It sounds completely ridiculous, but it took the basketball world a really long time to really understand that three is more than two.
The shift to basketball being driven by the 3-point shot instead of post dominance really began on the NBA level when advanced analytics and the dominant success of the Golden State Warriors showed just how efficient and deadly an outside attack could truly be. Led by Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, those Warriors teams proved that shutting down the outside game when you have truly elite shooters is borderline impossible. In the first of his back-to-back MVP seasons, Curry shot a staggering 45.4% from 3.
That's cute, Steph.
Over the course of this regular season, Gonzaga's Brynna Maxwell shot 50% from deep. That's 164 attempts, 82 makes. For the bulk of the season, the team's starting shooting guard has been the top-ranked sharpshooter in Division I women's basketball. And Maxwell is hardly the only deep-threat Zag: The Bulldogs are the best 3-point shooting team in the country — at 41.5%— and starting point guard and WCC Player of the Year Kaylynne Truong is also top 20 in the country behind the arc. That's a big reason why this year's Bulldogs squad has had such a tremendous season and are a threat to knock off anyone once the NCAA Tournament gets underway.
Maxwell's shot is a thing of beauty. It's seemingly effortless — flawless mechanics, a remarkably quick release, no wasted motion. By the time she catches the ball coming around a screen or off of a kickout pass, it's usually already too late for the defense. Which her teammates certainly appreciate.
"It's easy," says Kaylynne Truong, who notches plenty of assists via Maxwell. "She makes me look good."
Maxwell arrived in Spokane last offseason as a transfer after spending three years starting the majority of games for the University of Utah Utes in the Pac-12, helping them to their first NCAA Tournament win in over a decade last year.
She took to GU fast, making 11 of 17 shots from 3 over her first four games, including scoring 21 points in an upset over Louisville, who was ranked No. 6 at the time. But when you start talking to Maxwell about her great shooting this season, she almost physically recoils from the compliment — far from a fountain of overconfident bravado, she has sort of an aww shucks, I guess nature about it.
"I hate looking at percentages and stats. I hate when people bring it up. Because the last shot is probably the least important thing you can think. It means nothing," says Maxwell. "No matter if you made the last five or missed the last five, it shouldn't impact the next shot."
That almost dispassionate approach has served her well as the Zags have excelled through what by all rights could've been a disastrous campaign. Gonzaga was beset by a plague of injury woes to start the year, including losing starting guard Kayleigh Truong (Kaylynn's twin) for the bulk of the season after just five games.
"Like we were playing with six and a half [players], at one point. We had a player with mono, and we didn't know she had mono for a game," says Maxwell. "We've had to be flexible for sure... [but] with players coming back, we [now] have 13 players with a lot of on-court experience. And I think that's a really big threat. I don't even know how you'd scout that."
Despite the potential for disaster, Gonzaga won the WCC regular season title. But after falling to Portland in the WCC Tournament championship game, the Bulldogs need to refocus heading into the NCAA Tournament. Thankfully, Maxwell is all about that grind.
Basketball runs through the blood of the Maxwell family.
Brynna's parents, Steve and Kim, both played college hoops at Division III Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. Their homes in Portland and then Gig Harbor — where they moved when Brynna was 9 — were the type of abodes where basketball was always on TV. By age 2, Brynna and her twin brother, Nate, were shooting a rubber basketball through one of those kiddie toy hoops. But the children never felt like basketball was mandatory.
"Nothing was forced on me," Brynna emphasizes.
Instead, she was the one dragging her dad or her dad's pal and trainer, Steve Palau, out to a hoop to get more shots up.
"I always knew Brynna loved the game way beyond any other kids, way beyond what I ever did," says her dad. "So I always knew she had a heart for the game that was different. And I always knew she had high skill level, for sure. She showed that super early. But I wouldn't call Brynna an early bloomer either. Athletically, she didn't develop as fast as some of the other kids. So while I knew she was very skilled and loved the game, I couldn't really project where she was going to play."
When she wasn't on the court herself, Brynna would still crave more hoops. Luckily, she grew up in an era of great women's hoops in the Pacific Northwest. Her dad would buy mini-season ticket packs for the Seattle Storm so they could watch Sue Bird play. When Kelsey Plum arrived at the University of Washington and became one of the best college players in the country, treks to watch her hoop became a regular event, too.
"We went to countless games together. Anytime there was a game to go to, we would go," says Steve Maxwell. "We would go watch a random high school game if she had a free night. But Kelsey Plum and Sue Bird were childhood heroes for sure."
And while Brynna emphasizes that her game is "nothing" like Plum or Bird, her passion for the game might be on par.
"I just love every part of basketball," she says. "I don't have to be scoring. There's really not one part of basketball I don't like."
That work paid off when Brynna was a junior in high school and improbably led Gig Harbor to the Class 3A State Title. In the title game, Gig Harbor knocked off Garfield High 51-48, with Maxwell doing the bulk of the scoring with a whopping 31 points en route to breaking the state tournament's scoring record. Those high school highs led her to being a three-star recruit (per ESPN's rankings), and ending up at Utah, before eventually making her way to Gonzaga.
So how does one reach a point where every 3-pointer they put up is a 50-50 proposition to go down?
Work. A lot of work.
"Honestly, it's not really a secret, it's just you gotta go and do it," Brynna says. "It's never like, 'I gotta make like 200 [shots] today,' or something like that. Honestly, if you want to become a good shooter, you just got to put in the work. And a lot of people don't want to do that. I've noticed that the best shooters are the ones who are in the gym the most."
While that's certainly the case, there are things Maxwell does that elevate her from other players who work very hard. One is the fundamental base she and her dad built her game on. And that starts with knowing kids' limitations on how to properly shoot the ball.
"When she was young, she was so coachable," her dad says. "And I know enough to understand something about shooting mechanics. I wouldn't let her shoot beyond a certain range until she was strong enough to get the ball there with proper form. So while she had friends in sixth grade heaving up 3-point shots from their waist — just all shoulders — just hucking it. But Brynna wouldn't shoot past 15 feet, past the free throw line, cause that's where her range was to shoot the ball right. And eventually when her body grew, she was able to extend her range to shoot like she does now."
"Even in college, you see girls with flawed and broken shots, because they didn't learn it early," he continues. "And they either never unlearned that bad habit, or they're trying to make that bad habit work for them. But she didn't have to unlearn bad habits."
Her ultra quick release on her shot makes it incredibly tough to defend, but the keys to its speed actually lie in fundamentals that casual hoops observers often overlook — like precise footwork and body control.
"No wasted movement," Brynna says. "Catch it, your legs already bent, and you could just go up. It reduces the error in your shot."
"I didn't even know I had that quick of a shot until I got to college," she adds. "I knew it was quick. I just didn't realize it was that quick. And to me, that seemed like a wide open shot. And then you look back and it's like 'Oh, that actually probably was contested.' I don't know, when shots feel open to me, I shoot them. And I've had great coaches around me who let me shoot those and give me the green light in those situations. And yeah, I probably take some shots that might be questionable."
But when your name is always near the top of the 3-point percentage leaders in the sport, there's almost no such thing as a "questionable" shot.
The killer outside shooting really opens up Gonzaga's offense in a ton of ways. The most notable benefactor is GU's top-flight 1st Team All-WCC center Yvonne Ejim. When Maxwell, Truong and company are bombing from outside, it opens her up to feast in the post.
"It really spreads the court a lot," says Ejim. "It forces people to make decisions that they don't want to make. So it's either come in and guard people in the post and work really hard, but then like, oh, sorry, we've got like two shooters standing outside there waiting for the ball to shoot it."
"Making shots makes a big difference," head coach Lisa Fortier says. "It makes every offense look good."
"Sometimes we're running around like crazy, but we just make it at the end and people think it's good offense. The trained eye knows it's not," Fortier emphasizes. "But I think the biggest thing is Brynna, Lynne, Eliza [Hollingsworth], McKayla [Williams] have been shooting the ball pretty well and have just opened up the interior some, to where it's difficult to double team Yvonne. She deserves a double team. She demands a double team. But the teams that do that usually have to pay for it."
While transferring can always be a tricky proposition for a player, so far Gonzaga has been an easy fit for Maxwell. After getting a degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism while at Utah, she's working on a master's in organizational leadership at GU. While she wants to keep playing as long as she can in the future — be that WNBA or overseas — she also has interest in sports broadcasting and coaching when her playing days are done. That said, her college experience in Spokane is far from the norm.
"I have not been anywhere on campus but the gym," says Maxwell. "That's a fact. I have not been anywhere else, so I couldn't tell you what any building is called."
It turns out all of Maxwell's classes are online, and she loaded them at the front of the first semester and the back of the second semester, so she's not actually taking classes during basketball season. It would probably be an isolating experience if not for the fact that all the basketball players live close together and hang out, and that her parents have made it to every game this season except for two nonconference road contests.
Another comfort for Brynna is her religion, as faith plays a vital role for the Maxwell family. Even when talking about her shooting exploits, she's quick to apply her success to a higher power.
"It's just God's mercies. All glory to Him. Every shot, He puts in. I really can't explain it any other way. I'm not doing anything different," says Maxwell. "[My faith] takes all the pressure off. On my shoes I have Romans 8:31, which says 'If God is for us, who can be against us?' If God is on my side, who am I to be scared of other people, he's a good God. And he's brought me this far."
Gonzaga is poised to make a run in the NCAA Tournament this year. While the loss to Portland in the WCC title game knocked them down a seed or two, no big-time school wants to see the Zags advance. Their outside game is too big a threat.
But this also won't be the last ride for Maxwell. On Senior Night in McCarthey Athletic Center, all four Gonzaga four-year players — Maxwell, the Truongs and Hollingsworth — announced they'd use their extra COVID year of eligibility to come back for the 2023-24 campaign.
They've got multiple shots at this thing.
And when this team has shots, they drain them. ♦
