I am going to give the wings a chance since they have a new front office. But I already don’t like some of the things they have done.
Their draft was okay. I thought they botched the expansion draft. Leite should have been protected. The coaching hire looks questionable. I don’t know about bringing in Nalyssa Smith. And I think Hines Allen on basically a max contract looks like a foolish deal.
I think you are being way too generous! The truth is, the Wings are a disaster of biblical proportions! They have been bad for a long time with a team that has been unable to go anywhere largely imo because of Arike Ogunbowale. She is, has been, and will always be a player who can have great individual games as a scorer but will never be able to make her teammates better, indeed has no desire to. She is simply a volume shooter who occasionally has games where she actually shoots a good percentage and looks like a world beater but then reverts back to the 8-21 game where she scores 23-24 pts with one assist. Some were excited when they saw they were getting Paige but the weight of Arike and all the other “me, me, me” players is simply too much for even Paige to overcome.
Nalyssa is terrible, she has seriously regressed since Baylor, their best player besides Arike and Paige is Carrington, a legit good player on both sides of the ball but who has a terrible attitude, plays borderline dirty and is a technical waiting to happen. (She probably should have at least four or five so far already imo and is extremely fortunate that she has not seriously injured someone) Siegrist is too slow and cannot seem to score like she did in college, though if she were surrounded by a real
team she might could play a lot better. McCowan has lost her get up and go, and the rest of the roster seems like an odd collection of castoffs and freshmen who just don’t make a lot of sense. I feel so bad for Paige!
Plus, this coach does not appear able or willing to put his foot down and require the players read: Arike, Carrington, and Smith to play the game as it should be played. I think their best bet ( and best hope to keep Paige long term) is to tank this year and hope they can get Betts, trade Arike and Smith, hire a coach with some real gravitas & give her/him enough power to where she/he can force Carrington to adjust her ‘tude and tone down the rough/dirty play (otherwise, trade her too) and then attempt to surround that core of three plus (perhaps Siegrist) with a supporting cast that can ply a
team game!
They have a great player in Paige who knows all about how to make her teammates better. If they don’t make some serious changes to this roster one of two things will happen, neither of them good! One; they will waste a player who could turn that franchise into a perennial winner. Two; Paige will bolt to another team as soon as she is able.
They desperately need Betts and to trade Arike! I do not believe they will
ever win with Arike on that team, not even with Paige.
