Tag Archives: Connecticut Sun

WNBAlien Special – Grading the Trade: Three-way deal sends Lawson to D.C., Bentley to Connecticut, and confusion to Atlanta (with Matee Ajavon)

 

The offseason activity in the WNBA continued yesterday with more trade movement, this time with an extra level of complexity. In fact, it’s complex enough that the various press releases don’t entirely agree on the finer details. The Washington Mystics, Connecticut Sun and Atlanta Dream combined on a three-way trade (or two two-ways) that relocated a trio of guards to new homes, with a couple of minor draft picks thrown in to theoretically even the scales. Washington received Kara Lawson from Connecticut; the Sun got Alex Bentley from Atlanta; and the Dream collected Matee Ajavon and the #18 pick from the Mystics. Either Washington or Connecticut got the virtually-worthless #32 pick from Atlanta, depending on which release you believe.

 

Typically, you come out ahead in these multi-piece deals when you gain the best player involved – so let’s start with Washington. The Mystics were something of a surprise last season, with new head coach Mike Thibault engineering a turnaround from being the laughingstock of the league to a solid, competitive .500 team. But while they did a lot with organisation, effort and depth last year, Thibault knew as well as anyone that his roster needed more talent if they wanted to take the next step. His team also had a pretty glaring hole. Ivory Latta came in and did a useful job as the point guard last season, but it was a constant patchwork effort alongside her in the backcourt. They drafted Tayler Hill with the #4 pick, but she was a complete bust early on and only mildly useful off the bench as the season progressed. She’s now pregnant and due to give birth in May, so will probably be even less useful on a basketball court in 2014. The alternative last year was Ajavon, whose speed, aggression and willingness to take the big shot can be valuable – but her tendency to take a lot of bad shots and miss most of them distinctly mitigates that value.

 

Lawson always seemed a likely option to fill that hole. She grew up in the D.C. area; she has a relationship with Thibault from their time in Connecticut, where she had some of her best years; and her relationship with the Sun organisation broke down to such a degree last year that everyone knew she was going somewhere. She’s a superb outside shooter, 40% for her WNBA career from beyond the arc, including 43% over the last three years in Connecticut. But she can also be a steadying influence on an offense, running the pick-and-roll and getting the ball where it needs to be. Obviously, she’ll also be comfortable with Thibault’s sets and system after three years playing for him with the Sun. Playing alongside Latta could be a good fit, because neither will have to take on all the ballhandling responsibilities. Latta’s improved as a distributor but still likes to look for her own shot; Lawson had her best season in Connecticut when Allison Hightower was taking some of the point guard requirements off her hands – between them, they should be able to find a balance and help each other out.

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WNBA Today, 09/16/2013: Regular season ends as Mystics take #3 seed and Fever happily settle for #4

 

Sunday saw the conclusion to the WNBA’s 2013 regular season, with a surprising amount still to be decided. There were some minor questions around home-court advantage in theoretical WNBA Finals matchups, but the main issue remaining was in the Eastern Conference playoff race. With the #3 and #4 seeds still to be decided, the matchups in the first-round were also still up in the air. And there was still a chance that Indiana and Washington could finish off their games, and be left waiting around for the Atlanta result to decide their fate. It was a strange state of flux to be sitting in, heading into the final day of the season.

 

Indiana Fever 80 @ Connecticut Sun 82

  • Playing in the first game of the day, the Fever made the first conspicuous move in relation to deciding the seeding for the Eastern playoffs. If you want to be generous, you could say that their decisions suggested that they didn’t mind whether they faced Chicago or Atlanta in the first-round. After all, neither a win or a loss would definitively decide their opposition. But more accurately, it seemed like they wanted the Sky. Tamika Catchings took the day off to rest a sore back (I’ll resist making the standard joke about how it was caused by having to carry this team all season); Briann January sat out to rest a sore shoulder; and Shavonte Zellous was excused to attend a funeral. The Zellous issue was presumably legitimate, but if they really wanted to win this game, Catchings and January undoubtedly would’ve played. It left the Fever with just seven healthy bodies, and a distinctly makeshift lineup.

 

  • The moves made plenty of sense for Indiana. While Chicago have clearly been the best team in the East this season, the Fever have a great record against them over the years and went 3-1 against them this season. It also made sense in planning for the future, because a loss would give them a strong chance of the #5 overall pick in next year’s draft, while a win might move them down that order. If they were happy to play the Sky instead of the Dream, you could argue the players should’ve ‘rested’ for more than just this one game.

 

  • Of course, Indiana had a decent chance to win anyway. All of Connecticut’s injuries had them down to seven players as well, with Tan White the latest casualty due to a broken finger. And while you can rest as many players as you like, once you take the court instincts tend to kick in. No one’s going out on the floor playing to lose.

 

  • The reason I didn’t expect Indiana to rest so many players was the return of Katie Douglas. This was just her second game back after missing almost the entire season with a back problem, and it seemed like they’d want her to rebuild chemistry with the other key players on the roster. Clearly they didn’t think that was a big deal, presumably due to the number of years Douglas has already played with most of these teammates. There were some communication issues during this game, most noticeably between Douglas and Karima Christmas, where switches and defensive rotations weren’t particularly smooth. While she’s been watching from the sidelines all season, turning that into movement on the floor is very different, and Douglas needs to get up to speed very quickly. It’s a transition for Christmas right now as well, because she’s being asked to play some power forward after Indiana were forced to release Jessica Breland due to Douglas’s return. Christmas has been playing small forward all season, and while the amount of switching within Indiana’s defense means she’s had practice sliding inside, it’s not quite the same thing. Her help instincts and rotation moves aren’t quite those of a player used to playing in the paint.

 

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WNBA Today, 09/14/2013: Friday night resolves nothing as WNBA decisions go to final weekend

 

There’s an awful lot to cover in the closing days of the regular season for those of us who write about the entire WNBA. While continuing to follow the remaining games, there are end-of-season wrap-ups, playoff previews, and award articles on top of the usual stuff. And the teams aren’t making it any easier. On the antepenultimate day of the regular season we had four games last night, and three of them had at least some influence on the playoff picture. Yet resolved exactly nothing. So we’re going to try to keep the individual game coverage brief(ish), and then detail the remaining issues to be decided at the end of the article. You can skip to the ‘What it all Means’ section if you don’t want to hear about what happened last night.

 

New York Liberty 63 @ Indiana Fever 66

  • Indiana opened the evening in a flat tie with Washington for the #3 seed in the East, with two games remaining. But that was overshadowed by the return of Katie Douglas, who’d missed virtually the entire season with a back problem. As covered in this space before, while getting Douglas back for the playoffs was a very nice boost, by rule they were required to release hardship exception signing Jessica Breland when Douglas returned. This would be the first test of whether the gain of Douglas outweighed being down to Jasmine Hassell as their only backup post. Douglas went straight into the starting lineup, replacing Karima Christmas, while New York were still without star guard Cappie Pondexter. Playing for nothing besides lottery positioning (which could only be improved by losing), there was no need to rush Pondexter back.

 

  • It wasn’t long before the issues around losing Breland were highlighted. Erlana Larkins picked up two fouls in the opening 99 seconds, and had to go to the bench. That brought Hassell in, and in her 10 minutes of action over the course of the evening she did little beyond illustrating why she’s barely played for most of the season. We also saw Tamika Catchings forced to play some center later in the game, and Christmas having to slide over for occasional spells at power forward. When those lineups were in, the Fever looked desperately small. New York had some foul trouble of their own, which kept them smaller than usual in the paint at times, but they still punished Indiana inside for long stretches. Larkins and Catchings have been fighting their tails off all season, and they did most of the work as a pair during the Fever’s eventual run to a title last season. But the likes of Sylvia Fowles and Erika de Souza are likely to be in their way in the postseason, and this game showed how much danger a modicum of foul trouble can cause for Indiana. It’s going to be an awkward balancing act for the Fever in the playoffs.

 

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WNBA Today, 09/12/2013: Narrow victories for Sun and Sky as Delle Donne adds another buzzer-beater to her highlight reel

 

Last night’s pair of WNBA games had very little meaning in the grand scheme of things, but still produced tight, exciting finishes. What more can you ask for while teams are playing out the end of the regular season?

 

We opened in Connecticut, where Atlanta were the visitors. Both teams had the expected players available, i.e. Atlanta with everyone bar power forward Sancho Lyttle, who’s looking less and less likely to return for the playoffs; Connecticut with Charles, Lawson, Hightower and Faris out, leaving eight in uniform. The Sun had shown in their last couple of games that both the +/- statistics and the eye-test that suggested they’ve been better with Charles on the bench this year might have some truth to them. Atlanta had a couple of solid wins to start September, then went right back to looking shaky again. Connecticut are playing for pride and each other; Atlanta want to pick up their form heading into the postseason.

 

One word showed up an awful lot of times in my notes from this game. ‘Turnover’, often with an expletive or something like ‘crappy’ attached. Atlanta were staggeringly sloppy all night long. They started out the game committing several turnovers by trying to make the extra pass when they should’ve just kept going to the rim or taken the open shot. That’s okay. For a team that sometimes fails to move the ball enough, you can live with them making a few mistakes by trying to move it too much. But as the night wore on they were just making error after error, with passes flying out of bounds or straight to Sun players. They can’t expect to win playing like this.

 

Of course, they were playing Connecticut, so the Dream stayed in the game anyway. Atlanta led by as many as nine points in the opening period, but with useful production from Kayla Pedersen and Iziane Castro Marques off the bench Connecticut eased back into the game. This is how the Sun have been playing since Charles was shut down for the season. They’re working hard, playing as a team, and competing. They go through stretches where you wonder where their next point is going to come from, because there just aren’t that many obvious scoring options left on the team, but they move the ball around and scratch out enough to stay alive. Their last three games have probably been more impressive than the first 29. Atlanta led 37-36 at halftime.

 

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WNBA Today, 09/08/2013: Fever fight their way in, while Lynx continue to overwhelm Storm

 

The difficulties and complications of WNBA.com’s LiveAccess service over the weekend have made the contents of my articles a little confusing, so here’s what you can find below: details on Saturday’s games, plus bonus coverage of Friday night’s Indiana-Chicago matchup. Just to keep things chronological, we’ll start with that game, in the hope that some people are still interested in hearing about it, then roll into yesterday’s basketball. Coverage of Sunday’s games, including one particularly noteworthy explosion in an otherwise meaningless game, will be in tomorrow’s article as normal. On to the Bullet Point Breakdowns.

 

Indiana Fever 82 @ Chicago Sky 77

  • Indiana went into this game with work still to do in order to confirm their playoff spot. New York were in the process of losing yet another game, but they were still within range of catching the Fever. Chicago secured the #1 seed in the East the previous weekend, but were still playing for home-court advantage in a potential Finals matchup with Minnesota or Los Angeles, and trying to keep their momentum rolling into the playoffs. There was also a strong possibility that Indiana could be Chicago’s first-round playoff opponent, and the Fever have beaten up on the Sky with such regularity over the years that Chicago were looking for a win for mental reasons more than anything else.

 

  • Unfortunately for the Sky, point guard Courtney Vandersloot turned an ankle in warmups, and was held out of the game for precautionary reasons. It was absolutely the right decision, however minor the injury, considering the lack of real meaning to this game for Chicago – but it was still a disappointment to face the Fever without an important starter. Epiphanny Prince slid over to play the point, with Tamera Young coming into the starting lineup. They also had backup point guard Sharnee Zoll-Norman available for the first time in weeks, after recovering from her broken thumb. Indiana were still without Katie Douglas, and guard Erin Phillips was missing as well after being poked in the eye during their game against Atlanta a couple of nights earlier.

 

  • We’d only seen the marquee frontcourt matchup between Elena Delle Donne and Tamika Catchings once before this season – they’d missed one game each due to injury on the other occasions their teams clashed. As with the previous encounter, Catchings was nominally guarding Delle Donne at times, but Indiana’s defense was so fluid and switching so easily that the matchups were far from consistent. Delle Donne certainly wasn’t afraid of Catchings or her defensive reputation when she was lined up against the veteran star, attacking her off the dribble several times in the early going and having some success. She also set screens on Briann January multiple times, trying to force the switch and the resulting mismatch, and converted easily right over the top of January on more than one occasion.

 

  • However, while Delle Donne produced some points early on, and Sylvia Fowles was a presence in the paint at both ends of the floor, Indiana stayed right with Chicago and ultimately pulled out into a lead late in the first half. There’s one particular, incredibly basic way that Indiana use to create good looks against the Sky, and I’ve talked about it before. I call it ‘semi-penetration’, because the primary objective is rarely to get right to the rim or even deep into the paint. If a lane happens to open up, the driving Fever player will happily take it and carry on to the basket, but that’s not what usually happens. One player drives from the top of the arc – usually Tamika Catchings but several other Fever players do it as well – only aiming to get a step or two below the free throw line, and not really needing to beat her defender. The target is merely to entice the defender in the strong side corner to take a step or two towards the paint to offer help. Then the driver makes the easy kick-out to her teammate in the corner (or on the wing, both work) for a three she’s been given the room to shoot. It’s incredibly simple, but the help-defense principles drilled into defenses like Chicago’s always make that defender in the corner want to slide in and help. Briann January and Shavonte Zellous got into a rhythm hitting threes in the first half, and it helped carry Indiana’s offense even while Catchings couldn’t hit anything. The Fever led 44-34 at halftime.

 

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WNBA Today, 09/07/2013: Postseason four become official in West, reach brink in East, on five-game Friday

 

Another quintuple-game night in the WNBA on Friday, and all five of them had playoff implications of some description. Whether it’s officially confirming your spot in the postseason, fighting for seeding, or just playing spoiler while you look forward to the lottery, the regular season isn’t quite done yet.

 

Washington Mystics 70 @ Connecticut Sun 77

  • Although if you happen to be a Connecticut Sun fan, you could’ve been forgiven for thinking your team had already decided the season was over. With the mathematical calculations finally confirming that the Sun’s chances of making the playoffs were finished (realists had confirmed that eons ago), two more Sun players were shut down for the season. The team confirmed that Kara Lawson wouldn’t be returning for the rest of the year with lingering issues from her bruised knee, while Tina Charles was shut down with sore knees and various other aches and pains that everyone’s always feeling by this stage in the season. Making sure they stay below everyone else in the standings would also help Connecticut’s lottery chances, of course (and give them the #1 pick in a dispersal draft in the unfortunate event that any other team ceased operations over the offseason).

 

  • But in case you haven’t noticed me pointing it out several times over the course of the season, both here and on Twitter, the Sun have invariably been a better team with Tina Charles on the bench this season. Plus, when a team hears that their opponent is missing virtually their entire starting five (remember, Asjha Jones, Danielle McCray, Allison Hightower and Kelly Faris are all out for various reasons as well as Charles and Lawson), they tend to relax. The Mystics came out with very little energy, and we saw what might well have been the quickest timeout of the season. Mike Thibault brought everything to a halt after just 45 seconds, with his team trailing 5-0.

 

  • Washington struggled to find any of their usual energy and focus throughout the first half, but they did at least crawl into a pretty tedious contest. They didn’t hit many shots, but they managed to drive into contact enough to earn trips to the free throw line and gather up some points. Connecticut had a drought in the middle of the half where their basic limited level of talent was highlighted, but over the course of the half they shot significantly better than Washington. The rotations and help in the Mystics defense weren’t crisp at all, and Tan White led the Sun to a 36-34 halftime advantage.

 

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WNBA Today, 09/01/2013: Favourites all take care of business as playoff picture continues to clear

 

Four games on Saturday night in the WNBA, all four won in varying degrees of comfort by the favourites. So the playoff picture is continuing to resolve itself – mostly by default because we’re running out of games – but there weren’t exactly a lot of shocks to go around. With two weeks to go in the regular season, if you can’t make a pretty good guess at what’s coming by now, you haven’t been paying attention.

 

Los Angeles Sparks 80 @ San Antonio Silver Stars 67

  • At stake in this one: Los Angeles continue to chase Minnesota for the #1 seed in the West, coming into the day one game back. As a sideline, Chicago are right up with the pair of them for home-court advantage in a theoretical WNBA Finals. San Antonio were still in with a mathematical chance of chasing down Phoenix or Seattle for a playoff spot, albeit a very small chance. Bizarrely enough, a Silver Stars loss in this game would confirm Seattle’s place in the postseason, while Phoenix would still be catchable – despite Seattle sitting in fourth while Phoenix were in third. Schedules, tie-breakers and mathematics can be strange bedfellows.

 

  • LA had their usual starting lineup, and their roster as healthy as ever, but San Antonio began the game with yet another new starting unit. Danielle Robinson was still out with strained/sprained knee (the team have used both words to describe it), and now her replacement Davellyn Whyte was missing as well (reportedly with a foot problem). That shifted Shenise Johnson over alongside Jia Perkins in the backcourt, with Shameka Christon coming in to start on the wing. It’s a perimeter that had some success in their win over Tulsa the night before, but obviously their bench became even shorter.

 

  • While LA led by as many as 11, it was ultimately a fairly tight first half. The Sparks were looking to push whenever they could, but becoming a little ponderous and static when forced into halfcourt sets. San Antonio started slowly but came back into the game late in the first quarter through better defensive energy and Jia Perkins making plays on offense. Dan Hughes would love to have Perkins as his sixth woman energy from the bench, but the injuries have forced her into a much bigger role this season. She’s not always the most efficient scorer, but sometimes she can be electric.

 

  • The other place where San Antonio found success in the first half was on the offensive glass. With Candace Parker and Nneka Ogwumike, LA have a clear athleticism advantage in this matchup over players like Danielle Adams, Jayne Appel and Cathrine Kraayeveld. While Parker was doing her typical job of filling the stat-sheet in a number of areas, the Sparks were getting outworked on the glass and the Silver Stars were staying alive with second-chance opportunities. They took 11 more shots than LA in the first half, thanks to a 10-2 advantage in offensive rebounds, and it allowed the Silver Stars to trail only 35-30 at halftime.

 

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WNBA Today, 08/30/2013: Storm can taste playoffs, as Sun succumb yet again

 

Just one game in the WNBA last night, and with the Connecticut Sun as the visiting team the result never seemed to be in much doubt. The Sun are still without Allison Hightower and Kelly Faris due to injury, and Kara Lawson for family reasons. That’s on top of Asjha Jones and Danielle McCray, who’ve both missed the entire season. It’s too generous to Connecticut’s players and coaching staff to put all their problems this season down to those absences – especially when so many teams around the league have been fighting through similar issues – but obviously it’s made things much more difficult. However you distribute the blame, the Sun have been dreadful for the vast majority of the season.

 

Last night’s hosts the Seattle Storm have had their own key losses to deal with. Superstars Lauren Jackson and Sue Bird were ruled out for the entire year before the season began, forcing Brian Agler to piece together a roster from what he had left and what he could attract on the free agent market. Most prognosticators were not high on their chances of success before the season began – to say the least. But the Storm have come together as a team, worked hard for each other, and scratched and clawed their way to victories. Exactly like they’ve done under Agler in previous years whenever they’ve been missing key players. Last night’s game gave them a chance to push above .500 for the first time since the opening weeks of the season, and move within touching distance of confirming their spot in the playoffs.

 

The Storm have had their inconsistencies this season. Without elite stars to rely on, when their offense starts to break down, it can get ugly. Even in the important pair of games they’d just completed against struggling San Antonio, the Storm were awful in the first encounter and nearly managed to throw away the second. But at times recently they’ve flowed, and looked like they were growing more comfortable within their own offense. It’s led to an 8-4 record over their last 12 games. That’s the kind of form that’s more than enough to make them heavy favourites over Connecticut, and the first quarter went exactly as you’d expect. Seattle were effective in a variety of ways. Both Tina Thompson and Camille Little attacked inside, showing absolutely no respect for Kelsey Griffin’s defense (or the weak efforts that Tina Charles has been passing off as interior help defense this season). Meanwhile Shekinna Stricklen hit a trio of open three-pointers within the first six minutes of the game. By my estimation, the Sun starting perimeter of Renee Montgomery, Tan White and Kalana Greene were each responsible for one of those triples. So at least everyone was equally culpable for failing to cover their assignments. Seattle led by as many as 12 in the first quarter.

 

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WNBA Today, 08/28/2013: Storm squeak past Silver Stars to reach brink of postseason; Western elite beats Eastern also-rans

 

We’re starting to hit that point in the season. Where everyone knows which teams are good, and which teams are on the brink of giving up on the year as a dead loss. So last night’s three WNBA games saw two very predictable results that maintained the status quo, and just one tight, interesting contest. We’ll be starting with that one, obviously.

 

Seattle Storm 72 @ San Antonio Silver Stars 71

  • This was another of those double-features the WNBA has introduced this season, where teams play twice in the same city within barely 48 hours. So everyone had fresh memories of the dreadful game on Sunday where Seattle barely showed up and got what they deserved. After the Storm lost that game, this one became very important. It tied the season-series between the teams at 2-2, and pulled San Antonio within three games of the Storm in the standings. Another win for San Antonio would both narrow the gap to two, and secure the head-to-head tie-breaker over Seattle. The squads were identical, both sides starting the same units as point guard Danielle Robinson continues to miss out for San Antonio with her strained knee.

 

  • Robinson’s replacement Davellyn Whyte was firing and hitting from outside early on. That’s the one advantage Whyte gives you over D-Rob – she’s not afraid to fire away from deep, and occasionally she’ll get hot. Robinson rarely lets fly from further than 18-feet.

 

  • As has often been the case this year, Seattle started slowly. Brian Agler called his usual early timeout – it’s virtually a tradition at this point – and they pulled themselves out of it with the help of Tina Thompson. From there, the entire first half stayed very tight. Thompson was the leading light for Seattle, hitting little hooks and fadeaways inside or popping out beyond the arc for her trademark deep threes. It gave the Storm a presence and a primary option that they never really found on Sunday in the previous game, and their energy on the glass was important as well.

 

  • Between Whyte, Jia Perkins and Danielle Adams, San Antonio were hitting enough shots to keep pace. Even with a 19-7 deficit on the boards, they had the game tied at 31-31 at halftime.

 

  • The second half was a different experience. The game became more frantic and helter-skelter at times, with one key move from San Antonio head coach Dan Hughes having a big effect on the game. In an effort to handle Thompson and track her movement better, the Silver Stars began to treat her as a small forward. Instead of trying to guard her with Danielle Adams, who had to chase Thompson around screens and try to follow her out when she popped beyond the arc, they gave Shenise Johnson and Shameka Christon the assignment. That left Adams on either Shekinna Stricklen or Noelle Quinn. Obviously it was a risk to some extent. Adams is relatively light on her feet, but she’s not used to guarding perimeter players. And Thompson is still capable of posting up, so Hughes was trusting Johnson and Christon to be able to handle that. To a large extent it worked for San Antonio, as Thompson definitely cooled off in the second half.

 

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WNBA Today, 08/27/2013: Sunday, Bloody (awful) Sunday

 

Sunday was not an entertaining day of WNBA basketball. It was filled with sloppy play, teams who barely showed up, and other teams winning almost by default. And then it exploded into a frenzy of craziness right at the end. So this column’s going to follow the same path. We’ll cover all the tedium first, and build to the big finish. I won’t hate you if you skip to the end.

 

Seattle Storm 64 @ San Antonio Silver Stars 70

  • As mentioned in my pick for this game in the last column, I couldn’t understand why so much money seemed to be flooding in on San Antonio. Seattle’s Temeka Johnson had looked ready to return before the end of their previous game despite taking a hit to the head (and was indeed fit to start this one). Meanwhile, opposing point guard Danielle Robinson missed San Antonio’s last game with a sprained right knee (and ultimately missed this one as well). Seattle have been the better team during the season, and have even produced a little consistency lately, beating Indiana, Los Angeles and Phoenix in their last three games. San Antonio have been fighting, but pretty poor all year. Even on the road, Seattle seemed like they ought to be favourites. Of course, maybe my picks are offered free of charge for a reason.

 

  • Seattle were atrocious in the first half of this game (they were pretty bad throughout, but let’s look the opening 20 minutes first). After tearing LA and Phoenix apart for long stretches of recent games, they looked completely bemused by San Antonio’s defense, and utterly incapable of creating anything decent against it. The shot clock ran down without the offense going anywhere, they forced up bad shots under pressure because they couldn’t find anything else, and then the turnovers started piling up. It’s a typical reaction when you can’t break a defense down – especially for the Storm, but really for any team. You start forcing passes into tiny holes or even holes that never existed in the first place, and they become cheap, easy takeaways for the opponent. It was a return to the Storm from much of last season, where constantly handing over possession consistently killed their offense. Although, as long as the turnover went out of bounds or bounced around for a while so Seattle could get back and set their defense, it didn’t make much difference. They weren’t hitting anything when they held on to the ball long enough to shoot anyway.

 

  • San Antonio weren’t exactly a smooth-running machine themselves. The defense was obviously doing the job, shutting down Seattle, but the offense was pretty mediocre. They beat the Storm in transition a couple of times by running harder down the floor, and Jia Perkins made a few shots, but that was about it. They pulled ahead largely because Seattle couldn’t score. The Silver Stars did get a few nice plays from Shenise Johnson, who had to play some point guard with Robinson out and Davellyn Whyte picking up some early fouls. It probably won’t hurt Johnson to spend some extra time with the ball in her hands, making decisions and making plays. She needs the work, and she needs the responsibility to force her to step up. It might be just her second year in the league, but she’s supposed to become a big piece of the puzzle for this franchise going forward – not just a decent complementary player. San Antonio led 34-24 at halftime.

 

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