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WNBA Western Conference Semifinal: Sparks Push Storm to Brink of Elimination With 70-63 Game One Win
By Lee Michaelson
Publisher
Photo Caption: Tina Thompson took a step closer to an unprecedented fifth WNBA Championship ring, leading the Los Angeles Sparks to a 70-63 Round 1 Western Conference semifinals win over the Seattle Storm, who are without star Lauren Jackson for the series.
Photo Credit: Full Court/Lee Michaelson
Sparks owner Kathy Goodman sported an ear-to-ear grin as she stood outside her team’s locker room last night, congratulating each player on their performance as they left. “This was the ‘must-win’ game of our season,” she stated. “And they did it. They won.”
That they did, 70-63. But even L.A. Coach Michael Cooper admitted to being “concerned” about the narrow seven-point margin of victory in a game which many thought would be a blow-out, played as it was on the Sparks’ home court and with Seattle missing both two-time league MVP Lauren Jackson and reserve sharpshooter Katie Gearlds.
It looked like it would be exactly that—a walk-over—as the Sparks took a 22-6 lead in the opening quarter, while holding the Storm to just 11 percent shooting from the field and forcing seven Seattle turnovers. Seattle did not manage a single field-goal in the first period. Indeed, it was not until more than 12 minutes had elapsed from the clock, at 7:55 in the second quarter, that the Storm finally netted one from the field, when reserve center Suzy Batkovic-Brown sank one from downtown.
But that shot finally got Seattle’s feet under them and the Storm outscored the Sparks 22-12 in the second period and split the final two quarters almost evenly, as Swin Cash and Batkovic-Brown combined to prove that Seattle is not just Lauren Jackson.
Still, it is the Storm who will be limping back into Key Arena Friday, hoping the home-court advantage they earned over the regular season and the remnants of a badly battered roster will be able to keep their season alive for at least one more game.
Sparks Coach Michael Cooper called it “a very raggedy type of game,” and that about sums it up on both sides. “On our behalf,” Cooper added, “we didn’t do a lot of things well but we fought our way through it. There were a few little playoff jitters but we were able to get the win. Seattle was a little short-handed but they brought it all.”
“Jitters?” we asked well-seasoned playoff veterans as they stepped to the mic after the game. “No,” said Thompson, smiling. “Not for me. Atl least I didn’t see any.”
But Leslie confessed to a few of her own.
The one thing Seattle managed to do well in the early going was to control the Sparks’ star, whom they held to a single field goal (on six attempts) plus three from the charity stripe throughout the entire first half. Leslie scored from the field just once more in each of the two final quarters, but was more effective in the second half in getting herself to the line, which where she scored eight of her 14 points for the evening.
Upbeat and witty in the post-game press conference, Leslie dispensed with the usual PR spin. “I think I just sucked in the first half, to be honest,” she said with uncharacteristic bluntness in response to this reporter’s question on what accounted for her marked improvement in scoring, if not in shooting accuracy, in the game’s second half. “I’m not saying they didn’t play good defense, but I think I was just playing really soft, not finishing my shots inside, and missing chippies. It was ridiculous. For me, I tried to regroup myself in the second half. You need to get more aggressive, get down on the block, and quit settling for jump shots. They weren’t really double-teaming me that hard, so I felt I could get to the basket so I felt I could do that and get to the free throw line.”
She credited teammate Marie Ferdinand-Harris, who watched the game from the sidelines, with helping her adjust her mindset. “Marie Ferdinand-Harris came up to me at halftime and said, ‘You know, Lisa, you didn’t shoot the ball that well in the first half, but that’s okay. Try to get to the free throw line.’ When she told me that, I said, ‘Okay.’ That was my goal in the second half. Thanks, Marie!”
| Photo Caption: The Seattle defense did a good job of containing Lisa Leslie, who struggled to find her shot in the first half. She finished with 14 points, but got more than half of them at the charity stripe. |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Candace Parker was also tentative in the early going, taking only one shot from the field, which she missed, in the entire first half. She managed six points, all of them from the line in the opening half. She got more looks in the third period, going one for four from the field, and fared much better in the final stanza, going two for three from the field, including her sole three-pointer of the evening, to finish with 13 points, plus 10 boards, for her seventh consecutive double-double.
As a team L.A. made nine more trips to the line (30) than did Seattle (21), and the fouls cost Seattle, with its decimated bench, more dearly. But though they judiciously kept their mouths shut on the subject after the game, thereby avoiding being fined, neither team was happy with the way the game was called. Agler could be heard on open mic telling his players that they had to “quit bitching” about the officiating and get out there and execute. But he later picked up a technical after reacting too vocally to a questioned call. However, while the whistles were overactive in several cases, the Sparks too found themselves on the wrong end of several dubious foul calls. Two in particular—an offensive foul called on Tina Thompson with about six minutes remaining in the final quarter (that looked a whole lot more like a blocking foul by Seattle’s Janel Burse, who fouled out herself a few minutes later) and two in which Betty Lennox was blown for fouls when she appeared to be on the receiving end of Seattle contact, stand out as particularly egregious. In the end, however, the officiating was probably equally bad in both directions and made little difference to the outcome, which may be all you can ask of the refs in this physical league.
 | Photo Caption: Neither team was happy with the officiating, with Seattle Coach Brian Agler picking up a technical when he became too vocal in his complaints about the calls. Top left: L.A.‘s Betty Lennox (like most in the arena) was flabbergasted when this bit of contact with Suzy Batkovic-Brown late in the third quarter was called as a foul not on Batkovic-Brown, but on Lennox. Both players were pursuing a loose ball, and Lennox dove to the floor getting there first. Batkovic-Brown, evidently unable to alter course in time, ran into the prone Lennox and landed on top of her. Go figure! Below left: Sometimes you’ve just gotta laugh if you don’t wanna cry. Tina Thompson laughs off yet another dubious call in which she was whistled for an offensive foul as she battled Seattle’s Janel Burse for position. Most observors (including Sparks Coach Michael Cooper, thought Burse had initiated the contact and let the refs know about it. Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
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Instead, it was the unlikely tandem of DeLisha Milton-Jones and Australian point guard Kristi Harrower who carried most of the water for the Sparks in the early going. Each of them had seven points on three-for-four field-goal shooting in the opening half, with Milton-Jones also pulling down a team-high five boards.
Tina Thompson also came alive in the second half to finish with a team-leading 16 points to round out an evening of evenly balanced (if not particularly accurate—35.7 percent from the field for the Sparks as a team) shooting by L.A. Indeed, Thompson’s trey at the 7:23 mark of the third period cut short a 14-5 Seattle run in that quarter that had whittled down a 15-point L.A. lead to just five points. The shot swung the game’s momentum back to the Sparks’ favor, and it was Thompson’s one-footer three minutes later, book-ending a Lisa Leslie layup and a Lennox jumper and pair of made free throws that ratcheted the Sparks’ lead back up to 12-points.
The Storm would again threaten, narrowing the L.A. lead to just three points on three separate occasions in the late third and early fourth quarters. But Seattle was never able to completely close the gap.
On the Storm’s end of the floor it was the Swin Cash show. After getting off to a slow start with just two points in the first period, Cash took over for the Storm, leading all scorers with 24 points on seven-for-14 field-goal, and two-for-five three-point, shooting. Tanisha Wright joined in with 13 points, plus five boards and five assists.
 | Photo Caption: Swin Cash came up big with a game-high 24 points for Seattle. Los Angeles will have to find a way to stop her without allowing Sue Bird or Tanisha Wright to go off. For her part, Cash knows she will have to pick up her rebounding (she hauled down just one board on Wednesday) if her team is to continue its quest for another WNBA Championship. |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
But it was reserve center Suzy Batkovic-Brown who stepped up huge in the absence of her Australian Opals teammate Jackson, who is out, according to Coach Brian Agler, for at least the remainder of this playoff series with two stress fractures in her L5 vertebra. Batkovic-Brown, who averaged just 7.4 minutes and 2.4 points per game over the course of the regular season, played 30:31 minutes and knocked down 16 points in Wednesday night’s contest. The Aussie was everywhere, driving the lane on one possession and striking from long the next. She just 75 percent from the field, netting six of her eight field-goal attempts. But perhaps most impressive, Batkovic-Brown, usually a 27.3 percent long-ball shooter, hit three of her four attempts from three-point range. It would be nice to say that she forced the Sparks’ defense to spread the floor, but frankly, L.A. never adjusted.
| Photo Caption: Suzy Batkovic-Brown, who typically averages just 2.4 points multiplied that output exponentially with 16 points on Wednesday, knocking them down both in the paint and from long. The reserve center’s efforts almost, but not quite, filled the void created by the absence of teammate Lauren Jackson. Can she do it again on Friday? |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
On the down side for Seattle, Sue Bird, usually the Storm’s go-to player aside from Jackson, has struggled with her own injuries—namely, what was initially described as a “sore neck” but on further examination proved to be a bulging disk in her cervical spine that forced her to miss the last three games of the regular season. It’s an injury that will have to be attended to in the longer term, but Bird is expected to be able to participate through the playoffs. However, she never seemed to get into the flow of Wednesday night’s game. Agler could be heard exhorting her to take the “shot on goal,” and shoot she did, nine times from the field, but connected on only one of those attempts (and none of her three attempts from long). Worse, the league’s assist leader with 5.77 assists per game, was held “dishless,” for the entire first half. She came alive, in that area at least, in the latter half to hand out five assists for the game.
Though Agler had some spirited exchanges with Bird and sat her for a stretch in the early going, he was more gracious in describing the situation post-game. “I think Sue’s healthy,” Agler stated, “but she hasn’t played for two weeks. It’s all about getting back in that rhythm. I felt like she didn’t feel comfortable with her shot, she passed some up. That’s usually a good sign, but she’s our best shooter, so she’s got to take those shots.”
Thank heavens passed up some shots, because at 1-for-nine, Seattle could not have sustained much more of Bird’s shooting.
| Photo Caption: Whether due to injury (a bulging disk in her neck caused her to miss the last three games of the regular season), rustiness caused by the time off, the harrowing defense L.A. threw at her, or—more likely—a combination of the three, Sue Bird had a dreadful outing in Game 1, missing all but one of her nine shot attempts from the field. She finished with just four points, and five assists (against two turnovers), most of them in the second half, and her normal focus and energy seemed to be missing. She will have to do more Friday night in Seattle if her team’s season is to survive. |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
Agler was pragmatic about his team’s play in the absence of Jackson and Gearlds (the latter of whom may be able to participate when the series moves to Seattle Friday, while Jackson is gone for the series, if not for the entirety of the playoffs—assuming those two events have different end dates). “Well, we’re not at full strength,” he said, “especially without having Lauren. But we played the hand that we were dealt. We were like this a year ago – we’ve played a lot of games in the last two years without her. We have the ability to play well without her, but tonight was not one of those nights.”
Agler is said to have repudiated Jackson’s pleas to be allowed to play despite her injuries, and if that’s the case, we applaud him for it, as a coach who is more concerned with the welfare of his players than with tonight’s box score.
“I don’t know how long, it’s going to be a period of time though if she wants to do it the right way which I think she does,” Agler said of Jackson’s prognosis. “It’s going to take time. It’s going to be more than days, probably multiple weeks. She’s been out now for more than three weeks, so she’s made some improvement but it’s going to take some time.”
| Photo Caption: Two-time WNBA MVP Lauren Jackson was forced to watch from the sidelines once again as the Los Angeles Sparks took the Seattle Storm down to defeat in a playoff game. Will the Storm be able to break their first-round playoff curse without her? |  |
| Photo Credit: Full Court Press/Lee Michaelson |
The Sparks are taking nothing for granted, however. Cooper was not taking it on faith that Jackson will be out for Game Two, and said he plans to prepare his team as if Jackson and Gearlds were going to play. And Leslie pointed out that in a way, the Storm could be even more “dangerous” without Jackson than with her. It wasn’t a dig—her point was that with Bird and Jackson together on the floor, you could pretty well tell what plays to expect, where as with a star of Jackson’s stature out, other players would rise to the challenge, especially in an emotionally charged situation like the playoffs. “You never know where it is going to be coming from,” in that situation, said Leslie.
Both teams said the planned to step up their rebounding in Game Two. While L.A. won the battle of the boards, by a 37-25 margin, Thompson underscored the importance of aggressiveness on the glass and getting second and third chances: ““That’s what we try to do all the time. We start a big line up averaging 6’2” or 6’3”. We definitely wanted to take advantage of offensive rebounds especially against a smaller team. Of course we always want to make the first shot but just in case we want to get the rebound.”
And Seattle knows that to survive in this series, they have got to do a better job on the boards. Despite her game-high 24 points, Cash took that burden on herself. ““I thought I was okay,” she said, but added, “I was embarrassed that I only got one rebound on the stat sheet. I don’t remember the last time that happened. I think they out rebounded us by 12 on the stat sheet. That is something I need to focus on for the next game. I stayed aggressive and shots were falling from the outside. I really tried to get to the free throw line.”
And though L.A. did an excellent job in containing Bird, Cooper recognized that his team had to find an answer for Cash (and though he didn’t mention it, he should be aware that they need to get a hand in the face of Batkovic-Brown as well).
“Our defense was good,” said Cooper. “We were doing some different things on Sue Bird. We knew her and Wright were the ones they would go to, so we had to key in on them. ... I thought we did a good job of rebounding against this team, but I thought our defense had a lot to do with that. But in the second half, they had it going, especially Swin Cash. We have to do a better job on her down there.“
Of course it’s hard to lock down everybody, and to shut down Cash, L.A. may have to loosen up a bit on Bird. Both teams will have to step it up a notch tomorrow in Seattle. Look for Bird, a tough competitor, to do better—a lot better—than 0 percent from the field in front of the home crowd at Key Arena. She’ll have to, if her team is not to head off on an early vacation courtesy of Los Angeles once again.
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