Midseason Fantasy WNBA Update
A Collab with Charting Hoops
This week’s post was written by Chris Gunther at Charting Hoops. Chris provides a unique perspective on basketball, using in depth analysis to answer sometimes serious, sometimes random, but always interesting questions about the game, on the court and off. Check out his recent pieces on NBA expansion, the rise of the Jalens, and the WNBA landscape over at Charting Hoops.
For the last several years I’ve run a Fantasy WNBA league on ESPN with family and friends. I’ve played Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball in the past, but personally I don’t feel as invested in the individual NFL players and it’s tough to maintain enthusiasm over the 162-game MLB schedule. Fantasy basketball on the other hand, has been a blast. The player pool is small enough to know a bit about everyone, but deep enough that you can get solid contributions off the waiver wire each week. The 44-game schedule provides a big enough sample size to separate the signal from the noise, but is tight enough that every week matters. It’s been a fun way to introduce the people in my life to many of the players, and get them invested in and rooting for their new favorites.
Each year, the winner of our league gets a jersey of their favorite player. In the first season, I won an Elena Delle Donne Rebel Edition Mystics jersey, in the colors of the Women's March Movement with key passages from the 19th Amendment in the trim. My sister, our season two winner, opted for another Mystics player, the “Cloud 9” Natasha Cloud jersey. 1
We took a break for year three, as I moved across the Pacific to Sydney, but we’re back again this season. Now that the All-Star break has come and gone in the W, I thought it would be fun to take stock of where we stand through the first half of the season through the lens of our fantasy league: Hot Girl (Hoops) Summer.
To start off, let’s introduce you to the teams.
There haven’t been any blockbuster trades thus far, so those draft day lineups are a fairly good indicator of the results. Any guesses on who’s winning?2
Team La’a jumped to the top of the table in Week 1, and after eight matchups, is back where she started. Team Gary Indiana Lords had a slower start but has settled into second, while I (CHRIS) recently dropped back into third after a glorious half month in the lead.
La’a doesn’t have the best team in any specific stats, but has built the most balanced team - she’s second or third in every one of the six components of scoring,3 which lands her first overall. Meanwhile, after some unfavorable, untimely matchups in the first few weeks, Gary Indiana has been on a tear. The players he drafted have combined to score the most points, secure the most rebounds, and also record the most assists and steals.
That all makes sense given he nabbed Napheesa Collier with the fifth overall pick.
Note: On all of these charts, you can hover over to see more information!
Napheesa Collier has been the best player in the WNBA this season, and it shows in her wide lead in fantasy points. The MVP front-runner has scored 488 points, most in the WNBA, is top-five in steals and blocks, and ninth in rebounds. Of course fantasy scoring just scratches the surface of a basketball player’s contribution, but it’s a good indicator in this case: in addition to leading the league in fantasy points, Collier is first in both offensive and defensive win shares, according to Basketball Reference.
However, in fantasy points per game, A’ja Wilson ever-so-slightly slides past Collier. A’ja has missed a few games for concussion protocol and to rest her wrist, but when she plays, she can be counted on to fill up the box score.
A’ja had THE standout fantasy performance of the year so far, posting this line: 35 points, 13 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals, 3 blocks, and 1 three pointer. That’s crazy production. Taking those one by one …
Only 6 other players have scored 35 or more points this season
Only 21 other players have recorded 13 or more rebounds this season; only 2 of them also had 6 or more assists
Only 6 other players have recorded 3+ steals and 3+ blocks in a game this season
A’ja Wilson did all of that in one game. No other player has even recorded 30 points, 10 rebounds, and 4 assists in a game. Wilson’s done it twice in 18 tries.
With her teammates struggling, A’ja Wilson is truly doing it all for the Aces and keeping them afloat in the standings.
We knew A’ja (1st overall) and Napheesa (5th) would be first round fantasy picks, but there have also been a number of surprise players. To find the biggest “steals” and “flops”, I compared every player’s ranking in fantasy point production to when they were selected in the draft. The players who moved to the left in the chart below are the “steals” (overperforming their draft position), while those that slipped to the right have been underperforming, relative to their team owner’s (maybe skewed) hopes.
Azurá Stevens comes out as the biggest riser so far: The LA Sparks Center fell to the 51st pick in the draft (to Team EllieOop) but has recorded the 10th most fantasy points through the first half of the WNBA season. Some fans may not have seen this coming, but EllieOop had Stevens on her previous fantasy squad and knew she was getting tremendous value with this pick. Stevens is second in the W in rebounds, while also being one of the more well-rounded stars, accumulating her fantasy points from a relatively even balance of all contributing stats. Her Sparks may not be doing much (Her Hoops Stats gave them a D-), but Stevens, the unrestricted free agent, is putting up big numbers in a bid to up her next contract.
Gabby Williams is also having a breakout season. The first-time All-Star has been the 14th best fantasy performer after nearly going undrafted; Gary Indiana Lords is thankful he picked up the French veteran with the penultimate pick. Meanwhile Courtney Williams, Allisha Gray, and Dearica Hamby were all taken in the first half of the draft, but have been playing like top-10 picks: Courtney Williams, one half of Studbudz, is the second best player on the league’s best team; Allisha Gray is solidly in the MVP conversation, and Dearica Hamby has recorded the fifth most fantasy points in the entire league.
Much of the opportunity for Dearica Hamby, as well as Azurá Stevens, has come because of the extended injury to LA’s would-be starting Center, Cameron Brink. After suffering a season-ending knee injury 15 games into her rookie season, Cam hasn’t seen the court in over a year. But just last week, The Orange County Register reported that Brink is participating in 5-on-5 drills in practice and Sparks Coach Lynne Roberts is hopeful for a July return. Even after compiling a 8-14 first half record, the Sparks are still well within reach of a playoff spot and have a lot to compete for in the second half. After patiently stowing her away in his IR spot, Gary Indiana is hoping Brink is a big part of a second half comeback, and his patience could pay off come fantasy playoff time.
The other biggest fallers are also largely due to injury: Kahleah Copper was expected to return shortly after the season started, but her knee injury ended up requiring surgery which had the Mercury star scorer sidelined through mid-June. She returned for six games, before being forced to exit again with a hamstring pull. Courtney Vandersloot started healthy, but a heartbreaking ACL tear on June 7 ended her season prematurely. And Captain Clark has been battling a series of injuries that caused her to miss games for the first time since high school (but didn’t stop her from getting the most All-Star fan votes). Those injuries have had fantasy owner EllieOop’s heart beating faster than when she’s reading romantasy.
Other than with Brink, at the time of the draft we couldn’t have predicted which stars would miss so many games. Instead, we should evaluate draft prowess by fantasy points per game. And we can get even more analytical with a metric called Draft Score. As I lay out in Chapter 5 of my book, Skytown, Draft Score scores each draft pick 4 by comparing the selected player against all of the players drafted after them. As a result, each player’s score depends not just on their own performance, but on what teams could have had instead.
Brink is still at the bottom (0 points per game), as is Aaliyah Edwards who has simply under performed and lost minutes to Washington’s outstanding rookies, Sonia Citron and Kiki Iriafen (she’s down to just 14 minutes per game, vs 22 last year).
We now see the top two picks in the 2025 WNBA draft down here, in Paige Bueckers and Dominique Malonga. This placement isn’t really on them though. Paige is having an incredible Rookie campaign, and has put up the 11th most fantasy points per game in the entire league. But Ram NRG taking her with the second overall pick may have been a bit of a reach. Meanwhile in Seattle, the Storm are slow-rolling the 19-year-old Malonga, keeping her under 10 minutes per game, which may be good for her overall development, but has certainly not been good for my fantasy team. In both cases, we may have overreacted to the actual 2025 WNBA draft in selecting these players a little too early in the 2025 fantasy draft.
As mentioned, there hasn’t been a lot of trade activity so far in the league,5 which helps make this draft-based analysis more accurate, but is kind of boring. So let us know what you think! Where is there a win-win? What trades should go down in our league?
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Which is now two teams out of date …
Hint: It’s not me.
Scoring for Hot Girl (Hoops) Summer works as follows: 1 fantasy point for every real point, rebound, assist, and made three pointer. 2 fantasy points for every real steal and block.
Hence the name.
Gary Indiana Lords rejected my offer of Jewell Lyod and Rickea Jackson (and Max Christie) for Napheesa Collier.
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