By Bob Phillips
Photos by Bill Harper
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| Brittney Griner led all scorers with 26 points to lead Phoenix to an 88-83 victory over the Sun. |
Here are a few things to ruminate on:
- The Sun, who played the entire season without their best player, Chiney Ogwumike, had no business being in the playoffs to begin with.
- The very fact that they made the postseason can be credited to head coach and general manager Curt Miller, who was named the WNBA’s Executive of the Year it was announced yesterday. Miller was also named the league’s Coach of the Year. Under Miller’s mentorship, the Sun, which got off to a slow start this season ended up in the playoffs for the first time since 2012.
- Also, under Miller’s stewardship, Jonquel Jones, who as a rookie out of George Washington played a limited role with the Sun as a rookie in 2016 (6.8 points and 3.7 rebounds per game in 14.1 minutes per game), transformed herself into a double-double machine this season (15.4 points and 11.9 boards per game). JJ was named the WNBA’s Most Improved Player prior to yesterday’s game.
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| Jonquel Jones, the WNBA's Most Improved Player chipped in with 19 points and 15 boards. JJ averaged a double-double this season. |
Actually, the writing was on the wall headed into the game.
And it wasn’t so subtle, either. While the Sun finished 21-13 in the regular
season, finishing just one game behind the Eastern Conference regular season
champion New York Liberty who ended the season on a 10-0 run, the Sun had lost
their last two regular season games and three of their last four, including a
20-point drubbing in Phoenix nine days earlier. The Mercury, meanwhile, finished
18-16, including a three-game winning streak to end the regular season
(including the aforementioned rout of the Sun).
And while the Sun earned the right to play this one-game
elimination contest at home, they were facing a team that sported two of the
best players in WNBA history—Diana Taurasi, the leading scorer in league
history, and Brittney Griner, the 7-foot wonder with the wingspan of a 747 and an
inside-outside game never before seen in the league—certainly from a player her
size.
Indeed, the Sun and Mercury were like two ships headed in opposite
directions, and on Sunday, the ship heading upward ultimately prevailed.
Griner led all scorers with 26 points, her all-time postseason high-water
mark, and hauled down nine boards. Taurasi added 23.
Alyssa Thomas had
20 points and 10 rebounds for the Sun, while Jonquel Jones put up yet another
Double D with a 19-point and 15-rebound effort for Connecticut. Indeed, Jones
had her double-double secured by halftime (11 points and 12 boards), setting a
franchise playoff record for rebounds in a half. Jasmine Thomas (15 points)
and Courtney Williams (10) also scored in double digits for the Sun.
Phoenix led by
two at the first turn, 27-25, but the Sun came back in the second and went into
the locker room at intermission with a seven-point lead. 50-43. The Mercury
stormed back in the third period, and when Griner hit
from the baseline with 32 seconds remaining in the quarter, the Mercury had
their first lead, 68-66, since the opening minutes of the contest.
The fourth period
was all about who wanted it more, and when the Phoenix bombed in three straight
from beyond the arc (Leilani Mitchell, Taurasi and Monique Currie), it sent a
message to the 8,420 partisan
fans, who were equipped with orange towels given to them when they entered the
arena, but when it came time to use them at the end of the game, sat eerily
quiet. How every single seat wasn’t filled is a mystery. (Seating capacity for
basketball is 9,323, which translates into almost 1,000 empties. One thing’s
for sure: Uncasville ain’t Storrs.
Connecticut, down
by three, 84-81 grabbed an offensive rebound when Shekinna Stricklen was fouled
with 11.4 seconds remaining. It was a classic make the first, miss the second, then
either grab the rebound and put it back up moment, or, if the opponent gets the
rebound, follow immediately. Even if whomever was fouled made both, that would
still give the Sun a chance to tie it with a trey with seven or eight ticks
left. But when Stricklen missed the first, that strategy vanished. And when she
missed the second, so did the Sun’s chances of winning.
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| Former UConn star Diana Taurasi, the leading scorer in WNBA history, chipped in with 23 points. Dee is 11-0 in elimination games over the course of her career. |
As disheartening
as yesterday’s loss may have been, it was a great, great season for this young
team. And with a year’s experience playing together, and the hopeful healthy
return of Ogwumike, the sky could very well be the limit next season.
And talk about disheartening… The Liberty, who, as earlier mentioned, ended the
regular season on a 10-game run, finishing 22-12 and earning the No. 3 seed,
were unceremoniously booted from the postseason by the No. 6 seed, the 18-16
Washington Mystics.
So the top two seeds in the second round—Connecticut and New
York—were booted by two teams that both finished the regular season under .500.
(Minnesota, the No. 1 seed and No. 2 Los Angeles received byes into the
semifinals. In college basketball, this might make sense. In the professional
ranks, it does not. The one-and-done second round needs to be restructured.
For the play-in round, a one-game elimination makes perfect
sense. But In this reporter’s humble opinion (and I’ve watched about 37 billion
basketball games in my life), the second round should be best-of-five, with the
semifinal and final rounds best-of-seven.
But so much for the past. There is much for the Sun and
their fans to look forward to in the future. Miller, for one, is enthusiastic about
the prospect of this team growing and developing.
“I am incredibly excited,” he said. “We had double-doubles
out of both our post players tonight. JJ has only scratched the surface of her
talent and is going to get better.”
He also compared Alyssa Thomas to Candace Parker, the former
Tennessee All-American and current Los Angeles star, calling her “a
facilitating four.” This reporter used to say the same thing about Larry Bird when he worked for the late, great Inside Sports, calling Bird a “point forward.” It’s a matter not so much of being great in and of itself
(as Bird most assuredly was), but rather making everyone you play with a better
player (which he most assuredly did).
“It is just amazing what she [Alyssa Thomas] is capable of doing at the four,”
Miller continued. “When we made a run in the second quarter, and we were playing well, I
looked out there and we had four second-year players on the court. Even though
Rachel [Banham] and Morgan [Tuck] did not get extended time tonight, it just
speaks to [how] we are playing good basketball with that many young players on the
floor.”
In the end, however, it was experience—not youth—that won
the game for Phoenix. Not just Taurasi and Griner, but also Camille Little, Yvonne
Turner and Leilani Mitchell. This, too, will come to the Sun. Yesterday’s game
will prove to be a valuable part of the growing process."
“It’s huge when you have that experience and have gone
through the trenches and don’t get rattled by those things and it’s a learning
experience,” said Taurasi, who is 11-0 in elimination games. “We have all been
through it when we were young, and the end of the game seemed like the biggest
deal in the world. You know, it’s just a game and you can use that calmness to
really help you down the stretch of games and we had our five veterans on the
court and that really helped us.”
So as the Sun go home, the Mercury head to Los Angeles where
they will challenge the No. 2 seeded Sparks. First game in this semi is
tomorrow night. Tip-off is at 10 p.m. (ET) at the Staples Center, and the game
will be televised on ESPN2.
As the Sun mature, yesterday’s loss can play a large part in
that process.
“As we infuse Chiney [Ogwumike] back into our post depth, as
we continue to build for the future, I can’t be more pleased with our core
group that we have coming back,” Miller said.
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