Skip to content

Brittney Griner finally realising her all-conquering potential for the Phoenix Mercury

Coverage of the WNBA continues on Saturday evening as the Phoenix Mercury visit the Indiana Fever. Join us live from 6pm on both Sky Sports Mix and Sky Sports Arena

Brittney Griner

When Brittney Griner joined the WNBA after a great collegiate career with Baylor, the ground shook. Her presence was felt immediately.

She helped the Phoenix Mercury to a Conference Finals appearance in her rookie year. As a sophomore she was first in Win Shares for a team that featured Diana Taurasi, leading Phoenix to the best regular season record in league history and her first championship.

It seemed she couldn’t be stopped. It was clear that Griner was going to destroy worlds and dunk on the heads of any wannabe-basketball-superheroes on her way to collecting five or six WNBA championship rings.

But it wasn’t that simple. Since that early success, Griner has looked less like the unstoppable, mythical giant she promised to be. At times she’s had the impact of an oversized Groot.

She has still led the team in Win Shares at times in recent years but the Mercury’s success has plummeted.

Some of this has been outside of her control. Taurasi missed a full WNBA season in 2015 because UMMC Ekaterinburg essentially paid her to so she could focus on rest and playing in the Russian league. The Greatest Of All Time, as she's widely known, also had a few injured seasons more recently and with Phoenix being a weaker team as a result, other franchises grew in the WNBA-verse and other players avenged Griner’s early dominance when the 6ft 9in center was asked to shoulder more of the load.

DeWanna Bonner did her bit to lead the Win Shares column for Phoenix in 2015 and they went 20-14 for the season - a fair effort from the defending champions after losing a leading scorer. But the team still looked like it was built around an ageing Taurasi most years. When she returned, Griner was leading the team but it resulted in average basketball as they went .500 over two seasons.

Also See:

Again, when Taurasi missed most of 2019 due to injury, Griner picked up the Win Shares responsibilities but the team only managed a 15-19 record.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Highlights of the regular season game between the Chicago Sky and the Phoenix Mercury in the WNBA

What are Win Shares?

This advanced stat pretty much does what it says on the tin. Basketball Reference describes Win Shares as “an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player”.

A combination of weightings on stats takes the total number of wins a team has, then calculates how many of those wins can be attributed to a single player from their box scores.

No advanced stat is perfect, but Win Shares tends to show how important a player is to a team beyond just looking at points per game.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Highlights of the regular season game between the Phoenix Mercury and the New York Liberty in the WNBA

So, if Basketball Reference attributes Brittney Griner with 6.8 Win Shares during the WNBA’s best ever 29-5 Phoenix Mercury championship season in 2014, this suggests that 23.4 per cent of the team’s success that year was down to her. Keep in mind this was the best regular season record ever earned in the W.

If you tend to only follow the men’s NBA, this is similar to Stephen Curry's level on the 73-9 Golden State Warriors. If you follow NFL, it’s Tom Brady on the 16-0 New England Patriots in 2007.

Griner was scoring 15 points, grabbing 8 rebounds, and blocking 3.8 shots per game. The latter number totalled to 129 for the season. 129! That's the highest amount ever, and her nearest rival that year was Jessica Breland. You know how many she had? 58. Not even half. Griner was scary good in 2014.

Since then, however, her performance has not raised the Mercury bar and in recent seasons you can tell her heart wasn't in the WNBA as she shared her struggles with mental health at times.

Sure, her points were solid - she averaged better than 20 points and 7 rebounds for three straight seasons - but a lot of those were coming from settled mid-range jumpers. Her blocks per game halved and the rebounding numbers were barely scraping the top 10 in the league.

A reminder: there are only 12 teams in the league, which means there are only 12 starting centers. Griner is the third tallest player ever in the league - behind the dearly missed Margo Dydek, who died in 2011 - and the bit-part role playing rookie Bernadett Hatar. If Griner wasn’t a top 10 rebounder in the league as a starter, that means she was one of the worst rebounders at her position.

Simply put, Griner has played soft at times during her WNBA career.

We can rebuild her

When Diana Taurasi was injured in 2019, it was time to consider life after the GOAT. She might still have dreams in the game of basketball but the Phoenix Mercury started to pivot and build around Brittney Griner instead.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Highlights of the regular season game between the Phoenix Mercury and the New York Liberty in the WNBA

DeWanna Bonner moved to the Connecticut Sun last season. The Mercury brought in Skylar Diggins-Smith to help a now 39-year-old Taurasi with point guard duties and perimeter scoring.

Meanwhile, the team has also seen the development of the scrappy Sophie Cunningham to provide toughness on defense and shooting on offense, as well as Kia Nurse, who is thriving in a supporting role as opposed to perhaps being miscast as a co-star during her time on the New York Liberty.

Brianna Turner is also playing well, Shey Peddy has proven she can hit a clutch bucket and the team is hoping for a Bria Hartley return in the next few games.

It’s understandable that players don’t always go all out when there is little chance of a championship. It’s hard to deny that Griner has had some half-hearted seasons in recent years but she looks different out there in 2021.

Maybe it’s coming off a championship with UMMC Ekaterinburg, or perhaps the gold medal experience at the Olympics has helped, but she looks more motivated and is averaging a career-high 9.6 rebounds - which puts her in the top five in the league for the first time - as a result. Griner is also once again leading the league in blocks per game, scoring above 20 points after a dip last season and is dishing out the second-best assist clip of her career.

On top of that, she has three regular season dunks this year already. WNBA fans don’t watch the league to see the ball being thrown down and the players who manage dunks tend to do so on wide open fast breaks. Griner had one jam off a turnover last week, but her other two dunks this year were in traffic and driving past players. Seeing the rim being crushed is fun, but it also gives an indication of how energetic she is and what level of intensity she is bringing to the team.

Griner leads the Mercury in points per game, with Diggins-Smith just behind her. This is a good sign for Phoenix. Taurasi is still in the mix, but she is averaging her third lowest minutes and cannot carry a team like earlier in her career.

The team is now built around Griner and it’s working. They are on a seven-game winning streak and in that period she has had a 30-point, 12-rebound game, another with four blocks, and one where she got to the free throw line 10 times.

The Mercury are 16-10 and hunting down a first-round bye in the playoffs, with a chance to pick up their eighth straight against one of the worst teams in the league when they take on the Indiana Fever, live on Sky Sports Mix and Arena from 6pm this Saturday.

Griner is leading the team in Win Shares once again, but this is unlike the wilderness years when there was no championship in sight and her energy levels were low.

This season, she is looking like an all-powerful Thanos hunting for a ring, not dissimilar to 2014. Her excellent play is having an impact and Griner is putting herself firmly in the MVP conversation.

Around Sky