Film Study: Isabelle Harrison Drops 41 in Athletes Unlimited
The Sky forward has returned from injury in peak shape--with plenty of signs pointing towards her being a force in the W in 2024.
With Brianna Turner arriving in the Kahleah Copper trade, Sika Koné excelling in her first season in the EuroLeague and a handful of strong power forwards available in April’s draft, it was starting to look like Isabelle Harrison might once again struggle to keep her hold on the starting power forward job that seemed to be hers before injury cost her the 2023 season. At least it was looking that way until Harrison returned to the court in Athletes Unlimited last week. She could have looked off the pace (understandable) or rusty (expected), but Harrison’s return to the AU floor in Week 2 showcased a player who (especially as the weekend went on) already looked like the two-way force that finished in the top six of the AU standings in each of the league’s previous two seasons.
Fast forward to Week 3 and it took Harrison—Natasha Cloud’s first pick in Monday’s draft—just a single game (her fourth back in total) to drop a career-high 41 points on Thursday as Cloud’s team won an overtime thriller. In a short space of time, Harrison’s return from injury—which could have been a long and challenging on-court process—went from the story of her AU season to a subplot in what is quickly shaping up to be a campaign where the former Vol sets the table for her most impressive W season yet. Her overall numbers (41 on 16/22 FG and 8/9 FT plus 13 boards, 2 assists, a steal and a block) Thursday were nice, but it’s how she got those numbers that was so striking. Let’s dive into everything that went well and what it means for Harrison and the Sky in 2024.
Post Positioning
I don’t want to go too deep in the weeds of post technique right off the bat, but Harrison’s work positioning herself down low is foundational to everything else she did well on Thursday. When done at this level, it’s also critical to the overall flow of the offense—especially when that offense is playing through the post so regularly. In the first two plays below, we see Harrison sealing Maddy Siegrist—on opposite sides and with two completely different techniques. The first is far more crafty with Harrison’s intelligence and explosiveness allowing her to spin in behind Siegrist. As soon as she establishes that inside position, there’s only one defender with a reasonable chance to impact her shot and it’s the helper who Lexie Brown drags away from the baseline with her movement. The second is less technique, more brute strength. I’m a fan of Siegrist’s (and excited to see what she does in year 2 in Dallas), but she’s simply no match for Harrison in this type of situation where she leans into her physical strength.
These seals—no matter which style or side—are so important for the offense because of the outlet they provide for the perimeter players and the opportunity they offer to establish a paint presence. Every team wants to score in the paint, and aggressive drives from the perimeter were so often the avenue to get that rolling for the Sky in 2023 (and likely will be again in 2024 with Mabrey and Evans). However, there’s obvious value in a post player who can provide some variety to that effort by establishing this type of position regularly like Harrison did Thursday. One more wrinkle: flashing to position in the post like she does in the third play below. She has the physical and technical skill to establish and maintain position, but Harrison also does well to recognize the holes in the defense and float or, in this case, slash into them.
Post Finishing
Getting and maintaining position is great, but it can only take you so far. If you look back at the second play above, the seal is great, but the catch actually takes Harrison away from the basket. As a result, she needs to call on her bag of post moves to draw the foul which, in the context of the game (note the time + score), was a critical one. And in that one particular play, you already see a couple of different aspects of Harrison’s post game as she works effectively off the dribble and shows her ability to score on the move by getting up into a hook shot as she turns to the rim. Jump into the plays below, and you see those same moves and a whole lot more. The video is pretty self-explanatory and shows the full depth of Harrison’s post bag but what really stands out to me is how far away from the basket she’s starting in some of these reps before spinning and driving her way to the basket against varying coverages (again, Siegrist may not be the optimal defender but, I digress). Knowing Harrison can knock down mid-range shots with some regularity makes defending her when she steps away from the basket pretty challenging. You want to get tight enough to contest a jumper, but you’re also thinking about these abilities if she decides to put the ball on the floor.
Another wrinkle that caught my eye was the way she “seals” her defender off the dribble in the final two plays from the clip below. That term usually refers to situations—like in the first section above—where the player hasn’t caught the ball, but the idea is largely the same after the catch in these two plays. Harrison’s explosiveness off the dribble helps her beat her defender to the spot and, once she gets there, she’s just establishing inside position and backing the defender away enough to get a clean shot up. Harrison’s first step is quick enough to get by most WNBA bigs; so, this is a spot she can get to often—with clear signs here that she can score once she arrives in this position.
Running the Floor
The calculus is simple. If you get out in transition, it usually means you’re playing good defense, scoring lots of easy points and building confidence that eventually permeates your half-court sets. Teresa Weatherspoon wants her team to have a defensive identity and if you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen me talk about how a number of players on the Sky’s roster will support the team’s related goal to score in transition a lot next season. Harrison, as evidenced Thursday, is definitely part of that group. Some value may come from the mid-range like in the tweet linked above (which comes from a game last week), but the meat and potatoes of a great transition offense is the easy scores right at the basket like you see below. The key to getting those, especially for a big that generally doesn’t have the ball in hand on the break, is navigating the traffic well like Harrison does in each of these plays. The third play, in particular, stands out because of the way Harrison changes her pace. It sometimes seems as simple as making a beeline to the rim, but you probably don’t consistently wind up where the ball handler needs you by doing that. In this particular case, Harrison turns on the jets at just the right time. Any earlier and there’s no practical window for Brown to throw the pass into; any later and the defender is in better position to deflect the entry pass.
The key for Chicago in these scenarios will be making sure that teammates find Harrison when she gets out in transition. There’s an old adage that you have to reward your bigs when they run the floor, and that certainly applies here. Brown (who, as an aside, looks set for a great season herself) could easily look for her own shot in two of these scenarios but prioritizes getting others involved and makes a couple of eye-catching assists in the process. If Harrison runs the floor like this, Chicago’s ball handlers need to focus on finding her and making her a key part of their success scoring on the break.