystics team such a joy to watch and a steady competitor is an incredibly versatile and modern roster. There’s length in abundance and numerous players capable of handling, shooting, and playmaking at various levels. No player embodies that versatility more that Shatori Walker-Kimbrough. Walker-Kimbrough’s stat line doesn’t often stand out, but it doesn’t need to on a team with Ariel Atkins, Delle Donne, and Natasha Cloud. Her connective abilities amplify the skills of the team’s on-ball players while adding cohesive threads to the fabric of the Mystics.
Walker-Kimbrough extracts the most out of her scoring gravity. Even as a relatively average shooter, she’s incredibly willing to fire away, essential in actually drawing the defense into rotation. While she doesn’t draw the hardest closeouts or more intense coverages, she parlays that off-ball threat into secondary on-ball reps. Her passing and playmaking ability shines remarkably attacking off of the weak side, adding a second crack to an already scrambling defense.
Her pacing and tempo as a handler are really fun and effective. She throws in a great deal of stutters in her footwork and hesitations with her handle to momentarily freeze defenders. She doesn’t possess the quickest first step, but she has wonderful shift moving East-West, one of my favorite parts of her game. She’s adept at forcing small rotations, tricking help defenders into stepping over, and throwing darts out to the nail or the corner. She knows she’s not getting to the rim, but she sells the attack with an extra step or two to antagonize defensive shift, and I can’t iterate enough how awesome that is.
She’s rarely sped up with the ball in her hands and has a wide array of ways to get the ball off: cross-body throws, one-handed fastballs, overhead tosses, and some wonderful usage of jump passes to craft new angles. Again, that extra 10 percent of movement she applies makes such a significant difference in extrapolating the margins of an offensive possession. Her connective passing is crisp and lightning quick, making decisions before the ball even gets to her.
Walker-Kimbrough draws fouls at an above-average rate, using her craft and guile to draw contact in the paint. She excels working out of hand-offs and out of the slots, and her two-player game chemistry with both Myisha Hines-Allen and Elizabeth Williams has been a staple of Washington’s offensive flow.
On the defensive end, she has quick hands and is active with her length, ranking 15th in the league in steal rate. The Mystics play a slow place as mentioned earlier, but Walker-Kimbrough has a keen ability to create easy offense, translating offense to defense. She’s incredibly effective playing up at the nail or rotating low, and times close-outs well. She’s solid on the ball, but is at her best working in tandem with one of Washington’s bigs. She navigates screens well, but she’s makes her defensive imprint using her awareness and knowledge of personnel to attack ball screens with another player and shut them down, as her communication and preparation prior to screening actions setting up repeatedly stands out.
Routinely, you can watch a defensive possession and witness Walker-Kimbrough pointing and calling out assignments and coverages as soon as a screen is placed. Much like we hit on with her playmaking and taking the extra steps to buy time, Walker-Kimbrough adds steps defensively to take away the margins from opposing ball-handlers.
Part of what makes her so versatile is that she can play up on wings, and particularly get away with it due to her capabilities as an off-ball defender.
Shatori Walker-Kimbrough doesn’t bring the scoring weight of some of her star-studded teammates, or the same All-Defense level play of Atkins or Cloud, but this team is better because of her. Her play is often far louder and more noticeable when she’s not on the court, buffering offensive possessions and smoothing them out, or chasing an opposing team’s two-guard off a bevy of screens. What she does expands the margins for the Mystics, and those margins matter that much more in the playoffs.
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