2022 WNBA: Draft| Complete results| Grades| Mock draft

2022 WNBA Draft winners and losers: Sapna start rebuilding with Raine Howard. Today we will discuss about 2022 WNBA: Draft| Complete results| Grades| Mock draft

2022 WNBA: Draft| Complete results| Grades| Mock draft

The 2022 WNBA Draft, the WNBA draft for the 2022 WNBA season, was held on April 11, 2022 in New York City and was broadcast live at 7:00 p.m. on ESPN in the United States and TSN1/4 in Canada.

Draft

A lottery selection to determine the order of the top four selections in the 2022 draft took place on December 19, 2021, and was broadcast on ESPN in the United States and TSN2 in Canada.[2] In 2021, four non-playoff teams played. Qualified for lottery drawings: Atlanta Dream, Indiana Fever, Washington Mystics and Los Angeles Sparks. Sparks had previously traded the 2022 first-round pick, his lottery pick, to the Dallas Wings at the time of the lottery. The Mystics won the lottery and were the first pick in the draft. It was the first time in the history of the franchise that the Mystics had won the lottery. The next three picks were initially from Fever, Dream and Wings. [3] However, by the time of the draft, only one of the top four that still belonged to the same team had Fever. In March 2022, the Wings traded their lottery pick with Fever in a big deal. Less than a week from the draft, the Mystics and Dream will swap their top-three picks, with the Mystics also sending Dream the second-round pick of 2022 and the rights to swap the pick with Sparks in 2023.

Complete results

The 2022 WNBA Draft is in the books, and as expected, the Atlanta Dream started the night by picking Rhine Howard from Kentucky with the No. 1 overall pick. A big, athletic two-way wing, Howard is the best player in the class, and will help rebuild Dream.

Completing the lottery, Indiana Fever picked NaLyssa Smith from Baylor at No. 2, the Washington Mystics at No. 3 with Shakira Austin from Ole Miss, and Fever picked Emily Angstler of Louisville at No. 4. Those picks largely went as expected, but there were a lot of surprises afterwards.

Now that the action is complete, here are the full results with breakdown and grades for each first round pick.

 Atlanta Dream: Rhine Howard, G., Kentucky
As expected, Dream picked Rhine Howard with the No. 1 overall pick. Howard Kentucky has a large, athletic wing that can affect play on either side of the ball. She is an elite scorer who can shoot from outside and reach the basket, and will be able to defend multiple positions. Best player in the draft and a resounding victory for the Dream as they begin their rebuild.

Grades

The 2022 WNBA draft will be heavily judged on how much Indiana Fever has improved after dominating with four picks in the first round. The Fever had a total of seven selections, and players ranked on the roster would have the opportunity to make a change for a franchise that hasn’t been in the playoffs since 2016.

With so many selections on Monday, it’s no surprise that Fever leads ESPN’s WNBA draft grades. Indiana threw a curveball to most predictors in the first round to take on Stanford Cardinal guard Lexi Hull. But The Fever want players who are going to make a difference in appetite, and Hull has that kind of on-court personality.

While it was a busy night for some teams, the Chicago Sky were just a draft observer as the current WNBA champion had no selection. There were four selections between the Minnesota Lynx and the Phoenix Mercury, three of them in the third round, so those picks may not have made much difference.

Mock draft

With four picks in the first round and seven picks overall in the 2022 WNBA Draft, Indiana Fever is trying to transform itself. And once Monday’s draft is complete (7 p.m. ET, ESPN), the next phase of fever will begin.

“We’re going to rebuild with the younger players,” said former Indiana head coach Lynn Dunn, who took over as the franchise’s general manager in February. “Everybody’s going to work hard, everybody’s going to work hard, everybody’s going to be high-energy, hungry to play.”

The Fever picked numbers 2, 4, 6 and 10 in the first round on Monday. He also has No. 20 in the second round and No. 25 and 34 in the third. It’s a new challenge for Dunn, who coached Fever at the 2012 WNBA Championship. She was expected to help former Fever star Tamika Catchings in the rebuilding when she moves into an advisory capacity at the end of 2021.

But Catchings stepped down in February, and Dunn was moved to the role of architect for a team that has had a no-win record since 2015, when Fever lost in the WNBA Finals. They were .500 in 2016, and have since lost the record in five seasons.

Coaches Marianne Stanley, who is entering her third season with Fever, and Dunn hope to change their identity to Indiana. This draft is needed to help ignite them.