🏀 Aliyah Boston — Caitlin Clark’s WNBA sidekick — brings a unique set of skills to Unrivaled

My Week in Sport(s) 🏀 ⚽️ 🎾 🏈 🏉

Jan 17, 2025

Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.

Covered in this edition: 🏀 Aliyah Boston, ⚽️ Pedri, 🎾 Mirra Andreeva, 🏈 Josh Allen and 🏉 Antoine Dupont.

🏀 Aliyah Boston — Caitlin Clark’s WNBA sidekick — brings a unique set of skills to Unrivaled

The inaugural season of Unrivaled — a new three-on-three league with financial backing from a suite of big-name sports stars — tips off this evening in Miami, and the competition is set to play an important role in the women’s basketball calendar.

WNBA players who take part will be able to keep themselves in game shape over that league’s offseason, without having to go offshore and risk suspension under its rules in the process. They will also be paid handsomely. (Unrivaled claims that it offers "the highest average salary in professional women's [team] sports".) Top players — and likely future stars — have bought in: of the 20 players who recorded the most WNBA minutes in 2024, 14 are taking part in Unrivaled’s opening campaign.

Gameplay won’t be at all like the three-on-three that was played on a half-court at last year’s Summer Olympics. Rather, it’s a faster and more expansive version of traditional five-on-five — with a shot clock lasting 18 seconds rather than 24, and a court that gives each player about 1.3x as much space as they get in the WNBA. The set-up will likely favour ball-dominant players who are comfortable with room to work in — but more interesting to watch might be those whose games will be stretched.

Aliyah Boston, for instance, spends a lot more time close to the basket at both ends of the floor than the other players she’ll join at Unrivaled. Only one player selected rebounded more of her own team’s missed shots during 2024, and only two blocked a higher share of opponents’ shots; no one outranked her in both metrics. Despite her unusual skillset, she should have the talent to hold her own: Boston was the Indiana Fever’s first-overall selection in the WNBA Draft a year before they took Caitlin Clark.

The addition of such a unique player necessarily changed the role Boston played — and, by some models, she added less value to the Fever than she did as a rookie. Stylistically, however, there were encouraging signs. Her shot locations improved, and she was more integrated with her teammates: more of her own shots were assisted, and she assisted more of her teammates’ shots too. Boston will have to keep up her collaborative mindset with Vinyl BC; on this court, there won’t be anywhere to hide.

⚽️ Pedri’s passing game is evolving in Hansi Flick’s Barcelona midfield

Barcelona have become more vertical and aggressive under Hansi Flick, but one of their primary midfielders has changed his role. Pedri — so dangerous receiving the ball in space around the box — has been moved further from goal by his new manager.

The 22-year-old is actually completing a slightly higher percentage of his pass attempts in La Liga this season, despite the team in aggregate completing a lower share than they did under Xavi. And those passes are taking place deeper in build-up: the number of successful balls Pedri plays into the penalty area has fallen off by around 20% since last year, while the number of progressive passes he’s playing outside the box has risen by 28% on a per-minute basis.

Who’s picking up the slack around the box for Barça? Dani Olmo has played a hybrid midfielder-forward role for Flick this season, with fewer touches overall than Pedri’s previous campaign — just 33 completed passes per 90, on average — but lots of involvement in ball progression. And it looks like Pedri will remain in his deeper role, even if Olmo’s registration saga limits his availability: since returning from injury, it’s been Gavi who has rotated with Olmo in that more advanced midfield position.

What else I learned last week

🎾 Mirra Andreeva is already one of the best returners on the WTA Tour

Mirra Andreeva — the 17-year-old Russian who began 2025 as the only teenager ranked in the WTA’s top 100 — has progressed to the fourth round of the ongoing Australian Open, where she’s set to face top seed Aryna Sabalenka.

According to Tennis Abstract’s latest Elo ratings — where she ranks 10th — she’s already holding her own among the elite. And, while Andreeva is sometimes described as a different style of player to the modern archetype, her balance of strengths is actually rather typical of a player her age: Jeff Sackmann pointed out last month that she already wins as many return points as almost anyone else on tour — and that it’s on her own serve that she, like other players, is likely to improve as she matures.

🏈 Josh Allen has changed his style too — just not as much as Mahomes

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen has changed his approach to the passing game since he was drafted in 2018 — just not as drastically as Patrick Mahomes did over the same period, as we explored in the newsletter last week.

This regular season, Allen’s completed passes travelled about the same distance in the air as the rest of the NFL’s, on average — but as recently as 2022 he was 30% above league-average by this metric. Standing between him and another playoff shootout with his Kansas City rival is a QB whose approach hasn’t changed anywhere near as much: Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens, who is still completing his passes for as many air yards as he did in his first season as a full-time starter.

🏉 French scrum-half Antoine Dupont is a ball-progression machine

Accurately assessing player value in 15-a-side rugby union is a difficult problem. At ball-dominant positions, though, it becomes a bit easier to spot the impactful players — and no one stands out on a rugby pitch like French scrum-half Antoine Dupont.

Data provider Oval regularly publishes its player ratings for European competitions, and Dupont is almost always near the top. What makes him special? Compared to opposing scrum-halves, he’s more involved in both major components of ball progression: he kicks nearly twice as frequently as they do, and runs with the ball about three times as often. On average this season, he’s gained 505m per 80 minutes for his team via kicks and carries — while his opposite number has gained just 229m.