Which WNBA Draft players are the best fit with their new teams?

Sports

add

For the 38 college and international stars who heard their names called during the 2025 WNBA Draft, Monday night was the first step towards realizing their childhood dreams of playing in the WNBA.

While not every draftee is guaranteed a roster spot when the season tips off on May 16, all will have a chance to make their case during training camp in a few weeks.

On the latest episode of “No Offseason”, Zena Keita was joined by Sabreena Merchant and Ben Pickman to discuss which of the players drafted could fit best with their new teams. Watch the full discussion below.

A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on the “No Offseason” feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.  

Zena: Looking throughout all the rounds of the draft, are there any players that seem like they’re a really good fit? One of the ones I noticed was Makayla Timpson out of Florida State going to the Indiana Fever. Indiana just lost Temi Fagbenle in the expansion draft to the Golden State Valkyries. But Makayla is a rim runner, a shot blocker, and incredibly athletic. She’s a little bit smaller than Temi, but played well in the pick and roll with Ta’Niya Latson at Florida State, and I feel like this was a really good fit in terms of her filling in that hole. Were there any other players who, as soon as their names were called out, you guys thought, “Oh, that’s a good fit for them, they found a good home”?

Sabreena: I like Serena Sundell in Seattle a lot. I’ve been hyping her up for a few weeks here, so that won’t come as a surprise that I was happy to see her drafted, although it was much later than I expected it to happen. But she’s going into a Seattle team that doesn’t have a ton of guard depth right now. They have Skylar Diggins-Smith, Lexie Brown, and Gabby Williams is kind of a guard. But to come in there and be a backup point guard right away, and be a little bit of a spacer next to Diggins-Smith, I think is a good spot for her. I also like that Seattle drafted Madison Conner because they were the worst 3-point shooting team in the WNBA last year. They shot about 29 percent on 3s and Conner led the NCAA in 3-point makes, shooting about 45 percent of her shots from deep. Being a third-round pick, you don’t really expect to make the roster. But Seattle is in one of these situations where they’ve had a lot of offseason injuries, with Nika Muhl and Jordan Horston out for the season. So there are opportunities to potentially make some noise in training camp and I like those two fits, even if they are third-rounders, to potentially make that opening night roster.

Zena: A lot of people are saying Serena Sundell might have been a steal, having gone so low. Ben, what about you? Any players that stood out to you in terms of their potential fit for where they were drafted?

Ben: I’m going to go with a player who plays a very similar role to those that Sabreena just mapped out, and that is Te-Hina Paopao, going to Atlanta at number 18. Again, Sabreena mentioned some things about Seattle not being a very good 3-point shooting team, that was also true of the Atlanta Dream last year. And their new coach, Karl Smesko, comes from FGCU, where they took a ton of 3s every single year… they barely even knew that 2-pointers were a part of basketball.

So I really like this fit for Te-Hina Paopao. She was the NCAA leading scorer from 3-point range the year before last in the 2023-24 season. So if she can come in and make shots she’s playing her role, and she can do that well. That is what they’re going to ask of her. Just to be a floor spacer, and a secondary ball handler or even a primary ball handler when she comes in off the bench. Again, they’re not going to ask a ton of her right away. They already have Jordin Canada, Allisha Gray and Rhyne Howard, so they’ve got plenty of playmakers. But if Paopao can defend — which is something she worked a lot on at South Carolina, and something she gave the South Carolina coaches a lot of credit for in helping her improve that aspect of her game — and she can make 3-pointers, she has an opportunity to stick with the Dream. So in that regard, for a second-round pick, I think that’s a pretty good fit for her.

You can listen to full episodes of No Offseason for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

(Top Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

Er gilt als riesiges Mittelfeld-Talent – BVB heiß auf „argentinischen Wirtz“!

Argentinien

Next

trending_flat

Jackie Robinson Day 2025: Why MLB players wear the No. 42 once a year in honor of Dodgers legend

Sports