Storm Week 6: The Art of the Ethical Tank

The Storm may have lost all three of their games again this week (running their losing streak to 8 and dropping their record to 3-12), BUT. But. They looked a lot better this week than last week. Their offense in particular has made major strides since moving Awa Fam into the starting lineup and getting Dominique Malonga back from concussion protocols. They look like a functional basketball team now and all three losses were highly competitive, with two of them coming down to the last 10 seconds.

Monday: Storm make Aces work for it in Las Vegas, lose 101-91

A’ja Wilson is the best basketball player in the league and would likely be a unanimous MVP if the season were ending right now. She went for 34 points, 12 rebounds, and 9 assists against the Storm and Vegas needed pretty much all of it. The Storm led after the first quarter thanks to a hot start from Dom (12 points on 5 of 6 shooting), and Dom seemed to be actively targeting A’ja, perhaps remembering the success she had in that matchup in last season’s playoffs. Unfortunately, Dom’s concussion recovery meant she couldn’t really exercise and she freely admitted to being out of shape. The Storm have been steadily ramping her minutes up but in this game she only got to play 17. They were great minutes as she wound up with 19 & 5 and a ludicrous +8 in a game the Storm lost by 10.

The Storm hadn’t scored more than 72 points since May 24th, but wound up with 91 in this game (and had it within 6 in the middle of the 4th). A career-high 7 assists from Flau’jae Johnson helped, and even more importantly she did it with zero turnovers. The team as a whole turned it over just 9 times and 8 different players combined to hit 12 of 27 3-pointers (including all 4 of their bigs: Dom, Awa, Steph and Mack each had one). They were hurt by a 39-27 rebound deficit, but the big picture here is that they played well enough to beat a lot of teams. Just not Vegas.

Wednesday: Storm miss game-tying 3-pointer with 6 seconds left, fall 88-83 to LA

The Storm led for 37% of this game, and by as many as 9. It was close basically the whole way, but LA’s vets just made more plays down the stretch, especially Nneka Ogwumike (who was making her return to Seattle after starring here for the last two seasons). As further evidence that the Storm’s offense is starting to hum a bit I would point to their 26 assists on 30 made field goals in this game. Flau’jae was once again a big part of that, with 6 of those assists and no turnovers. 13 assists and 0 turnovers in a 2-game stretch hasn’t been done by a rookie in 25 years, but that’s exactly what Flau’jae did. She also had her second double-double of the season with 14 points and 12 rebounds. That’s twice as many double-doubles as all other rookies put together!

Dom continued to look good as her minutes ramped up to 24, and Awa looked good with a 12-6-4-2 line. She’s actually second in points and second in rebounds among rookies if you only look at the games since she started playing. Bench minutes are what ultimately cost Seattle this game. The starters were +3, -1, +5, +0, and +10 (that last one was Natisha Hiedeman, who scored in double figures for the 6th time in a row, which is the longest such stretch in her career). However, bench players were -10, -5, -13, -5, and -9.

Jordan Horston had a good game as well, and is a big part of the identity that this Storm team is starting to develop. The team wants to play defense, create stops (whether via turnovers or rebounds), and run — all of which are exactly what Jordan excels at. Last game, against Vegas, Jordan held Kelsey Plum to 18 points (7 below her average) and Kelsey’s inefficient 6 for 17 to get those points is a real credit to Jordan. Against Vegas, Jordan was similarly effective against Jackie Young, though Young got loose in the 4th quarter when Coach Raman didn’t play Jordan, electing to go with a better offensive player instead since the Storm were behind.

Jeff Brown from Storm Chasers said it best: “Losing competitive, close games this season is literally the best-case scenario for the long-term success of the franchise.”

Friday: Spirited comeback falls just short versus Valkyries 76-72

For the second game in a row, Natisha Hiedeman attempted a 3-pointer in the last 10 seconds of a game that would have tied things up, but the shot didn’t go down. T has been the team’s best and most consistent player, going for a career-high 26 in this one. Coach Raman wants the ball in her hands at the end of the game and you can see why, even if Kiah Stokes was able to block her shot this time around. The big picture, of course, is that this was another close, competitive game and it was also another one against a good team as well (the Valks would be the #7 seed in the playoffs if the season ended right now).

Player of the Week

The first 2-time winner of my Player of the Week award is, fittingly, Natisha Hiedeman. She’s been the Storm’s best player so far this season, leading the team in points, assists, and assist-to-turnover ratio while also chipping in the second most steals. She’s also leading the team in 3-pointers, with twice as many as 2nd place Flau’jae Johnson while hitting 37% of them. This week was perhaps T’s best, with 59 points across the 3 games, as well as 15 assists, 10 rebounds, 6 steals, and a block. Maybe (hopefully) Dom will stake her own claim to being the team’s best player as the season progresses, but right now it’s T.

Roster Update

On Monday of last week, the Storm waived Lexie Brown. She was on a protected contract, but the Storm are far enough under the salary cap that they could afford to just give her the entire year’s salary and move on, opening up the roster spot for a player who fits better with the Storm’s rebuild (and they still have cap room for potential future moves).

I thought trading for Lexie Brown was a perfectly reasonable gamble to take a year and a half ago, when the Storm sent a pair of second round picks to Los Angeles for her. The Storm needed shooting and if she could return to the form she demonstrated before she started missing time due to Crohn’s Disease, she was exactly the kind of veteran 3 & D player last year’s Storm needed to flesh out their roster.

However, at 31 years old she was always an awkward fit with this year’s team. I was a little bit surprised she made the team out of training camp, but not very surprised as the Storm front office has always bent over backwards to try to do right by their players. They gave her a bunch of playing time early in the season, perhaps so she’d have a chance to resurrect her career, perhaps as a bit of a trade showcase. She had one very good game — catching fire and leading us to a win over Connecticut where she hit 3’s on 4 consecutive possessions, but that was her only good game. Throw out that game and she averaged just 2.1 points in her other 9, with just one assist per game.

Lexie had been away from the team (for reasons that were never announced publicly) for two games when she was waived. Her playing time had dropped to zero once Katie Lou Samuelson started playing anyway so it seemed like the writing was on the wall. She might have asked to be waived so she could try to hook on with another team, or maybe the Storm just felt the situation had run its course.

The day after opening up this roster spot, the Storm promoted Taylor Thierry into it from their developmental roster. You may recall that Taylor is a 2nd-year player who failed to make the Atlanta Dream roster this year, and the Storm signed her to a dev team spot 6 days into the season. Apparently they liked what they saw because now she’s on the full roster. It’s possible some other team wanted to sign Taylor to a full contract and the Storm needed to do this in order to keep her (if so this might also explain why they chose now to waive Lexie). Or it could just be that they wanted to be able to give her more playing time (development roster players can only be active for 12 total games per season). Meanwhile, this move means the Storm have an open spot on their development team. They have not filled it yet.

The other big thing going on with the Storm roster is that Ezi Magbegor is progressing well in her rehab from an off-season foot injury, and has begun doing work on the court. At a recent media availability, Sonia was asked directly about playing her at the same time as Dom and Awa and more or less dodged the question, admitting it gave her and her coaches the opportunity to do some creative things, but giving no indication what those might be or if they actually would. Which I guess is fine … there’s no reason she should tip her hand now. I think one of their biggest goals for this season should be exploring those possibilities and I am happy to hear they will (and maybe even soon). All 3 bigs are under contract for not just next season but also the one after that.

Tank Rooting Update

While the Storm seem to be trying their best to win games, as they should in my opinion, this roster was not built to make the playoffs this year. The Storm lost all 5 of their leading scorers from last year in free agency, and replaced them with a combination of rookies and a couple of mid-level vets who can keep things mostly functional. It’s too soon to say whether this is going to be a 1-year rebuild or a 2-year rebuild (ultimately that will probably come down to what sort of talent the Storm can add this off-season), but it is safe to say each of the next two rookie classes are exciting so if you have to lose some games, now is a pretty good time to lose them.

The way I see it, GM Talisa Rhea put together a roster that can tank ethically. The team can focus on developing the young talent it already has, and it has quite a lot for a team just starting to rebuild. It can implement and iterate on new schemes on both offense and defense, and it’s going to wind up with a decent draft pick even while they succeed in refreshing the team’s culture.

Of course, none of that is going to stop me from refreshing Tankathon and keeping an eye on the other teams that are likely to be in the lottery. Here’s a quick guide for what we Storm fans should be rooting for, sorted into a few key categories:

The reason we won’t have the best odds at the #1 pick:

Connecticut Sun — Connecticut is the only team with a worse record than us this season, and they were 12 games worse than us last season as well. The WNBA uses 2-year cumulative records to determine lottery odds and there’s basically no way we’re going to wind up 12 games worse than the Sun this season.

Would love to see these teams get their stuff together and make a run at the playoffs:

Chicago Sky — Since Chicago was tied for the worst record last year, we need them to make a run at the playoffs if we’re going to finish below them in the 2-year standings. We might not need them to make the playoffs, but we probably need them to come close. Since they don’t control their own pick I do think they will try. The Sky made multiple win-now moves in the offseason, and started 3-1, but things have gone very badly since Rickea Jackson tore her ACL. When Skylar Diggins crashes out, she can take a whole team or a whole season down with her. She already called out the team’s “loser mentality” publicly. Maybe it’s a calculated attempt to light a fire under her team, but with losses in 8 of their last 9 games things do not look good.

Washington Mystics — The Mystics are the youngest team in the W, but two of those youngsters made the All-Star game last year so some consider them a dark horse playoff team. They lost 7 games more than the Storm last year so that would be great for us.

Wait, the expansion teams are both good?!

Portland Fire — The Fire are currently 7-8. They didn’t play last season so their 2-year winning percentage just is their current .467 winning percentage. Our 3-12 mark this year when combined with last year’s 23-21 gives us .441 and has us below the Fire. If the Fire continue to be surprisingly good, that has a decent chance of holding. Their win over Dallas on Saturday supports this theory. And as much as I would prefer the Storm to end their current losing streak, I won’t be that sad if Portland beats us on Wednesday.

Toronto Tempo — Toronto’s 7-7 record would have them just on the wrong side of the playoff bubble if the season ended today. Thanks to a couple of big free agent signings, I think they’ve got a good chance to stay within sight of .500 all year, which is all we’ll need to finish well below them.

Just don’t fall apart and we’re fine:

Los Angeles Sparks — The Sparks were 2 games worse than us last year, so in theory they could play their way below us. However, in practice I think the Sparks will make the playoffs and even if things go badly for them, they’ll be in close enough contention for long enough to finish well above us.

Dallas Wings — Dallas had the worst record last year and the #1 pick in the most recent draft, but they’re done rebuilding. They’re currently 8-5 and look quite good. While their 2-year record is currently 8 games worse than ours, none of that matters if they make the playoffs. Only the non-playoff teams are in the lottery.

So there you have it: we want the Sky, Mystics, Fire, and Tempo to win as many games as possible (with a side order of Wings and Sparks). Those first four are probably the teams we’ll be battling with for the 2nd best through 6th best odds at winning the #1 pick. It feels to me like we’re going to wind up 3rd or 4th, but with one of the two worst records this year so if we continue our rebuild into next season we’d be well positioned for the Sarah Strong lottery.

Next Week

The Storm renew the “I-5 Rivalry” on Wednesday, driving south to take on Portland for the first time since 2002. Then on Saturday the Storm play at Phoenix. Both games look winnable, though the Storm will likely be considered underdogs in them both.