Hailey Van Lith absolutely whooped yesterday in her very first game for the Sky this season. And a lot of people are talking about this being like, okay, yeah, this is going to be a breakout year. And I hope it is. There’s no way it’ll be as bad as last year because she wasn’t very good and she got injured last year.
She was very iffy last year. Actually, she was really good first half versus Connecticut. If you watch that game, she looked really, really good against the Connecticut Sun in the first half and then didn’t really do much. It was the game where Angel Reese had a triple double.
But especially early, it was HVL that kind of dragged them into that game and Angel was exceptional, too. I have to give her credit where credit’s due. She was actually exceptional. But Hailey Van Lith came out with 20 points in a quarter on zero misses. 20 points in a quarter on zero misses, which was kind of mad.
And this is why I’m not looking too much into this, by the way. Because look who she’s doing it against. Look who she’s doing it against. I don’t even know who all of these players on the floor are. I actually don’t. I know that Shay Icheske there. I know Maggie Dougan’s there. So, there’s two undrafted rookies.
There’s Jilly Aliene, who played for the Fever last year, played 1 and 1/2 minutes in preseason and got cut. Okay, yeah, she’s going to hit a shot over undrafted rookie Maggie Dougan. Hailey Van Lith, all she showed is that she can absolutely cook third stringers. That she would be the most dominant player in the WNBA if she was playing third stringers every night.
HVL struggled against the Mercury starters. And that’s the problem. There’s no real G League equivalent for the W. But she’s at that Jimmer Fredette tier. She has Jimmer Fredette syndrome. Evidently way too good. What Jimmer Fredette syndrome is, is realistically known as Cameron Jerome syndrome. It’s where you’re way too good for the championship but not good enough for the Premier League.
Every year Cameron Jerome used to be near the top scorers in the championship as the second tier of English football. But every year he tried to come up to the Premier League, he was terrible. He just kept signing or his team would get promoted and he’d be terrible.
For people that suffer with Cameron Jerome syndrome right now, Adam Armstrong’s the best example. He has seven Premier League goals in like 100 games. But in the championship, every year he’s one of the best players.
So HVL has Jimmer Fredette syndrome, basically. Jimmer Fredette goes down to the G League and drops 50. Mac McClung is another good example. If you put Mac McClung in an NBA game he would struggle because he’s not good enough to be an isolation scorer at the NBA level. All of his weaknesses get exposed.
And that’s the problem with HVL. She can get buckets. But she doesn’t get buckets incredibly well at the WNBA level. And she definitely does not get buckets well enough that it makes up for all the deficiencies in her game.
The fact she’s slow, that’s the biggest thing. She’s slow. She’s shifty, she’s skilled, she’s got a handle. She’s just slow and small.
She’s slow, small and doesn’t have an ability to really get into positions defensively. She doesn’t have super quick hands or isn’t a super good anticipator on defense. So, when she goes up and plays against starters in the WNBA, they’re all just going to clamp her.
Basically everything she does is she has to score, get into the paint or initiate the pick and roll, otherwise she’s going to struggle. And not only that, with all those negatives, she’s going to get cooked on the defensive end.
But we saw against third stringers what she did that a lot of players on the Sky couldn’t do. And she is one of the best pure shot creators on the Sky. It’s just she’s not a good enough pure shot creator at the WNBA level to make up for her deficiencies.
But if you brought her to Europe, she’d be one of the best players in Europe. She absolutely would be. The pace is a little bit slower. It’s like Mike James. Mike James in the NBA has had chances to be a starting point guard and he’s actually looked good. His ability to create a shot, he’s scored, he’s had some really big NBA games. He is a bucket.
The problem is that a lot of the time he’s been a bucket on bad teams or he’s been a bucket as a temporary fix when scorers are out.
She’s almost like a worse version of Odyssey Sims. Odyssey Sims when she’s a starter and plays on high usage is actually pretty good. She’s always been pretty good. We saw it with the Fever.
But Odyssey Sims when she’s playing on low usage or off the bench is legitimately terrible, which is why for the Wings I’m like, oh no, what have you done? You’re bringing Odyssey off the bench. It didn’t work the last time you signed her and played her off the bench.
But yeah, so HVL in her defense, she cooked. No matter what anyone wants to say, HVL cooked. But she scored zero points with 3 minutes to go in the third quarter. With 3 minutes to go in the third quarter, she had zero points. She then went and made eight shots in a row.
It is one of these things where especially in preseason, we saw it as well from the Fever. Shatori Walker-Kimbrough looked genuinely terrible in the first half. And then as soon as the New York Liberty put on their third stringers, legitimately she looked like the best player on the floor. She looked unbelievable against the third stringers.
And that is the thing. Against the third stringers it’s very easy to go and get buckets. It’s very easy to make mistakes, to take that extra dribble. But when you’re coming in as a tertiary point guard it’s going to be tough.
I do think, look, they protected HVL or HVL would have been taken in the expansion draft. They traded their picks to protect HVL. But I expected her to look better against the starters. I did. And it’s going to be tough. It’s really tough for HVL to get any sort of role on this team.
I think Sloot not being okay, Sloot’s knee being out to start the year, HVL will be there at the start of the year, no question. I don’t know if HVL ends the season on this team. I really don’t.
And a lot of people are like, oh, it’s going to be her year based on a preseason game. I’m sorry. We have watched Jaylen Brown, who tried out for the Fever last year and didn’t make the team. We watched her look like Michael Jordan in preseason in Caitlin Clark’s very first preseason game. Preseason means nothing.
We watched Jessica Timmons look unbelievable. We all watched Kianna Trahan look like she couldn’t play basketball and then she went out as the third stringer and looked really good.
It is a very different game playing third stringers, especially the Mercury’s third stringers who might be the worst third stringers of them all.
She basically did it on undrafted rookies and Jilly Aliene. It’s not impressive to score 20 in any sort of WNBA game, yeah. But the problem is everybody we saw in college, whether it be Louisville or TCU, HVL can get buckets against college level opposition.
And that was college level opposition.
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