Andre SnellingsESPN5 minutes of reading
Britney Griner is back.
Back to her country. Back to your home. And back to the WNBA, where the three-time All-WNBA First Team player and her Phoenix Mercury teammates will take the court on Friday, May 19 as part of the WNBA’s opening night quadrupleheader.
It’s only been five months since Griner was released from a Russian penal colony where she was serving a nine-year sentence after pleading guilty to importing hashish oil into the country. Griner was arrested last February, a week before Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Joe Biden’s administration said she was “wrongfully detained,” and Greener wrote a letter to President Biden saying she was “terrified that I could be here forever.” In her first post since being released in December in a prisoner exchange, she wrote on Instagram that she plans to return to the WNBA.
Now that the WNBA season is about to begin, I’ve been asked to suggest what Griner’s game and production might look like this year.
It’s challenging on many levels, to say the least. Honestly, it’s harder than usual for me to separate my analysis from my personal feelings of pulling for her as a person after all she’s been through. And the analysis itself is so multi-layered that it’s hard to know where to start.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m good with numbers and all. I can usually research a players history and current circumstances to give a reasonable prediction of what their stats might look like in a given season. Even if they are coming off an injury, I can look at other players who have come back from a similar injury and use that to shape my predictions.
But this? This is unprecedented in the history of American professional sports. So I won’t necessarily try to make specific line-by-line statistical predictions that I usually do. Instead, let’s just look at Greener’s story together from a quantitative perspective, then piece together what we can from various anecdotes and interviews to try to shape the numbers into reasonable estimates.
Where do I start
Start with her typical level prior to 2022. Over the five seasons from 2017 to 2021, Griner’s stats were very consistent, and she was locked in at that level in 2021. Here are her averages for the entire five-year period and then just for 2021 year:
Greener 2017-21: 20.6 PPG (55.8 FG%, 81.4 FT%), 7.9 RPG, 2.3 APG, 0.5 SPG, 2.2 BPG, 0.0 3PG in 32.4 MPG
Greener 2021: 20.5 PPG (57.5 FG%, 84.6 FT%), 9.5 RPG, 2.7 APG, 0.4 SPG, 1.9 BPG, 0.1 3PG in 32.8 MPG
Griner was 30 years old in the 2021 season, and the upcoming campaign will be her age 32 season. Longtime teammate Diana Taurasi gave an interview about what Griner’s game looked like toward the end of April. Taurasi mentioned the rust in Griner’s game, but also pointed out that Griner is visibly improving with time.
“Yeah, I think she’s advanced,” she said. “I mean, when you don’t do anything for 10 months, yeah, it’s a long stretch on your body — mentally, physically. But every week you just see her get a little bit better.”
That same week, Griner gave a similar insight into his game.
The following Sunday, Greener returned to practice with the Mercury. It was her first official basketball practice with the team in 560 days since she led Phoenix to the WNBA Finals on Oct. 17, 2021. Mercury coach Vanessa Nygaard said the practice was the culmination of a 100-day plan to prepare Griner for her first team training.
Griner also gave another update on the state of her game:
“Am I where I want to be? No, because the last time I was with my team, I was against Chicago in the finals, and as much as I want to be the Finals BG right now, I’m not,” she said. “So, I just gave myself a little grace and my teammates just picked me up. But I feel like I’m in a good place to start training camp, for sure. I mean, I haven’t had a fight, they don’t have to get a stretcher or oxygen or anything, so I guess I’m doing pretty well.”
Look forward
So what does that leave us predicting what to expect from Griner?
It’s not clear yet, but she’s working in the shape she needs to be in for the season. Griner is a full participant through preseason training camp. It’s unclear how much she can or can’t play in the preseason (she didn’t play in the opener).
But when it comes to drafting veteran players, I’m big on keeping minute production pretty consistent. As Griner hones her skills, it’s likely her per-minute production will be similar to what we’ve seen in her career. The question then is how much she could play.
As she mentioned, since late April, she’s found victory in not needing “a stretcher or oxygen” to get through the workout. It’s unclear if she’ll be able to play her typical 32-plus minutes to start the season or even at any point in the campaign. It’s also unclear if Griner will play every game, or if he could be on some sort of workload management when the season begins.
To complete our numerical exercise, I’ll calculate that she plays 27 MPG, in 80% of games, at a similar per-minute rate as from the five seasons from 2017 to 2021. That would give a rough production estimate of:
Greener in 2023: 17.2 PPG, 6.6 RPG, 1.9 APG, 0.4 SPG, 1.8 BPG, 0.0 3PG
That would translate to 30.2 fantasy points/game (numbers are rounded). Based on last season’s WNBA stats, the 30.2 FP/G would tie Natasha Howard for the 14th-best fantasy scoring average in the league.
Had she held that average for 80 percent of the WNBA’s 36 games played last season, it would have been good for 22nd in the league in total fantasy points, tied between Emma Meesman and Courtney Vandersloot.
These are very rough calculations and obviously Griner still has the upside to be the fantasy first round pick that he was before 2022. But hopefully this gives you some things to consider as you prepare for your women’s basketball fantasy drafts.
For me personally, I like to risk upside and will definitely be pulling for Griner this season for reasons that have nothing to do with fantasy hoops. But that means I’ll most likely pick her in the second round of many leagues… and I’ll do it with a smile.