Storm Week 5: Finding the Silver Linings in a Five-Game Skid

The Storm lost all 3 of their games last week, running their losing streak to 5 and dropping their overall record to 3-9. However, you don’t have to look too hard to see good signs. Awa Fam made the first start of her career on Wednesday and went for 18 points and 6 rebounds against Phoenix, a game that was close and competitive the whole way. In addition, Dominique Malonga returned from her almost month-long stay in concussion protocols on Saturday and we finally got our first few tantalizing minutes of her playing together with Awa. Meanwhile the best sign I see is that the Storm have the #3-ranked defense in the entire league.

The average team in the W is scoring 85 points per game so far this season, but the Storm are allowing only 81.8. Even better, the Storm have held 5 of their last 8 opponents to 80 or less, surrendering just 79.2 points per game on average if you ignore the first 4 games of the season. Of course, the right way to do this analysis is to adjust for pace. Maybe the Storm’s opponents are only scoring less because the Storm are slowing the game down, and not because the Storm D is actually good on a possession-by-possession basis. However, the Storm’s pace of play is right in the middle of the pack: 7 teams are faster and 7 teams are slower. Looking at points allowed per 100 possessions actually moves the Storm defense up from 4th stingiest in the league to 3rd. And honestly, I think this might undersell the Storm’s defensive talent a bit because the Storm have been really bad at rebounding during this stretch. Only the Chicago Sky collect a smaller percentage of available rebounds than the Storm, and enemy offensive rebounds often lead to good shots for the opposition, so if the Storm could end more possessions after just one shot I think things would look even better on that end. With Dom now returning to the lineup, and 4-time All-Defense winner Ezi Magbegor scheduled to be reevaluated in the next few weeks, it seems reasonable to think our rebounding problem might just go away on its own and our defense could become a real strength that we can build upon as a key part of our identity.

Rookie Flau’jae Johnson deserves a sizable chunk of the credit for how good the defense has been. She leads the team in blocks despite being just 5’8”. She’s also tied for the team lead in steals with Jordan Horston, and currently leads the team in rebounds as well. All that effort and success on the defensive end has allowed her to stay on the court even though her offensive game has been quite inefficient so far. Ryan Ruocco even quoted a stat on the broadcast for the Lynx game about how whatever opponent she’s guarding 1 on 1 has an impressively low field goal percentage.

The offensive side of things has been a different story for the Storm, unfortunately. Their 75 points scored per game is the lowest in the league (and they’re still the worst when you look at per 100 numbers). During their current 5-game losing streak they’ve scored 68, 68, 56, 72, and 64. You’re not going to beat anyone with any of those numbers. That said, I think it would be premature to pass judgment on the offense right now – we need to see how things change now that Dom is back. She was averaging 16 points per game before suffering her concussion, by far the best on the team. It’s also worth noting that their only player with a million dollar salary (and their only previous All-Star) – Ezi Magbegor – has yet to make her debut. While she’s known for her defense, she has also scored as many as 14 points a game in previous seasons and her career average is 10. While it may be too soon to pass judgment on what they’re capable of, it is crystal clear that offense is where the team most needs to improve.

Monday: Storm hold Dallas 10 points under their average, but still lose by 23

For me, this game was a microcosm of the season so far. The defense looked good, but the offense couldn’t hit a shot. Dallas had lost every game this season where they were held to 90 or less, but they won this one with 79. Holding Dallas to 36 points in the first half should have felt great. Giving up 9 offensive rebounds for 16 second chance points was painful, sure, but the real pain was that 25 points should be what you have in a quarter, but it was instead what the Storm had at halftime. They followed that with just 12 points in the third quarter and this game was never close.

The game was not without some silver linings: Sonia Raman ran her record up to 5-0 on challenges before finally losing one. (Noelle Quinn was so bad at challenges last year that she stopped even trying them because she hated never having timeouts available.) Also, Flau’jae Johnson had the first double-double of her career as she grabbed 10 rebounds in addition to scoring 16 points. Meanwhile Mackenzie Holmes was +6 in her minutes despite the team getting blown out (and this is on the heels of last week when she was +1 while the team got outscored by 33). And Awa Fam had her best game so far, with her most minutes at 31, her most rebounds at 7, her most steals (by far) at 4, and 8 points was her second highest mark of her short career.

Wednesday: Awa Fam shines, but the Storm drop a close one to Phoenix

Phoenix had lost 6 games in a row coming into this game, and was without a doubt the most disappointing team in the W so far this season. They didn’t have the worst record, but it was close and they did have the same core that made the finals last year, which they brought back with the expectation of making another deep playoff run.

The Storm made exactly the lineup tweak I suggested last week: starting Awa Fam instead of Jade Melbourne while sliding Jordan Horston to the 3 and Flau’jae Johnson to the 2. It was just the 4th appearance of her young career, but Awa made the most of her first start. She led the team in points (18), rebounds (6), and blocks (2) while also chipping in with a couple assists and a steal as well. While she failed to hit a 3 in 4 attempts, she only missed 4 of her 13 2-point attempts for an efficient 53% shooting overall. In short, she looked like she might already be the Storm’s best player. It was just one game, but it was hard not to be optimistic.

As far as the game went, the defense continued to shine, holding Phoenix to 72, but the offense only scored 68. The game was close basically the whole way, and the Storm led by 3 at the end of the 3rd quarter, but getting outrebounded by 10 definitely hurt and the Mercury just made more plays in crunch time. The game was tied with 6 minutes left, but once Phoenix took the lead, they never gave it back, ultimately winning by 4.

Saturday: Storm start strong, but a terrible 3rd quarter led to a blowout loss to the Lynx

Dom is back! After missing 8 games in concussion protocols, Malonga finally returned to the active roster. She only played 14 minutes, and looked a little rusty for many of them (putting up just 7 points and 2 rebounds), but it was great to know she’s ok.

The Storm started this game red-hot from 3-point range. They hit 6 of their first 10 and found themselves with a 12-point 1st-quarter lead against a Minnesota Lynx team that sports the best record in the league. (Interestingly, the Storm have shot 44% from 3-point range in their 3 wins and 27% in their losses.) The Storm hit three more 3s in the second quarter, and 9 is the most they have hit in a half this year, but Minnesota’s offense started to figure some things out in the second quarter. The Storm had no answer for rookie wunderkind Olivia Miles, who kept driving to the rim successfully, and by halftime Minnesota led 45-43.

Traditionally halftime is where the Storm start to fall apart against the Lynx. For years and years of Storm-Lynx battles, Cheryl Reeve went into the locker room after a hard-fought first half and when her team emerged they are just better. I don’t always understand what adjustments Reeve has made, I just know we somehow always start losing in the 3rd quarter. In this game it was on defense where the Lynx improved. Minnesota went on a 10-0 run to start the second half, and the game was never close again. They held the Storm to just 10 points in the quarter while carving up the Storm’s defense for 26 points of their own (and mostly in the paint where Miles seemed to invent a new way to pass the ball to Natasha Howard every trip down the court).

The Storm had 43 points at halftime, but still couldn’t break 70 for the game. It was Minnesota’s 7th win in a row, and 6 of those were by double digits. The two stats that really tell the tale are the paint points (which Minnesota won 50-20!) and turnovers, which Minnesota won 23 to 14. This was a road game against arguably the best team in the league, so we were punching above our weight class just to be in the game at halftime, but those turnovers are starting to become a consistent problem. The Storm attempt a lot of low-percentage passes on offense, often because they’re trying to squeeze the ball into the paint to players who aren’t actually open. It works sometimes, and it’s not hard to see the vision, but the team is going to need more experience and better chemistry to make their offense work.

Hopefully Dom’s return will help stabilize things. I’m actually quite curious to see what Sonia does once she’s ready to put Dom back in the starting lineup. Does she start bringing Awa off the bench and let Stephanie Dolson continue starting? Or do we get to see what happens when Dom and Awa start together? Sonia has insisted that she doesn’t want to put Dom and Awa into a box by assuming what they’re capable of. Rather, she wants to give them lots of chances to show what they can do, similar to the way the San Antonio Spurs let Victor Wembanyama play however he wanted for most of his rookie year just to see what he was capable of. They didn’t really start building an offense (or a defense) around him until after they had all that data.

Player of the Week

I’m tempted to give this to Flau’jae, who led the team with 20 rebounds in addition to being second in points and playing great defense. However, she also led the team in turnovers and needed 38 shots to get 11 to go in. I think it’s correct for the Storm to let her take all these shots, and she does something eye-popping just about every game, but the truth is that she has not been consistent or efficient on offense. Yet. The team is giving her tons of opportunities to pick up all the experience she needs to develop, and I’m not going to worry about her efficiency until next year.

I’m also tempted to give this to Natisha Hiedeman, who led the team in both points and assists, but I think the story of the week is pretty clearly Awa Fam.

Awa brought down 17 rebounds in addition to being one of three Storm players to average double digits in points per game. The 7 assists were great to see, and 6 steals plus 2 blocks attest to the way she has begun contributing immediately on defense as well. The big picture here is that in just her second week of play in the W, and at just 19 years old, Awa already looks comfortable. When she’s open, she shoots. When she sees a ball she can get her hands on, she grabs it. She’s probably ahead of where Dominique Malonga was in her second week last season (though to be fair Dom did not get the chance to play nearly as many minutes as Awa has because the team thought of itself as a contender last year).

Around the W

I like the Commissioner’s Cup. The first month of the W season is often a bit wonky. Not everyone is here yet, and the training camps are short so the first few weeks of games are often disjointed. I like the idea that we’re going to watch a tournament now that can serve as a temperature check. Now that everyone has had enough time to see what’s working and work out the kinks in their plans, where are teams actually at?

The way it works is that everyone in the West plays everyone else in the West exactly once, and the team with the best record goes to the final. The teams in the East do the same thing and send their best team to the final. The schedule makers put things together such that all the regular season games in the first half of June add up to that full round robin, and the way it works in practice is that those games always have a little bit more juice than normal regular season games. In part it’s because there’s extra prize money on the line, but in addition WNBA players are competitors and if you put a title and a trophy on the line, they’re gonna want to win it.

The Storm aren’t going to be winning it this year as they’re already 0-3, but I am quite curious to see who does face off. Minnesota, Dallas, and Vegas are all playing great ball in the West right now. The Dream have probably been the best team in the East so far, but both the Liberty and the Fever probably think they are the best team. We shall see what happens!

Next Week

The Storm play the Aces on the road on Monday, then host the Sparks at Climate Pledge Arena on Wednesday. That game will see Nneka Ogwumike make her return to Seattle after starring here for the last two years. The week then wraps up on Friday with another return as Gabby Williams and the Valkyries come to town.