12. Seattle Storm: Brianna Turner, 6’3 F/C, Notre Dame
Bigs are hard to come by in this league. Bigs who can block shots the way Brianna Turner did before injury cost her the end of 2016-17 and all of last season are rarer still.
So in Seattle, where Natasha Howard’s rim protection has taken the Storm first team’s defense from mediocre in 2017 to elite in 2018, adding Turner allows for a similar effect on their second unit. Assuming Turner returns to her prior form, it is easy to imagine her playing the role of defender of last resort, running the break on the turnovers she and Jordin Canada create, and generally making it difficult for opponents to take advantage of the rare moments Howard, Breanna Stewart and Sue Bird are out of the game.
Turner may well be more than this, eventually—she’s long, with a build that suggests she can add strength to it as she gets older, and she’s an effective finisher in the paint already. But it says something significant about her game that she has a chance to help what was the best team in the 2018 regular season, and right away.