Tag Archives: New York Liberty

The Daily W, 06/06/2014

 

Washington Mystics 74 @ Connecticut Sun 66

 

Lineups: Rookie guard Bria Hartley got another start in the backcourt for Washington, maybe hoping she’d be energised by returning to play in front of many of the fans who loved her in college. The Sun stuck with the same lineup from their previous game, which meant the Chiney Ogwumike/Kelsey Bone pairing remained in the post, even though Kelsey Griffin was available again after her illness.

 

Story of the Game: Washington were on top for most of the first half. Kia Vaughn and Emma Meesseman were the post pair having the most success, and their developing chemistry could be a big plus for the Mystics in the future. Mike Thibault likes to mix and match his lineups, but if he notices a particular unit working well together he’ll use his rotations to make sure they’re on the floor together as often as possible. Meesseman has the all-round game and mobility to be effective in various areas, Vaughn has the size and work rate to fight in the paint and a pretty reliable mid-range shot. They gave Ogwumike and Bone problems.

Their teammates were chipping in as well, and the Mystics shot a high percentage in the first half to stay in front. The primary source of points for Connecticut was Ogwumike, who continues to impress. She gets those same hustle points off energy plays and offensive boards that we’ve been watching her sister Nneka pick up for a couple of years, but she’s also a focus of their offense within sets (something Nneka’s never been given a chance at in Los Angeles). With a lot of jumpers that weren’t going in from the rest of the Sun players, their deficit would’ve been a lot more than eight at halftime without Ogwumike’s efforts.

The Sun came back into the game in the third quarter. They were much more active and energetic on defense, the Washington offense stalled, and the scoreboard evened out. Connecticut also benefitted from a run of scoring from Alex Bentley. When your point guards are Bentley and Renee Montgomery, you have to accept that you won’t always run a perfect offensive set. They’re both prone to breaking off and looking for their own points at times, rather than playing the classic distributor role at the point. But sometimes that’s what you need to kick your offense into gear and wake your team up. Along with drives to the hoop and an answered prayer for three as the shot clock expired, Bentley tossed in a behind-the-back pass to Allison Hightower for a three. Connecticut were right back in the game.

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The Daily W, 06/01/2014

 

New York Liberty 66 @ Indiana Fever 70

 

Lineups: Both teams opened with the same fives they’d used in previous games. Tamika Catchings is still in street clothes due to her sore back, while the only missing Liberty player is Kamiko Williams, who tore her ACL in the preseason.

 

Story of the Game: Indiana were the team in front for most of the first half, and led by as many as 11 points in the second quarter. Rookie forward Natasha Howard had another productive outing, delivering several hustle plays and some nice finishes to help the Fever. The Indiana coaches have already talked about how much it helps her if she can hit an early shot and get into the game, so maybe we should’ve known the performance was coming when she hit a rainbow jumper from the free throw line to open the scoring.

Briann January was the other player keying the Fever offense, continuing her early-season hot streak from outside. Her career numbers – and watching most of that career – show that she’s a better shooter from the perimeter than she is at finishing under pressure at the rim, so firing more threes makes sense. Especially considering she’s shooting a ludicrous 71% from beyond the arc so far this year (that might be just a touch unsustainable).

New York had a pretty messy first half, with Cappie Pondexter barely involved. Fortunately Tina Charles decided to show up, and was more aggressive attacking the basket in the paint and going after rebounds. In fact, the Liberty destroyed Indiana on the glass in the opening 20 minutes, which played a significant role in keeping them in the contest. Indiana were one of the few teams this season that largely chose to defend Charles straight up, letting Erlana Larkins do the best she could on her own, rather than sending endless double-teams. Larkins is a strong, physical defender, but that policy gave Charles license to attack rather than kick the ball back out, and let her play herself into the game.

The Liberty finished the second quarter with a 10-2 run, led by Charles, which pulled them within three points at the break, despite a mostly poor opening half.

Outside of the first 30 seconds, when a Marissa Coleman layup extended Indiana’s lead to five, neither side led by more than four points for the entire second half. It was tight and scrappy, neither team finding much rhythm and both cancelling each other out. Indiana did a better job competing on the glass, but their offense slowed to a crawl and they didn’t shoot nearly as well from beyond the arc. Charles wasn’t as productive offensively, and New York didn’t have a lot else. It always looked like coming down to the final few possessions.

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The Daily W, 05/31/2014

 

New York Liberty 60 @ Washington Mystics 68

 

Lineups: New York stuck with the same five, but Mike Thibault made significant changes to his starting group. Kara Lawson and Monique Currie were both benched, with Tierra Ruffin-Pratt and Jelena Milovanovic coming in on the wings. In Ruffin-Pratt’s case you could see it as a defensive switch, bringing in someone who could cover Cappie Pondexter more effectively than Lawson. Considering Essence Carson isn’t playing well enough for a defense to need to adapt for her, Milovanovic for Currie was a straight coach’s decision. Neither Lawson nor Currie has been playing well enough to really have any complaints.

 

Story of the Game: Washington were the team on top for most of the first half. Kia Vaughn was their primary offensive weapon in the opening quarter, finding space inside off simple plays for high-low feeds from Emma Meesseman. Then Vaughn started hitting her jumper from the elbow, and even added a layup in transition after running the floor hard. The Mystics were the more active team in general in the first half, more willing to push the ball and look for quick offense, and more attacking in halfcourt sets.

The Liberty managed to stay in touch, largely because Pondexter was having one of her more accurate shooting nights and point guard Anna Cruz was hitting from outside. Their focus on stuffing the ball inside to Tina Charles gets them in trouble sometimes, because the team becomes too focussed on feeding her, which leads to turnovers because the passes are so obvious. They still rarely show evidence of having enough ball movement or perimeter shooting to take advantage of the attention she draws down low. And the Liberty also got destroyed on the glass in the first half, which didn’t help. Charles was being outplayed by the opposing posts.

Washington’s lead hit 12 in the third quarter, before Pondexter led the comeback charge. She was raining jumpers from outside, had a drive-and-kick for a Cruz three, and basically dragged her team back into the game without a lot of help. This was the superstar Cappie we’ve seen too little of in the last couple of years.

The ridiculous Liberty bench unit lacking Pondexter, Charles or Carson was in evidence again at the end of the third. They survived for a couple of minutes, just about.

The fourth quarter stayed tight until the final five minutes, although Pondexter saw little of the ball and Charles remained as ineffective as she’d been all night. Then Ivory Latta took over for the Mystics. She drilled a three, had a couple of driving layups while Cruz just waved her by, and then sealed the game in the final 30 seconds with another step-back three – she fired that last one way too early in the shot clock, but once it went in no one cared.

 

Key Players: Vaughn early and Latta late was enough for Washington, along with the collective effort throughout. Just like last year, this is going to be the most balanced team across 10 or 11 players all season long, as Thibault uses everyone to get the job done. In many ways that’s the reverse of how the Liberty have been built, but ironically it was the starting center and combo-guard who led the Mystics to victory in this one.

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The Daily W, 05/28/2014

 

Seattle Storm 64 @ New York Liberty 70

 

Lineups: The same fives these teams used in their last games came out for the tip-off. Alysha Clark continues to open at small forward for Seattle, presumably to give them energy and hustle from the start, because the likes of Noelle Quinn and Shekinna Stricklen are still more likely to be in that spot in crunch time. Seattle’s bench was a little thinner than before, due to Jenna O’Hea’s broken toe, which is expected to keep her out for 4-6 weeks.

 

Story of the Game: Neither side led by more than four points in the opening period, as they felt each other out and tried to get something going. The very first possession from New York featured a high-low pass from Plenette Pierson to Tina Charles with deep position in the paint, signalling their intent for much of the rest of the game.

Seattle opened up by missing a series of mid-range jumpers, with posts Crystal Langhorne and Camille Little popping into plenty of space, but failing to knock anything down. Then Sue Bird began to take over the Storm offense. The entire first half was peppered with outside bombs from Bird, using screens to shake Anna Cruz, and then filling it up from the resulting opportunities. She had 17 points at halftime.

But until late in the half, Bird didn’t get a lot of help offensively, and New York had been the team in front. The Seattle defense struggled to recover at times after their frequent collapsing on Charles, and the Liberty hit enough shots to maintain a lead until Bird just got ridiculously hot. She wrapped up the first half with another deep jumper in Cruz’s face, giving the Storm a three-point lead at the interval.

The Liberty clearly spent the break talking about Bird and how to cool her off, although we’d already seen the signs of them adapting in the first half. When she came off any pick the big was showing hard on her now, essentially turning it into a trap, and forcing someone else to beat them. Of course, Bird’s the consummate point guard and at times that merely led to great looks off the pick-and-roll or slip screens, when Bird fed the ball to the screener rather than shooting herself. But in general it worked for New York – along with Bird simply cooling off – and Seattle’s offense was significantly less effective in the second half.

But New York weren’t exactly steamrollering the Storm at the other end. The physical defense of Little and Langhorne was forcing misses from Charles, along with basic errors from the Liberty center that didn’t have much to do with the defenders. She missed a lot of straightforward opportunities in the second half. Essence Carson’s jumper has looked pretty good in the early stages of the season, but without being put to a huge amount of use. And Cappie Pondexter was invisible for huge stretches of this game. Tanisha Wright is always one of the tougher defenders on Pondexter, but the Liberty can’t afford for Pondexter to fade out of games entirely, whoever she’s facing.

Bill Laimbeer took a risk late in the third quarter, as Carson, then Pondexter, then Charles, were all subbed out. The remaining players unsurprisingly struggled to score, and Seattle were back in front by five points at the end of the third, despite their own offensive struggles. The pretty obvious lesson for Bill is that his two-and-a-half stars can never be on the bench simultaneously – unless it’s garbage time and someone’s up by 20.

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The Daily W, 05/25/2014

 

Seattle Storm 73 @ Washington Mystics 65

 

Lineups: Seattle stuck with the same group that lost to Connecticut the night before, with Alysha Clark in that third perimeter spot they’re unsure what to do with. Ivory Latta regained her starting spot in the Washington backcourt from Bria Hartley – apparently Latta missed a couple of practices last week due to a minor injury, which may have been the reason Hartley replaced her against Indiana.

 

Story of the Game: The first half was a low-scoring affair. Emma Meesseman scored at will early on for the Mystics, initially using her height advantage inside, then hitting jumpers when given too much space from mid-range. But she didn’t get a lot of offensive help from her teammates.

Seattle went super-small at times in the second quarter, with Nicole Powell becoming their center. But it seemed to upset the Mystics more than the size limitations hurt Seattle. Washington were thrown off their rhythm by knowing they should be attacking the mismatches, and focussing too much on that. Seattle doubled hard and with more organisation than we’d seen from them in previous games this season, managing to recover well enough to survive. The Mystics also just missed several good looks when the ball was rotated away from the double-teams. The Storm also finally manged to exploit the other side of being undersized, when Powell knocked down a pair of threes – the other team’s bigs aren’t used to guarding players like her, so she should find open looks when forced to play ‘center’.

Both teams were better offensively in the second half, and Seattle were scrambling less on the defensive end because Camille Little and Crystal Langhorne played the vast majority of the minutes inside. The Storm were noticeably better than in any of their three previous games, using backdoor cuts and more motion to pierce into the heart of the Washington defense. They also hit some shots, which always helps. Shekinna Stricklen made her first meaningful impact of the 2014 season with back-to-back threes that keyed a Seattle run in the third quarter to build a lead, and they largely maintained it from there. After looking tired for several minutes, Sue Bird drilled a huge three with 90 seconds left in the game to help ice it. Die Bitches apparently still lives.

 

Key Players: The three primary scorers for Seattle were Bird, Little and Tanisha Wright, but it was a collective performance. There was better cohesion, and they fought their way to the finish line just like we’ve seen them do many times over the years. It remains to be seen if they can produce this kind of result regularly, or against stronger opponents, but at least it got them off the mark for the season, and prevented an ugly 0-4 from appearing in the standings.

Meesseman’s early burst was the most memorable sequence for Washington, who didn’t have a great day. The ball movement and perimeter shooting wasn’t good enough to punish Seattle when their defense broke down. We’re also still waiting for the real Kara Lawson to show up in a Mystics jersey.

 

Notes of Interest: Jenna O’Hea has been getting good looks for the Storm – and they’ve been running sets specifically designed to break her open for threes – but she’s not been knocking them down. A career 45% shooter from three-point range in the WNBA, she’ll likely snap out of it, but the physical pounding from playing power forward for the Storm may not be helping. She sometimes had to chase players like Diana Taurasi around when she was playing for LA, but she never had to hold up against the likes of Candice Dupree or Emma Meesseman in the paint. Powell was given all the backup post minutes by Brian Agler in the second half of this game.

If you’re like me and mute or switch over as soon as the halftime buzzer sounds in most games, hold on a minute or two for Mystics home games. They talk to head coach Mike Thibault, and he’s invariably insightful and amusing in his honest analysis of the first half. It’s worth sticking around for.

 

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The Daily W, 05/18/2014

 

Atlanta Dream 90 @ Indiana Fever 88 (2OT)

 

Lineups: Angel McCoughtry came off the bench due to a minor hip problem picked up the night before (I’ve never understood why not starting helps in any way with a niggling injury, but that’s what happened). Matee Ajavon started in her place. Indiana were still without Tamika Catchings and Layshia Clarendon, so opened with the same five as the previous night.

 

Story of the Game: The Fever got off to a hot start, just like the night before, led by Briann January. She seemed to be avoiding her problems with finishing at the rim by just sticking to jumpshots, and they were all dropping. Indiana led by double digits early in the second quarter.

However, Atlanta never looked in that much trouble, and the game always seemed like it would come back to them. The Fever had some problems containing the Dream in transition, with Erika de Souza picking up points simply by running hard from basket-to-basket. Shoni Schimmel, for the second night in a row, was exciting everyone with her shockingly successful entry onto the pro level. The assists were flowing again, and she was drilling those shots from deep that she always loved firing in college.

It was tight for most of the second half. Fever head coach Lin Dunn went small on the perimeter after losing any confidence in Marissa Coleman or Shavonte Zellous, preferring the double-point guard look with January and Sydney Carter, often with diminutive off-guard Maggie Lucas as well. That left someone thoroughly undersized having to cover McCoughtry – usually January.

A pretty messy half of basketball was finished off by several shambolic broken plays to close regulation. A steal eventually gave Karima Christmas the chance to break away and win the game for Indiana, but she blew the layup and sent us to overtime.

Rookie forward Natasha Howard, who’d already had a strong night, was the star for the Fever in OT. She attacked and finished through contact several times to produce points for Indiana. Then Schimmel, who’d had less impact on the game  since halftime, converted a ridiculous finish on a drive to tie it up late in the first extra period. Both teams contrived awful shots in the final minute, before the Fever failed to even get one off on the final possession. On to double overtime.

Howard was still the main offensive threat for Indiana, and she gave them a one-point lead with 30 seconds left, but missed the and-one free throw. McCoughtry curled off a high screen at the other end, took the pass, and drilled a three for the lead. In general, opposing teams want Angel shooting threes – but she’s never scared to take or make the big shot, from anywhere on the floor. Lucas ended up with the final shot for the Fever, but she airballed it and the Dream held on.

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The Daily W, 05/17/2014

 

A new regular feature here at WNBAlien – quick recaps of the previous night’s games, mentions of who played and who stood out, notes on anything interesting that might’ve cropped up, and anything else that seems worth talking about. Just without the ridiculous length of previous seasons. Most days, it should go up much earlier than today’s initial example.

We’ll still look in depth at certain games and teams when it’s warranted, especially when there aren’t four or five games on a single evening.

There’s also an injury report at the bottom, collating the news on who missed out last night and who got banged up while playing.

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Minnesota Lynx 89 @ Washington Mystics 77

 

Lineups: Brazilian rookie Damiris Dantas got the start at power forward for Minnesota in place of the injured Rebekkah Brunson. Belgian youngster Emma Meesseman got the nod to start at the same spot for Washington in the place vacated by Crystal Langhorne. Otherwise starters as you’d expect, including Kara Lawson making her debut in the Mystics backcourt.

 

Story of the Game: Maya Moore came out firing, carrying the Lynx into an early lead. Washington’s bench unit helped them get into the game, led by Stefanie Dolson drilling a trio of deep jumpers when the Lynx left her alone. Minnesota maintained a single-digit lead for most of the night behind Moore and Seimone Augustus, but Ivory Latta bombing from outside kept Washington in it. Then Tierra Ruffin-Pratt joined in and the Mystics actually took a very brief lead with 8 minutes left.

But Minnesota’s starters responded, tightened up defensively and hit a series of jumpers to pull away again. Ballgame over.

 

Key Players: Latta and Ruffin-Pratt were the only players who really showed up offensively for Washington, with the occasional flash from Meesseman and Dolson. Some weak rotations defensively – with Augustus and Moore the main culprits, surprisingly – left Latta too open from outside in the second half.

But it was those same two Lynx stars who carried much of Minnesota’s offense over the course of the game. Dantas also had a nice debut, and fit in smoothly as part of the starting core. Asia Taylor, the other rookie post the Lynx retained from camp, looks awfully small and thin for a frontcourt player. You can afford to be one or the other, but when you’re both it’s hard to survive in this league without moving more to the perimeter.

 

Notes of Interest: This is going to become a theme as we go through the other games from last night – solid, impressive rookie performances, but with sequences where they’re still working out what they can get away with at this level. Dolson made some shots, and had a lovely touch pass for a Tianna Hawkins bucket, but was called for at least a couple of illegal screens. Even though many of the refs are the same, that’s the kind of thing that can be called differently in the pros from the college game. Dantas made the necessary hustle plays, and generally kept things simple, although there were a few miscommunications. It looks like she’s already realised that there’s so much freaking talent on her team she doesn’t need to do anything too outlandish. Just fill your role, rook.

 

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New York Liberty 75 @ Connecticut Sun 54

 

Lineups: Spanish ‘rookie’ (it’s her first year in the WNBA, but she’s 27) Anna Cruz got the start at the point for New York (so much for Cappie Pondexter at ‘lead guard’). DeLisha Milton-Jones was at power forward despite Plenette Pierson being in uniform and seeing a few minutes of action. Pierson doesn’t look physically ready to play starter minutes yet.

The perimeter of Alex Bentley, Allison Hightower and Katie Douglas was about what we expected from Connecticut, but Kelsey Griffin started in the frontcourt next to Chiney Ogwumike. Kelsey Bone and Ogwumike will surely be the best frontcourt pairing this franchise can offer over the course of the season.

 

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WNBA 2014 In-Depth Previews: New York Liberty

 

Cappie Pondexter/Anna Cruz
Essence Carson/Chucky Jeffery/Sugar Rodgers
Alex Montgomery/Toni Young
Plenette Pierson/DeLisha Milton-Jones
Tina Charles/Kara Braxton

plus the injured Kamiko Williams, who they can’t replace because she tore her ACL in training camp and therefore has to be paid her salary for this season – and they don’t have the remaining cap space to sign someone else if they cut her.

 

Significant additions: Charles, Carson back from injury, black uniforms
Significant losses: Kelsey Bone, Leilani Mitchell

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There are lots of positives for the New York Liberty heading into this season. They got their second superstar when Tina Charles decided she’d had enough of Connecticut and wanted to come home. Essence Carson is back after blowing out her ACL four games into last season. They’re back in Madison Square Garden after three years exiled to New Jersey due to renovations. They’re reverting to the black road uniforms that no one ever wanted them to get rid of in the first place. Cappie Pondexter and Bill Laimbeer have had a full year to get to know each other and find a fit for this team that should work. So why does it still feel like this team has a lot more questions than answers circling around it going into 2014?

 

A central part of the problem is just what else is there besides the stars. Yes, Carson is back to help Pondexter out in the backcourt, take on some of the scoring load, and generally give them better options on the perimeter than they had last year. But we don’t know quite what she’ll produce coming off a serious knee injury, or if her body will hold up for 34 games. Talking of bodies holding up, that’s a question mark elsewhere as well. Plenette Pierson, a very good forward in this league for a lot of years, struggled through much of last season with a variety of injuries. Then she suffered another knee injury late in her season overseas that her European team called an ACL tear. Laimbeer has said it wasn’t as serious as initially reported, and apparently she’s been running in camp, but no one is remotely sure what she’ll be able to produce this season. Her body already seemed to be breaking down last year, so adding one more major issue on top is not good news for an important player for the Liberty.

 

That leaves lots of kids, unknowns and role players trying to fill holes on the Liberty roster. DeLisha Milton-Jones has an awful lot of miles on her clock, and looked just about done last year in stints with San Antonio and then New York. She’ll be playing significant minutes if Pierson isn’t ready. Kara Braxton will be her usual enigmatic self, showing flashes of real talent one moment, before Bad Kara emerges and does three things that make you want to throw something at her. Toni Young showed off her athleticism last season as a rookie, but not a lot else, and she’s still a combo-forward who hasn’t proven she can play either spot effectively until we see otherwise. Alex Montgomery is a hard-working, decent wing who might be starting at small forward due to the lack of alternatives.

 

The other perimeter backups are Anna Cruz, a Spanish combo-guard making her first foray into WNBA basketball. She has played some point guard, and she might be Pondexter’s backup on this roster, but this is by no means Celine Dumerc that they’ve added. Cruz is decent, but that’s about it, and the history of Euros translating their ‘decent’ play over to the WNBA isn’t great. Chucky Jeffery is back as well, and might be the alternative backup ballhandler if Cruz doesn’t work out. We didn’t see much of her last year in Minnesota or New York, so Liberty fans can only hope that she’s developed. Sugar Rodgers was also acquired from Minnesota – who otherwise likely would’ve cut her – and will happily come off the bench and start firing away. This bench is a lot of different random pieces with the hope that a couple step up and produce.

 

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WNBAlien Special – Grading the Trade Catchup: Charles forces her way to New York, Sun make the best of it

 

The biggest news of the WNBA’s draft night this year had nothing to do with the players being selected. The Connecticut Sun had the #1 overall pick, and everyone had known Chiney Ogwumike was heading there from the moment the lottery ping-pong balls handed it to them. But the Sun still managed to be involved in the central story of the night, sending malcontented star center Tina Charles to the New York Liberty for center Kelsey Bone, the #4 pick (which immediately became Maryland’s Alyssa Thomas), and New York’s first-round pick in next year’s draft.

 

Charles being traded wasn’t really a big surprise. Last season in Connecticut was an absolute disaster, with several players upset about Mike Thibault being fired as head coach, Anne Donovan unable to take control or win key players over after being handed the reins, and then various injuries (and ‘injuries’) piling on top. As a result, a franchise that had won 25 games and been inches away from the WNBA Finals in 2012, finished with the worst record in the league and became a punchline in 2013.

 

Charles herself had a dismal season last year. She looked half-interested much of the time (at best), and reluctant to join the scrap under the basket when she had limited help around her. Donovan’s schemes, which seemed to encourage her to play further away from the basket, didn’t help. The raw numbers of 18 points and 10 rebounds per game were pretty impressive in a strange way – Charles was still piling them up even while playing on auto-pilot. The 40% field-goal percentage, for a freaking center, was staggeringly atrocious.

 

Some of her quotes towards the end of last season showed how unhappy she was with the way the year had gone, and hinted at a wish to get out – or to sit out. As always, that’s the primary negotiating tool for any WNBA player remotely near star-level. They make significantly more money overseas, so simply sitting out the WNBA season to rest their bodies before heading back to Europe or Asia is always an option. More often, it’s a threat. Trade me (sometimes ‘trade me to the specific city I want to play in’) or I just won’t play, has become a fairly common refrain around the WNBA.

 

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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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