Satou Sabally started off this season looking like her best self. Now in a recent stretch of games where the Mercury have struggled, she has suffered from a fate similar to what has befallen her team.
It has been a time of social media speculation and trade murmurs as Sabally was benched against the Atlanta Dream due to a lack of energy and was out due to personal reasons for the Mercury's game against the Sky, which was noted to not be in connection to the benching by head coach Nate Tibbetts.
Regardless of what has been rumored, we do have some facts: Satou Sabally returned to the Mercury against the Sun Tuesday night with a great 23 point performance, and they desperately needed her back in form to make the deep run they hope to make in the WNBA Playoffs.
Getting Satou Sabally out of her slump
In fairness to Sabally, this stretch has been a bit of an odd one both for herself individually and for the team as a whole. Sabally is still working her way back from an ankle injury that kept her out of the WNBA All-Star game in Indianapolis. Add that in addition to this being really the first true time that herself, Alyssa Thomas, and Kahleah Copper have spent time on the court together and there has been some real adjusting to do.
In the five game stretch since the All-Star break prior to the Mercury's win against Chicago in which Sabally missed, Sabally averaged only 10.4 points per game, a massive drop from her season average of 17.2 points per game. In those five games the Mercury struggled, posting a record of 1-4.
To put it bluntly, the Mercury can't afford Sabally to be below her best self. This is a team that was not heralded highly going into the season due to a lack of name value surrounding the Phoenix stars. While those surrounding players have certainly over performed that expectation this season, a lot of that has to do with how good Sabally has been.
Sabally's ability to take on so much of the offensive responsibility and forcing teams to respect how dangerous she is on that end has made such a difference in allowing her teammates to get open shots. With her in this slump, that well is drying up some.
When it comes to getting Sabally back to her peak form that she reached earlier this season, the solution might be a bit backwards but with return of Kahleah Copper, that solution is now available. Currently, Sabally ranks second in usage rate in the entire WNBA, behind only A'ja Wilson.
Scaling back some of the offensive responsibility that Sabally has been given over the course of this season and handing it over to Kahleah Copper might just be what is needed to get Sabally back on a more consistent performance trend. As other potential deep playoff teams attempt to get healthy or add to their teams via trade, possibly the biggest acquisition the Mercury can make is getting Sabally consistently into her All-Star form once again.