Celebrating the Kiah-nator's final Stats. A slam for WNBA ROY?

[JSB60]

So it looks to me like Kiah was actually helped this year by having come off the bench at UCONN. Very few elite players are used to that role, and she has looked natural as the sixth player for the Liberty.

 

[DobbsRover2]

So it looks to me like Kiah was actually helped this year by having come off the bench at UCONN. Very few elite players are used to that role, and she has looked natural as the sixth player for the Liberty.

That is true. Very very few college players get drafted in the 1st or 2nd round after playing a sub-in roles at school (it takes a very special school and extraordinary player), but having gotten that experience for four years, you are mentally well set up to enter a pro league where only the really elite rookie is called on to take a leading role on the team, and in most cases even to be a starter off the bat. The 2015 draft had no really star player in the mold of an EDD or Griner or Maya, and you could say that all the players drafted ahead of Kiah after being the star or a main contributing starter on their college season had difficult seasons, and for half of them at least it bordered on just ouch. But that's not new for WNBA rookies, and Kiah had a head start over all of them entering the pros.

 

[DobbsRover2]

But, you know, we may well have.

Obviously you would not be saying that if you had ever heard the Uruguayan team hitting the high "oh-di-lay-ee-ay" notes -- or maybe you don't want to.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Guilty as charged on Hamby. But I haven't given up on her yet!

I feel more embarrassed for underestimating Kiah. I dismissed Striper saying that Chicago should be targeting Kiah. And now I wish Chicago had Kiah!

Yeah at least with Hamby you can boil down her really bad stats to the one area of shooting -- 35.4% on FGs and 64.2% on FTs. And weirdly she was actually pretty good on her 17 3pt attempts, almost beating her FG% at 35.3%. Her defense and rebounding were at least decent, so she mainly has to work on those one or two shooting issues and getting herself positioned right in the paint and at the line.

 

[Striper69]

Guilty as charged on Hamby. But I haven't given up on her yet!

I feel more embarrassed for underestimating Kiah. I dismissed Striper saying that Chicago should be targeting Kiah. And now I wish Chicago had Kiah!

Like I said: The Sky with Kiah would be a shoo-in for the title.

At the time I didn't know that Fowles had gave up on the team but even with the team as they turned out they would be formidable.

 

[meyers7]

Obviously you would not be saying that if you had ever heard the Uruguayan team hitting the high "oh-di-lay-ee-ay" notes -- or maybe you don't want to.

Can honestly say, I have never heard that.

 

[DobbsRover2]

One more addition to the Kiah saga. Back in April shortly before the WNBA draft, a site called R-bk--l devoted to the WNBA (I try to hide the identity a bit) held their official mock draft in which Kiah slid all the way back to the end of the 2nd round at 23rd, more than twice as poor as the 11th spot she was actually selected at. Five of the players selected before her including one in the mock 1st round were cut before playing a game. The player who really did get selected 23rd in the WNBA draft (before being cut) was Amber Orrange, who was chosen in the 1st round instead in the mock draft. I am guessing that none of the members of the mock draft board were actual WNBA GMs doing practice drills.

But at least the combined Win Shares of the first 22 players in the mock draft did outdo Kiah by 4.2 to 3.6, even though average dropped further to 0.19 WS per player. And the R-bk--l voters have selected Jewell Loyd as the WNBA ROY, so they are consistent in how they display their combined knowledge of player values in the WNBA.