Culture
Is Caitlin Clark or Angel Reese the top newcomer so far? WNBA rookie rankings
Even in a game where Angel Reese was ejected, her impact was undeniable. The Chicago Sky rookie was tossed for picking up a second technical with just over two minutes remaining in Tuesday’s loss to the New York Liberty. Her second foul was rescinded a day later by the WNBA.
Nevertheless, Reese had already logged 13 points and 10 rebounds, recording her second double-double. It is the kind of statline Chicago has already come to expect from the No. 7 pick in April’s draft. Reese has been a consistent contributor over the first month of the WNBA season, but she isn’t alone among members of her rookie class.
From their final college seasons through the WNBA Draft to the start of their pro careers, these rookies have brought new star power and a fascinating dynamic to the league. They’re working out the kinks as they adjust to a higher level, but there’s no doubt they are delivering in meaningful ways.
Feeling the love, Skytown 💙 pic.twitter.com/nK2wIbN9lR
— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) May 26, 2024
Though it feels like the year has just started, somehow, someway, some franchises have already crossed the quarter mark of the season. With that, here’s our look at the five best rookies the first month of the season.
15.6 PPG | 6.4 APG | 5.1 RPG
Clark has been the center of attention during her first month in the WNBA, especially last week. But amid some struggles, she still has found ways to produce. She is aggressive attacking the basket, already attempting 48 free throws, which are the seventh most in the WNBA. She’s also impacted Indiana’s offense despite not hitting 3-pointers at nearly the same clip as she did at Iowa. Reese certainly has made a case for the No. 1 spot, but Clark also shoulders significantly more defensive pressure than any rookie. Her 25.8 percent usage rate is more than WNBA stars like Skylar Diggins-Smith, Breanna Stewart, Kelsey Plum and Sabrina Ionescu. She’s shown growing pains and reasons for optimism. A focus in June should be cutting down on turnovers, as Clark leads the league (56) and has 21 more than Phoenix Mercury guard Natasha Cloud, who is second.
GO DEEPER
Has Caitlin Clark lived up to the hype so far in her WNBA rookie season? Experts debate
2. Angel Reese, Chicago Sky
10.8 PPG | 9.0 RPG | 5.0 ORPG
At LSU, Reese recorded double-doubles on a near nightly basis. Thus far, she’s been pretty close to that. Entering Thursday night’s matchup against the Washington Mystics, Reese had recorded at least 8 points and 8 rebounds in six of her eight games..
Reese’s impact on Chicago has been tangible. She leads all rookies with 9 rebounds per game and leads all WNBA players with her average of 5 offensive rebounds per game. Sky coach Teresa Weatherspoon, a Naismith Hall of Fame player, has taken a liking to what Reese provides, especially on the glass.
“It’s a knack,” Weatherspoon said two weeks ago. “She’s just relentless. She does a relentless pursuit for the ball and that’s who she is, that’s what she’s about.”
Reese frequently establishes high-quality rebounding position and is aggressive in attacking the rim if she isn’t boxed out by opposing bigs. On offense, she also has already shown she’s unafraid of contact, attempting at least six free throws in six separate games.
Reese’s impact has been evident despite other limitations in her game, making her first month especially impressive.
So far, almost all of her offense has come around the rim. She’s attempted only nine jump shots this season, according to Synergy Sports, making just one. Even around the basket, she has struggled, shooting 29.9 percent. Yet, minimizing Reese’s importance is a focus for Sky opponents.
Improving her perimeter shooting and ability to finish around the hoop will be paramount to her growth. Chicago guard Marina Mabrey has also assisted Reese on only six baskets, an indication there is room for improvement in Chicago’s pick-and-roll action. But if this is Reese’s floor, the Sky have plenty of reasons to be optimistic about their future.
8.0 PPG | 5.4 RPG | 2.6 BPG
Brink, like Reese and Clark, has shown flashes of the skills that made her a star at Stanford. Although the Sparks are just 2-7, Brink scored a career-high 21 points in 23 minutes against the Dallas Wings on May 26, and she tallied at least 5 rebounds six times. Coach Curt Miller hasn’t stretched the No. 2 pick’s usage. Brink has yet to play more than 30 minutes in a game but she’s displayed her offensive repertoire. She’s been solid on catch-and-shoot opportunities and looks comfortable around the rim, shooting 63 percent from the field, according to Synergy Sports. Though Brink developed a reputation as a vaunted shot-blocker in college (and is averaging 2.6 blocks per game so far), some opposing bigs have succeeded going up against her. Brink allows bigs she’s guarding to shoot 43.9 percent.
Despite rather limited minutes, Rickea Jackson’s 3-point shooting and rebounding have stood out. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
9.1 PPG | 3.0 RPG | 46.7 FG
Jackson has played the fewest minutes (208) of anyone in my current top five, but she’s taken advantage of her opportunities. She’s tied for the third most 3-pointers (seven) by rookies, but she’s shooting the second-best percentage of any rookie with at least 10 attempts (only Alissa Pili is better). She’s been a solid rebounder (3.0 per game) and proven she can score in different facets. Sometimes that has taken the form of being aggressive in transition, other times from behind the arc or slashing to the rim. She’s made at least 50 percent of her shot attempts in five of nine games, though done so only once since being inserted into the starting lineup on May 28.
6.6 PPG | 5.0 APG | 2.6 RPG
Uzun is making her WNBA debut this summer, but she is no stranger to playing with — and against — some of the world’s best competition. The 26-year-old guard spent last winter playing for EuroLeague champion Turkish club Fenerbahçe, where she played alongside notables like Napheesa Collier, Kayla McBride, Natasha Howard, Nina Milic and Emma Meesseman. Uzun made the Wings’ opening night roster after signing a training camp contract and was thrust into the franchise’s starting lineup.
Right away, she’s been trusted to draw the best out of a team with top-four aspirations. Uzun is averaging 31.3 minutes per game, the second most on the roster and the second most among rookies behind Clark. Though she’s continuing to figure out how to play alongside Arike Ogunbowale, the early returns are positive. Twelve of Uzun’s 40 assists have been to Ogunbowale, and she has also found Dallas bigs Teaira McCowan and Monique Billings on multiple occasions. In addition to her offensive playmaking, the 5-foot-10 Uzun has been an excellent defender so far, with opponents shooting only 28.6 percent on shots she’s guarding, according to Synergy Sports.
🇹🇷Dün gece yine ilk 5 başlayan ve 26:24 dakika saha kalan milli oyuncumuz Sevgi Uzun, karşılaşmayı 4 sayı (1-8 FG, 2-2 FT), 2 ribaund, 4 asist ve 1 top çalma ile tamamladı.pic.twitter.com/FH2dwrQ6II https://t.co/QnJHxul5Ml
— Women Hoops (@womenhoop) June 6, 2024
She plays with fearlessness on both ends. Exhibit A: It didn’t go down, but she nearly made the shot of the year when she threw an inbounds off Sun center Brionna Jones with less than 10 seconds remaining in a one-point game, collected her own pass, and shot it.
Others considered: Julie Vanloo ( Mystics), Pili (Lynx), Aaliyah Edwards (Mystics), Kate Martin (Las Vegas Aces)
(Top photos of Caitlin Clark, left, and Angel Reese: Jeff Haynes / NBAE via Getty Images)
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
Cold weather can serve as a plot point or emphasize the mood of a scene, and this week’s literary geography quiz highlights the locations of recent novels that work winter conditions right into the story. Even if you aren’t familiar with the book, the questions offer an additional hint about the setting. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
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