Our friends at The Believer are now publishing web exclusives. To celebrate, we’re sharing excerpts of their inaugural weekly column, in which Katie Heindl (author of the beloved Basketball Feelings) writes about the WNBA for both longtime fans and the casual observer. If you want to follow along and bypass the paywall, pick up a Believer digital-only subscription. For just $16 a year, you’ll also have full access to the magazine’s complete two-decade archive, including the most recent issue.
There’s a sequence in Napheesa Collier’s recent thirty-point game against the LA Sparks that tidily highlights the sort of perpetual, undercurrent threat she is. Barely three minutes into the first quarter, Collier seems to bolt out of nowhere to intercept a pass between the Sparks’ Layshia Clarendon and rookie Cameron Brink, rocketing the ball back down the court, uncontested, for an easy layup. Watch back in the lead-up to the steal and see Collier, who plays for the Minnesota Lynx, all coiled energy and at least three steps ahead of the sequence that’s about to play out.
The ball’s then passed off to Clarendon by Sparks forward Rickea Jackson as she’s pressed backward by the Lynx’s Bridget Carleton. The second Clarendon takes possession, Collier’s teammate Courtney Williams is on them, arms out and blanketing their view.
Throughout, Collier’s eyes never leave the ball—not when she picks up Brink and sets the 6’4” rookie on her hip, and not when she backs into the paint as the Sparks run a screen for Clarendon—and, opposite Williams’s statuesque stance, she’s been softly bouncing from the ball of her foot to her heel, as if revving up. Clarendon hesitates, deliberating who to pass to, but it’s clear Collier knows before they do. Partly because Williams has cut off many of Clarendon’s potential outlets, and partly because Collier, after shifting backwards into a zone defensive scheme, now has a wider perspective of the floor. It’s a smart move by Collier because she gives herself more room to watch where the ball will go and also lulls Williams and Brink into letting their guards down just enough to make the next split-second possible.
Read the rest of the essay over at The Believer