The WNBA doesn’t have an award for “clutch-ness” the way the NBA does, so it figures that they also do not have an award for “unclutch-ness.” Allow us to fill the vacuum: Defector’s inaugural Unclutchy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choking and Tanking goes to the Seattle Storm. The voting wasn’t close, which is good; if it were, the Storm probably wouldn’t have won.
WNBA Stats defines “clutch time” as the final five minutes of a game within a five-point margin. It happens to be the time when the 7-28 Storm do their best work. They’ve played 16 clutch games and lost a remarkable 14 of them. Consider it a simple tradeoff. If you want to build around a pair of awesome, athletic teens, you must also accept that teens are fickle and mercurial and sometimes straight up forget how to play basketball. It’s all part of the fun.
The 6-foot-4 Awa Fam, 19 years old on draft night, had a reasonable claim to be the first-overall pick in the draft this past spring, but she ended up going to Seattle at No. 3, after Azzi Fudd and Olivia Miles. The term “stretch big” gets thrown around a little casually these days, so it might be more meaningful to say that Fam is a great shooter who only happens to be a big. The percentages won’t wow anyone—she’s making 35 percent of her three-point attempts this season—but the volume (four attempts per game) should. These are contested threes and quick catch-and-shoot looks she’s hitting, not the “somebody left her open” threes most centers take.
Not a slice of hesitation from Awa Fam on these pick and pop 3's
— Steve Jones (@stevejones20.bsky.social) 2026-06-28T03:03:08.342Z
Fam's fellow (honorary) teen, Dominique Malonga, only gets better each game. She’s played the Liberty tough a few times already in her young career, but her 31-point, 10-rebound performance in New York last week foreshadowed the two-way force she’ll be at her peak. Against a roster that’s on the older side and not terribly athletic, she looked like she was moving at double speed. It feels right that her home games are called by excitable Storm announcer Dick Fain, whose enthusiasm I shared when I saw this play against the Lynx (0:24 in the video below), in which Malonga locked up Napheesa Collier and then hit the transition layup on the other end:
Look for Fam and Malonga to shine this weekend, when they face two teams that struggle with long and mobile bigs. They host the Portland Fire on Friday night and the Chicago Sky on Sunday. When the Storm last played the Sky, on Monday night, something had to give: The Sky are the second-worst clutch team in the league this year, having lost 14 of 20 clutch games. Chicago, Malonga decided. Chicago had to give. After the Sky made it a one-possession game with a little over two minutes left, she loped to the basket for a layup and then sort of magically poked the ball away from Natasha Cloud on the next possession to set up a Zia Cooke three that ultimately iced it.
The win, Seattle's second clutch win of the season, ended an 11-game losing streak that began in early July, their second 11-game losing streak of the season. If there was a boozy team celebration afterward, the Storm’s most important players probably couldn’t join it. The punchy Washington Mystics (14-7 in clutch games) might caution against using youth as an excuse, but Malonga and Fam would be the youngest players on the Mystics. Fam was born in June 2006 (gah!) and Malonga doesn’t turn 21 until November.
They could both stand to get stronger; one reason the late-game offense looks so sludgy is that more physical forwards and centers can still get the better of them. A tanking campaign can be a useful way to see what you’ve got, a low-pressure sandbox for young talent to play around in. Push it too far, though, and it becomes hard to make sense of anything happening on the court. Fam and Malonga’s development has been done no favors by Seattle’s sometimes shambolic guard group. Natisha Hiedeman, whose last gig was being the backup to someone moonlighting at point guard, is a little overtaxed as a starter. Jade Melbourne and rookie Flau’jae Johnson can pressure the rim and play fast, but their inexperience is another reason the late-game offense can look sludgy. Under these circumstances, it’s also not easy to evaluate first-year head coach Sonia Raman.
Like the Mystics, the Storm have their sights set on the guard-heavy 2027 draft. Their pick likely won’t be very high. Though they have the league's worst record right now, the WNBA uses a cumulative two-year record to determine lottery odds and the Storm finished a hair above .500 last year. A trade could be another path to getting the right guard in Seattle: Ezi Magbegor signed a three-year deal with the Storm this offseason but she seems like the odd player out in the frontcourt. However they go about building around their young talent, the Storm front office can probably be trusted to make the most of their resources. Seattle got the Malonga pick in the three-way trade that sent out Jewell Loyd, who has played some pretty uninspiring basketball in Las Vegas. They got the pick that became Fam in 2024, when the Sparks traded it to draft Rickea Jackson, who isn’t a Spark anymore. Plus, there’s no hurry. Their franchise pillars are only getting started. We’re not in crunch time just yet.
