WNBA Watchword: Chemistry

One of the sharp realities of women's professional basketball is the competing WNBA and international schedules coupled with heightened player mobility within the WNBA.

Both factors mean that teams come into the season with little experience playing together and must adapt on the fly early in the season. What looked good on paper does not always work out on the court. This poses a considerable challenge to WNBA coaches as well as players.

Q McCall at SwishAppeal.com does a fantastic job of addressing the issue of Chemistry in the WNBA context. Check it out.

However, the other team that is quietly an excellent example of complementary player styles is the Indiana Fever. Depending on how you want to break down the player styles, there are approximately 13 fairly distinct ones in the WNBA (including a range of point guard styles and excluding a few superstar outliers). The Fever has a league-high 7 of them, not including Jene Morris who as a rookie obviously didn't play in 2009 but figures to add an 8th style if she continues on the path to becoming a scoring perimeter player.

More importantly is that as much as people talk about the Fever's scoring struggles, part of what makes this team dangerous is that they have 7 players who are very efficient given their playing styles. In terms of individual contributions to the key four factors stats - effective field goal percentage, free throw rate, offensive rebounding percentage, and turnover percentage - they had four players in 2009 who were above average contributors in at least 3 of 4 of those categories relative to their playing style. What all of this means is that the Fever are not necessarily a team that's going to blow people's socks off offensively but they have a pretty good balance up and down the roster, which gives head coach Lin Dunn a number of different combinations to play with while not necessarily having a huge drop off in performance (this is what the Chicago Sky discovered this past weekend).

Definitely, the whole post is worth a read for Q McCall's insightful analysis of Achieving chemistry in the WNBA.