Sun’s rise attributed to commitment to core
Plan to keep group of young players together for years has paid off
UNCASVILLE — The Connecticut Sun have a chip on their shoulder, and they don’t care who knows it.
Saturday morning, three days before the Sun kick off their playoff run, the team’s Twitter account posted a video compilation of fan, journalist, and pundit commentary that questioned the team’s ability to win the WNBA title, or even withstand the challenges of their upcoming semifinal series.
The Sun know they are young. They know they struggled on the road earlier this season. They know they don’t have a ton of experience deep in the postseason.
But what the Sun do have is something no other playoff team can boast: A core group of players that, over the last three seasons, has played together more than any other lineup in the entire league.
And that was entirely by design.
In early 2016, head coach Curt Miller and the Sun front office committed to keeping together a group of relatively young players, hoping that, if they could develop on and off the court, they could turn the franchise around.
Since the 2016 season, the Sun have managed to keep seven players — including all five current starters. And the results are speaking for themselves. In the last three seasons, the Sun are the only team each year to finish in the top four of the WNBA standings — consistent success that, the team says, is a direct product of maintaining a consistent core.
Now, Miller is hoping that prioritizing roster continuity and team chemistry can make up for his team’s relative youth and playoff inexperience as it seeks to achieve its biggest goal yet: a WNBA championship.
“Chemistry is a big part of team sports and the locker room, and this team has become a family,” Miller said. “Everything isn’t harmony 100 percent of the time, but the one thing when you do become a true family and care for each other on and off the floor is that you work through those things.”
A rebuild based on consistency
When he was hired in December 2015, Miller noticed that the Sun had undergone a lot of roster turnover over the years that, he believed, made achieving any sort of sustainable, meaningful success like “trying to catch magic in a bottle.”
His solution? To get the front office to avoid frequent roster tinkering and instead have it commit to a group that could play together as long as possible.
His philosophy wasn’t arbitrary. Early in his tenure at Bowling Green, Miller’s first head coaching gig, he recruited a massive, seven-player class that could grow together on and off the court. That class produced one of the most successful mid-major teams in modern history, when it went 31-4 and
reached the Sweet 16 during the 2006-07 season. Continuing with that approach, Miller ultimately led Bowling Green to eight straight regular-season conference titles and nine straight 20-plus win seasons.
Implementing that philosophy in the WNBA would be more difficult. After all, the WNBA is a professional league, where players are encouraged to maximize their playing opportunities and earning potential. And injuries could always throw a wrench in franchises’ plans.
But the Sun front office bought in.
All five of Connecticut’s current starters — Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas, Shekinna Stricklen, Courtney Williams and Jasmine Thomas — have been in Connecticut since at least June 2016. Since 2017, the group has played together more than any other lineup in the league. Across the Timeline found that the Sun lineup boasts a leagueleading 61 starts in that time, while data compiled by the WNBA and Positive Residual showed that the group has played a leaguebest 1,014 minutes together.
Throughout those 1,014 minutes, the five have maximized familiarity of each other.
“It’s just easy for us to get back into flow with each other,” Alyssa Thomas said. “We’ve been doing it for so long that I know where [Stricklen] is going to be on the court, I know where Courtney [Williams] is going to be on the court, that it’s just kind of a natural fit for us.”
Miller said that coaching a core group for so long has also allowed his staff to challenge the team by adding more complex strategies on the defensive end. He feels comfortable adopting a more aggressive game plan at times since he knows the players understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Accordingly, the Sun as a unit are allowing nearly four fewer points per game from last season and have seen an uptick in steals and blocks. Jasmine Thomas, Jones, and Alyssa Thomas also made WNBA all-defensive teams.
“The commitment and maturation this year on the defensive end of the floor is just more evidence of [their bond],” Sun Vice President Amber Cox said. “They’re so cohesive and their communication sometimes is just a little bit like, ‘How did she know she was going to do that?’, and that’s product of them playing together for so long.”
Jasmine Thomas, a nineyear veteran who has stints with two other franchises, said that this particular team spends a lot of time together off the court. They grab meals, go to the movies, explore the state, and especially like to go bowling.
Now or never?
The Sun front office had to make a choice going into the 2019 season: With eight player contracts — including those of three starters — set to expire in 2020, they could blow up their roster, or they could build upon the existing foundation.
Despite losing former No. 1 draft pick Chiney Ogwumike, who forced a trade in the offseason to play with her sister in Los Angeles, the Sun could still bring back the majority of their core contributors. In fact, due to Ogwumike’s season-ending injury that kept her out of the 2017 season, the Jones-Thomas-Stricklen-Williams-Thomas lineup had already played plenty together.
With no guarantee that all these pieces would be back in Connecticut in 2020, Miller doubled down on the group he had in front of him. With the majority of his players now entering their fourth season together, and with the promising growth of younger players like Williams and Jones, he thought his team was close to turning a corner
To the Sun, turning a corner had a very specific definition, one clear to everyone from the front office down to the team: earning a top two seed in the WNBA playoffs so that they could avoid the dreaded singleelimination rounds, which had doomed Connecticut each of the previous two seasons. Despite earning the fourth seed and a firstround bye two years in a row, the Sun fell to the Phoenix Mercury both times in single-elimination games. The franchise has not won a playoff game since 2012.
The Sun took a big step toward their goal right off the bat, going 9-1 to start the regular season. Even after cooling off with a five-game losing streak, Connecticut recovered and never looked back, ultimately securing a top two seed in their third to last game of the regular season with a win over Dallas and achieving a 15-2 home record, tying a franchise best.
The postseason, though, is a whole different ballgame. In fact, it’s one that typically favors experience. Since Miller started coaching in the WNBA in 2015, each title-winning team has had an average of five players over 30 on its roster. Meanwhile, Miller hasn’t coached a player that’s in her 30s since 2016 (though Jasmine Thomas will reach this milestone on Sept. 30).
This is where doubling down on roster consistency and chemistry, Miller hopes, will make a difference.
“That’s what we’re banking on,” Miller said, “our chemistry, our continuity, our trust in each other out on the court, through the years of allowing them to play together and grow together and experience the highs and the lows together, that we can kick the trend that we needed a bunch of 30-year-olds on the roster.”
But if anyone is concerned about the Sun’s youth, it’s not his players.
“We know we’re young but this year specifically we didn’t want to come into the. season and say ‘Oh, we’re young.’ Maybe the first two years it’s OK, but the third year it becomes an excuse a little bit,” Jones said. “We’ve been to the playoffs. We can play with any team in the league. We know it. Scratch the young thing, and let’s just go here and execute and win basketball games.”
Added fuel, at least in the back of their minds, is the reality that everything could change come the offseason. That makes now as good a time as ever to take advantage of their on-court familiarity and off-court bonds to achieve something special.
“Realistically, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Jasmine Thomas said. “I just know that I want to make the most of the opportunity that we have right now with this group that is family to me.”