Storm Cannot Overcome a Very Bad First Half and the Force of Nature That is Tina Charles, Lose
They Probably Would've Dealt with One Okay But They Were Doomed
It was bound to happen eventually, the Storm’s slow starts in games and overall shortcomings had them walking the tightrope against teams with dominant players. While the song Tightrope is hella fun and cool this style of basketball play is decidedly not. Having done the reaping part of the famous tweet, this game it was time to do some unfortunate sowing AND OH BOY DID THEY SOW THIS ONE. They lost, they deserved to lose, and hopefully they will learn from this narrow defeat to the Mystics (the score was 87-83 if you’re into that sort of thing).
If you were wondering the exact moment that the Storm front office regretted trading Natasha Howard it was probably around 2:41 left in the second quarter after a sequence where Tina Charles got an offensive rebound and turned it into a three point play, hit a hook shot, and then assisted on a three that put the Storm down 15. Other than the second game of the season against the Aces, who I think will probably wreck the Storm on Sunday when they meet again, our pals have been able to mask their interior defensive inefficiencies with quick hands and timely traps. Last night though a million quick hands and traps that used an actual time machine would’ve been no match for Tina Charles. When she wasn’t hitting every shot she took she was pulling Storm defenders towards, her rotating the ball, and giving her teammates just an unholy amount of open threes (16!). Charles’ presence also completely scrambled the Storms rotations, made their pick and roll defense shambolic at best, and led to multiple second chance points for the Mystics. Without a player like Howard, someone who can take the other team’s big one on one and then pull that big out to the three point line on offense, the Storm can look pretty fudged up!
Even with all that the Storm had a chance to win, they were down two with the ball in their best player’s hands, and she got a look she converts most of the time. Still though, if the Storm want to get back to championship form they need to clean up their mistakes on defense (and some of the ones on offense too). I think we can say with some certainty that this Storm team is not the world destroyer of the last two title runs, the question now is what kind of team they’re going to be, and I think they’re still figuring that out.
Brain Drizzles
There were some positives from this game! Both Jordin Canada and Candice Dupree showed a bit more life than they have recently. Canada made more of her quick drives to the rim and when she does that she’s a solid contributor to the team rather than just a human being who happens to be on the floor while wearing a basketball uniform. Dupree crawled out of fully cooked-dom into somewhere around the mildly sauteed zone to score 10, while her defensive rotations were not great if she can carve out a spot as secondary scorer from the post who can hit the occasional mid range shot then her signing will not have been a total disaster.
This is pure uneducated not knowing what practice is like speculation but I think running a little more Epiphanny Prince/Ezi Magbegor (who shockingly only played 7 minutes last night) pick and rolls might unlock something for the bench group. They’re both excellent going downhill and have shown some touch around the rim. Haven’t seen a lot of that action from the Storm yet but it’s something to monitor.
Sue Bird 3000 assist watch: 2979
THAT’S IT FOR NOW! See you after the Sunday’s matchup against the dreaded Las Vegas Aces!