Name: Marie Gülich
Age: 26
Contract status: Gülich made $57,000 in 2020, per The Next’s salary database, on the third year of her rookie deal. She is entering the final year of her rookie contract at a salary of $70,040.
Stats: Gülich played in 12 of the team’s 22 regular season games, starting one, for a total of 119 minutes. She averaged 2.4 points, 1.5 rebounds, and 0.3 blocks in 9.9 minutes per game. The Sparks did not play Gülich in their lone playoff game.
Preseason expectations: The Sparks brought in Gülich to be a strong, defensive center who was a bigger, more physical option than their existing frontcourt players. Assistant GM Michael Fischer was particular enamored with Gülich’s defense and rebounding as a former Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year.
As discussed previously with Reshanda Gray, it was unclear which of the backup bigs would emerge as Derek Fisher’s preferred third choice behind Candace Parker and Nneka Ogwumike, but Gülich was at a bit of disadvantage entering the season because she had to go through a longer quarantine process after coming from Europe. She then suffered an ankle injury that kept her out of the first four games.
What went well: Gülich was a decent post hub on offense; she does a good job of sealing her defender, thus making it easy for her teammates to feed her the ball close to the basket. She’s also a good screener. The physical presence Fischer was looking for was certainly visible on the offensive end as the L.A. offense was 3.0 points per 100 possessions better with her on the floor.
What needs to improve: Gülich’s defense left much to be desired, despite her reputation before coming to the Sparks. L.A. mostly played her in drop coverages, and opposing teams would expose her mobility on high screen-and-rolls that led to wide-open jumpers. The Sparks also got a bit too foul-happy with Gülich on the floor; their opponents’ free-throw attempt rate (the proportion of free-throw attempts to field-goal attempts) skyrocketed to 39.7% when Gülich played.
There was some hope that Gülich could be a stretch big after taking 25 threes during the 2019 season, but she abandoned that part of her game with the Sparks, taking only three 3-pointers all season and missing them all.
Ultimately, Gülich had the worst plus-minus on the Sparks in 2020. It was a small sample size (-22 over 119 minutes), but that’s all we have for a 22-game season.
The real problem with Gülich’s season is that the Sparks kept her over rookie Beatrice Mompremier at the league-wide cutdown date. While Mompremier made a meaningful impact for the Connecticut Sun, the team that knocked the Sparks out of the playoffs, Gülich rode the pine for L.A.
The choice to keep Gülich wasn’t merely a failure of talent evaluation; it also was a failure of cap management. The Sparks were about $2,000 short of the cap space needed to keep Mompremier — money that probably could have been found in the free agent contracts of Seimone Augustus and Tierra Ruffin-Pratt — and thus had to waive the promising rookie. It’s difficult not to see Gülich’s season through the lens of what might have been had the Sparks simply kept their second-round draft pick.
Future with the Sparks: The Sparks will presumably welcome back one of, if not both of, Maria Vadeeva and Chiney Ogwumike in 2021, making Gülich expendable. It’s hard to see much upside for a center who doesn’t really command the glass but also can’t space to the perimeter. The Sparks can waive Gülich’s contract without penalty. That seems like the most probable outcome after a season when Gülich didn’t give a compelling reason for the Sparks to keep her around.