Bad Trades
Why don't WNBA players like Chicago?
There has been a lot of talk about basketball trades recently, between the wild NBA trade deadline1 and some of the biggest names in the WNBA heading to new cities. While we eagerly wait to see the new pairings in action, I thought this would be a good time to share at how some previous trades played out. Specifically the most lopsided trades in WNBA history, originally discussed in my forthcoming book, Skytown.
There have been 317 trades in the league’s 26 seasons from 1997 to 20222, about 12 per season. A simple way to measure “lopsidedness” is counting how many win shares a team gives away in the trade vs how many they get back. Here’s what that looks like:
Each dot above is a WNBA trade. Most trades are in the bottom left, within ~10 win shares on either side. This makes sense since teams generally don’t trade their best players with a lot of potential win shares ahead of them. Only 7 of the 317 trades have involved superstars with both sides getting assets worth 20+ win shares in the deal. The Kelsey Plum / Jewell Loyd trade may end up in this category.
The grey, 45° line represents a perfectly fair trade. A team that gives away a player worth 10 wins, gets a player worth 10 wins in return. So, the farther away a dot is from the 45° line, the more lopsided the trade. Here are the 12 trades where one team got away with 25+ more win shares than they gave away. The first team listed was the “winner” of the trade.
Those are all BIG-time face palms. The very worst trade occurred in January 2004 when the San Antonio Silver Stars (now the Aces) traded the 4th pick in that year’s draft to the Connecticut Sun for Shannon Johnson, as well as swapping 2nd and 3rd round picks. Seems innocuous enough, but 2004 turned out to be one of the best draft years of all time. The Sun cashed in that 4th pick for Lindsay Whalen, who would compile nearly 60 win shares over her 15 years in the WNBA, 9th most all-time.
Sorry Dee Brown3, looks like you made the worst trade of all time during your half season as General Manager of the Silver Stars. Tough luck! What’s that? You’re saying you couldn’t have known that the 4th pick would be so good? That’s fair. Instead of the 60 wins Whalen contributed, Brown could have expected the 4th pick to perform similarly to previous 4th picks from prior drafts, contributing about 15 wins over a career. Shannon Johnson, who Dee Brown and San Antonio received in the trade, added nine wins over her remaining games. Trading an expected 15 win shares for 9 win shares still isn’t great but it’s much better than the 60 vs 9 as it played out.
As a matter of fact, 9 of the 12 most lopsided trades of all time were driven by draft picks who significantly outperformed, including the aforementioned Lindsay Whalen, Kara Lawson in 2003, Tina Charles, who’s 2009 #1 pick traded hands multiple times, Tiffany Hayes in 2012, Chelsea Grey in 2014, and Jonquel Jones in 20164.
Excluding these unexpected over-performances, 3 trades stand out as expectedly bad. A team letting all-WNBA talent go before their primes, and getting peanuts in return. And all three times, the team was the Chicago Sky.
2015: Sylvia Fowles and the 2016 #22 pick for Érika de Souza; 41.4 win share delta
Going into their 10th year as a franchise, the Sky were poised for a run at a chip. They had just made their first trip to the Finals, only falling to the Phoenix Mercury, one of the greatest teams of all time. The Sky were returning one of the best lineups ever assembled, including Elena Delle Donne, Courtney Vandersloot, Epiphanny Prince, and Allie Quigley. And then Sylvia Fowles demanded a trade. She sat out half the season, forcing the Sky to finally accept this deal sending Fowles to the Lynx, in which they somehow got bamboozled into giving up the better player AND a pick. We’ll never fully know why Fowles wanted “new experiences” outside Chicago. All we know is Fowles had the best years of her Hall of Fame career in Minnesota, winning two championships, while de Souza played just three more years of average basketball.
2010: Kristi Toliver for the 2011 #17 pick; 30.4 win share delta
Two days before the start of the 2010 season Sky Head Coach and General Manager Steven Key made this weird move. Even when it was announced, it didn’t add up. Toliver was the 3rd pick a season prior and had a successful rookie campaign averaging 8 points and 2 assists in just under 15 minutes per game. Now the Sky trade her for a draft pick 14 spots lower. According to observers at the time, Coach Key was frustrated with Toliver, often excessively criticizing her mistakes, but this trade seems too far. The Sky used the second round pick on Angie Bjorklund who played a total of seven games, made two career field goals, and posted a negative game score in her one season. She doesn’t even have a photo on BasketballReference.com. Meanwhile, Toliver went on to win Most Improved Player, make an All-WNBA team and three All-Stars, and win two championships in her 14 seasons.
2009: Candice Dupree and the 2010 #16 pick for Shameka Christon and Cathrine Kraayeveld; 25.8 win share delta
When the Sky announced they’d bring back Steven Key as Head Coach & GM in 2009 a frustrated Sky blogger noted the players would provide the ultimate opinion on Key: “If everyone requests a trade this off-season, that will indicate unhappiness.” Well, a few months later Candice Dupree, the Sky’s first draft pick, the team leader in points, rebounds, and blocks, and the face of the young franchise, requested a trade. Shortly after5 this deal was completed, sending Dupree to the reigning champion Mercury. Unlike the two other trades, the Sky did get something of value in Christon, a reigning All-Star, and Kraayeveld, a vet who had been to the playoffs three times with the Liberty. Unfortunately, injuries derailed Christon’s career (she’d play just 10 games for the Sky) while Kraayeveld’s numbers regressed across the board in her two years in Chicago. Dupree, like Fowles, would have the best years of her career in Phoenix and win a championship on the 2014 Mercury.
And this doesn’t even include the Sky giving away four picks, two swaps, and Leonie Fiebich for Marina Mabrey, a trade which will almost certainly be very, very negative for the Sky once it has time to play out. It’s probably fair to say the Sky are the anti-Lakers. At least the Sky are good at drafting, but that’s another story…
FWIW I don’t think the Luka Dončić / Anthony Davis trade is as bad as everyone is making it out to be for the Mavs (to be clear, still not good). I was feeling some validation for about half an hour on Saturday … and then AD re-injured his ab. Get better soon!
Cutting off at 2022 ensures players analyzed have had at least 2 seasons with which we can grade the trade. Still, older trades will be more pronounced given the extra seasons of play.
At least your daughter Lexie won her trade, when the Sky traded her to the Sparks in 2022 for Li Yueru who added 0.0 win shares and had her contract suspended after 16 games.
This one is particularly bad because the Wings moved up to the #5 pick in this trade, just to take Aerial Powers over Jonquel.
The deal was completed so quickly the marketing team didn’t have time to change the season ticket design, which featured Dupree’s outstretched arm reaching toward the basket Space-Jam style over the ironic tagline “Playing for Keeps.”