When I moved to Seattle in 2004, The GF took me to a lot of Storm games. Like all men I was not a fan of the WNBA so I was more than skeptical. But hey, tickets were cheap and I was able to watch sports with her so I figured I would give it a try. After a few games I came away really liking the WNBA because it was everything that NBA wasn't - no isolations, no dunking, no show-boating. The skill level with shooting may not have been there, but the offensive sets that they ran made me feel like I was in a time warp. I loved it so much, I even wrote an article for the old website, Page 86, on my experience.
That year we were in attendance as the Storm won the title. Sue Bird was 23. Lauren Jackson was 22. On the way home, we talked about how they could become a dynasty as they were so young and so talented. Needless to say, we never thought it would take them 6 years to win another one. I loved watching the game on tv last night, but can't help wonder what went wrong. I can't help feel like the team wasted the last 5 years. The league is ten times better than it was in 2004. Winning next year is going to be hard. This should have been their third or fourth title, not just their second.
So what happened? Having both LJ and Bird in their early years should have been good enough, but we found out quickly that for how good they were they needed help. In hindsight, the 2004 team was more than just LJ and Bird - it was the deepest of their teams prior to this year. Having to make some decisions on who to leave unprotected in the expansion draft, the team would go on to overvalue Betty Lennox and instead lost Kamila Vodichkova, Sheri Sam and Tully Bevilaka that offseason. Lennox and new starter Janell Burse both had huge upside but they couldn't replace the leadership lost. And in moving them to starters, they never were able to regain their bench strength until this year.
In the past 5 years my interest in the WNBA has gone down. I quickly found out that really it was only the Storm that I liked. I would not be interested in watching a random Tuesday match-up between San Antonio and Connecticut like I would in the NBA. Sure, I love to watch Candace Parker post people up, block shots and then play point guard for LA. And watching Phoenix is like watching Loyola Maramount in their heyday. The Storm continued to make the playoffs but the first round losses made me lose interest. (for once I was actually acting like a Seattle sports fan!)
This year got me back into it. I probably didn't watch more than 10 games, but every time I was really impressed with this team. The biggest difference with teams of the past was their depth. Finally they had someone (Abrosimova, Wright) who can handle to ball and give Sue a break. Finally they had another scoring option (cash) who would remain healthy all year. Finally they had some frontcourt court depth (Little, Willingham) who could actually score and rebound. And the biggest reason - they FINALLY had a healthy LJ.
The past three years as LJ has been hurt, Sue has tried to do more things. She can score 20 points on any given night, but asking her to do it every night was a losing battle. She is a hundred times better as the floor leader, the distributor. She can hit key shots when needed, not on every possession. The pressure to win and do everything seemed to be getting to her. The Wife and I started wondering if she was somehow overrated. That of course is blasphemous, especially coming from me, but her stats were going down and the team wasn't getting past the first round. Luckily she proved us wrong. She still is the best point guard in the league. Not Lindsey Whalen. Not Becky Hammon. Not Tisha Penichiero. Sue Bird.
At the end of the game, Sue said that she was sick of hearing about the 5 first round losses. She said she could remember every play of every loss because of how much she heard about it. It obviously fueled her and the team - they went 28-6 in the regular season inclusing a 17-0 mark at home. Then in the postseason they went 7-0 to win the title. Teams can't do much better than that. I can only hope that even with this championship she can find something new to light a fire under her ass because it won't be any easier next year.
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