Quite frankly, I am sick of seeing the "3 to see".
Thank goodness – I thought I was the only one that had more than enough of the ”3 to See”…
As far as the original question, I have to go with EDD.
As has been already posted, Diggins may not even be the best player on her team, although she will undoubtedly dazzle opponents next year in the WNBA with her wide variety of hair bands, hairdos, and pouts. And she’s almost certainly going to set a rookie record for tweets. But as a player, I doubt that she’s going to dominate. There’s a very simple litmus test named Kelly Faris and Diggins was not the Notre Dame player that beat Kelly consistently.
As for Griner, she is dominant, but that’s as much due to sheer physical size as skills; truth be told, if she was “only” 6’5” or 6’4” we’re probably not having this conversation; her passing game is limited as is her range. But she is that tall, and she has worked to develop her game and take advantage of what she has physically, and she is the dominant player in college.
Still, Delle Donne can do almost everything, and do it well. She has a far more complete offensive skill set – she can post up, she can play facing the basket, she certainly has a long range shot – an excellent long range shot, she can pass, dribble, pull up, and even
dunk. And as mentioned before, she doesn’t have the surrounding cast that Griner has, so she spends far more time being double and triple-triple-teamed while she’s doing those things and she still succeeds.
When they both get to the WNBA (or the overseas leagues) Delle Donne is going to bring a far more complete set of offensive skills, while Griner is going to have less of a physical advantage – the women at the pro level are going to be taller, stronger and faster than what she’s faced in college to this point. Besides the late Margo Dydek there have been at least five other players 6’8” or taller and a whole slew of players 6’5” or greater. Griner
may be a better player than any of them, but the margin between her and everyone else is going to be much slimmer than it is at the college level; she’s not going to be the best ever.
There is supposedly a quote from Ernie Delle Donne, to the effect that had his daughter stayed at UConn, Connecticut would have had two more national championships. That’s not an entirely unrealistic assessment; this weekend as we watch her play the early game, imagine what she would have added to what the Huskies already had over the last couple of years.
(And then remember that Breanna is bringing much the same raw skill set now, and that the Elena Delle Donne we’ll be watching this weekend may well be the Breanna Stewart we’ll be seeing three years from now. That's a good thing - a very good thing)
