With the end of the regular season approaching slowly but surely, award races are heating up—well, most of them. Olivia Miles and Janelle Salaün have already created so much separation that Rookie of the Year and Sixth Player of the Year should be easy decisions for voters.
End-of-season awards and the conversations around them will always leave someone feeling slighted or overlooked. This year, we haven’t talked enough about Shakira Austin for Most Improved Player and Sydney Johnson for Coach of the Year.
Shakira Austin has been phenomenal this season
Shakira Austin is averaging 15.9 points, 9.5 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 1.3 blocks for the season. She scored at least 25 points in three of the Mystics’ last five games—three statement wins against the Aces and Wings—and recorded three double-doubles. She probably should have been an All-Star.
Austin was already a candidate for the Most Improved Player award last season. This year, she has been even better. She is averaging career highs in points, rebounds, assists, and blocks per game, and has added a 3-point shot to her game. Austin took just 20 3-pointers in her first four seasons. She has already taken 36 this year and made 13 (36.1%) of them.
Austin has made this jump without being given a significantly bigger role than she has had before. Her minutes per game went up from 23 to 29, but she has always been a pretty consistent part of the Mystics’ starting lineup when healthy.
Jessica Shepard, meanwhile, was a 20-minute-per-game backup in Minnesota before securing a starting role in Dallas. So, how much of her statistical improvement is due to actual improvement and how much of it is because she now has an opportunity to show what she has always been able to do? Marina Mabrey’s case is a little stronger. She was already a number-one option on offense in Connecticut last year, but struggled. This year, she has been scoring much more efficiently.
Sydney Johnson is the perfect coach for the Mystics’ rebuild
Cheryl Reeve deserves to be Coach of the Year. She took a team that was missing its superstar and that everyone expected to take a step backwards and coached it to the best record in the league.
Still, Sydney Johnson deserves to be in the conversation. The Mystics are the youngest team in the league. Austin and Michaela Onyenwere are the only players on the roster who entered the season with more than one year of WNBA experience. And yet, Washington is a playoff team and has upset several more veteran powerhouses. The Mystics beat Indiana, New York, Minnesota, Atlanta, Golden State, Las Vegas, and Dallas and are currently on a five-game win streak. That’s not an easy thing to do with such a young roster.
Moreover, players are making notable improvements under Johnson’s leadership. Austin, as mentioned, is looking like a true star and has added the 3-point shot. Sonia Citron improved as a playmaker, and rookies Lauren Betts and Cotie McMahon look much more comfortable already than they did early in the season. McMahon just scored 18 points in a 20-point comeback to upset the Wings for the second time in a row.
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