The Storm and America's Largest Corporation Conspire to Ruin My Night, BOTH OF THEM FAIL!
Our favorite team attempts to throw game into the toilet, misses toilet but makes basket and as always AMAZON SUUUUUCCCCKKKKSSSSSSS!
Thank you Jewell Loyd for rescuing this team from what would have been a real stinker of a loss to the Dallas Wings! The Storm really crapped all over the court through the final stretches of regulation last night, an offense that was swiss watch efficient through three and a half quarters turned thrift store watch that you even replaced the battery in but somehow it still loses 5 minutes every hour garbaggio at the end of the fourth. Empty possessions, quick shots, offensive sets that had no second option after initial action was foiled, all of it saw a lead that was as high as 10 shrink down into nothing and send the game to an extra period. Luckily, the Storm have maybe two of the top 7 offensive players in the WNBA right now and their brilliance can (and did!) overcome that kind of performance.
IT WASN’T ALL BAD THOUGH! Through much of the game the Storm looked like the unstoppable death machine that can score from every spot on the court. The passing was particularly lethal at moments, bamboozling the Wings with passed pinging around the court finding wide open looks either at the basket or behind the arc. The defense was also good in fits and starts, I can only heap so much praise when the Wings scored 20 points or more every quarter, but the Storm got their hands on the ball repeatedly.
This was a game where the Storm did just enough to escape with a win and I, for one, am glad that they won’t have to face the Wings again, barring the playoffs, after Sunday’s match up.
Brain Drizzles
STEPHANIE TALBOT! DANG! Were it not for Jewell Loyd’s buzzer beater, the story of the game would be the Aussie’s 21 points on 17 shots. Everything she tossed up seemed to go in which was important becaaaaauuuuussseeeee
Katie Lou Samuelson returned to the team and left her shooting somewhere on the court wherever that god forsaken 3 on 3 tournament was. I’m sure she’ll round back into form but, yikes, it was a bad night for her. Honestly, it wasn’t a good night for any former UConn Huskies from beyond the arc, with Sue and Stewie combining with Katie Lou to go 2-14 from three point range, somebody get some water from Storrs or something STAT!
The bench group looked better tonight, Katie Lou’s abysmal game notwithstanding. Ezi Magbegor looked much more fluid on the court and Jordin Canada contributed defensively, they were a minus overall (if you go by the dreaded +/- stat) but they don’t have to be amazing, they just have to hold the line while the big three get their rest. Epiphanny Prince, however, was not at her best and had a particularly gruesome moment when she lost the ball while looking to the ref for a call, that call was egregiously blown by the officials, but you have to keep your head up nonetheless.
The Storm went to the line a whopping 29(!) times this game. The third quarter almost stopped every possession to put another player in green at the charity stripe. I think that tightly called third had some detrimental knock on effects for the rest of the game when the refs seemed to loosen things up in the fourth. The Storm spent fair amounts of that final quarter of regulation looking for calls that had suddenly disappeared as the game got tight. This definitely contributed to some of those ugly late game possessions.
I attempted to watch the game on my actually very inexpensive Team Pass streaming service that I purchased from the WNBA, which up until now (spoiler alert!) has been great, but when the game started and I tried to turn it on I got a pretty standard issue blackout notice. This was odd because the game was not broadcast on my local television and was not on any of the national networks which seemed to be the only conditions for a streaming blackout.
After a somewhat stern email sent to a customer service rep over at league pass I was informed that games streamed on Amazon Prime were also subject to this blackout. Now my own problems with Amazon aside (and I have soooooo many! Basically if you’re an able bodied human who lives in a major city and chooses to use Amazon, you pretty much care more about getting $1 off a pair of underwear than you do about the working conditions of another human being and that sucks real bad my buddies! There is more nuance to my position obviously, but this isn’t Cloud Somethings: The Substack About Why I Don’t Use Amazon. Stay tuned for that when I decide I want to send out an even more boring newsletter) THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT THAT I HAVE NO RECOURSE FOR! IF I had known about this seemingly out of thin air restriction before the season, then perhaps I would not have purchased the team pass to begin with! Usually when there are games that I cannot watch on TV I just, um let’s say, “go to a friend’s house”. Though there are many hassles with “going to a friend’s house”, like I think my “friend’s house” might have a few too many advertisements for games that are supposed to make me horny and maybe I think that every time I “go to my friend’s house” I might be infecting my computer with a virus, generally “going to a friend’s house” has worked for me for years of watching sporting events. I wanted to show some monetary support for the WNBA and it sucks to be met with this. A funny aside though, my “friend’s house” stream was lagging a little behind the regular broadcast so I got an alert about the final before I saw the actual shot which was a little sad but also a little bit of a relief.
The Wings are fucking good! They took the Storm to the limit and that’s with almost nothing from the first two picks in this last draft! They are going to be scary as hell next year, they’re pretty damn scary this year too.
That’s it folks! See you after the Storm thankfully play their last game in the regular season against the Wings!