It All Comes Down to This
More than 40 games between the regular season, the preseason and the playoffs and countless more practices all come down to this: One game, 40 minutes, Tuesday night at KeyArena, where one of the Sacramento Monarchs and the Seattle Storm will advance to the WNBA Finals and one will go home.
 Bird had surgery on her broken nose Monday morning. Jeff Reinking/NBAE/Getty |
"We've got to clean things up and this point, and I don't feel like we have to make major adjustments anywhere," said Storm Coach Anne Donovan. "We needed a sideline out-of-bounds play, because getting the ball inbounds seems to be a little bit of an issue for us. That's the biggest adjustment we had coming into today's practice.
"Offensively, we keep showing them video and reminding them when we have spacing, good things happen. We get the right shots, we shoot good percentage because we're shooting good shots. It's more reminders than it is major adjustments."
"We cannot, with our team, beat this team without supreme effort," Whisenant said. "Our game is built around intensity and alertness. You can't just play hard. You've got to be smart and alert when you play hard. There were times last night when we played hard, but we weren't alert. We let the crowd and the fact that we were down affect us."
The media, this site included, has been throwing around the term "largest game in franchise history" to describe Game 3. While Donovan has been here only for the last two years, she agreed.
"To date, it sure is," Donovan said. "We're going for the Western Conference crown, which is pretty amazing stuff for this basketball team that is still so young and great strides over what we accomplished last year."
That's not an unfamiliar situation for the Monarchs, playing a Game 3 on the road for the fourth time the last two playoffs alone. The Storm has never done so in franchise history, though several players - Adia Barnes, Janell Burse, Betty Lennox and Sheri Sam - have Game 3 experience.
"I think it's factored in to Sacramento making runs," Donovan said of the experience mismatch. "They've been in Game 3 before, they won on the road in L.A., so they definitely have experience in the same situation in the first round. But I have to think we're the better team."
If the pressure of the situation is getting to the Storm, it wasn't apparent during practice, held at KeyArena, as players kidded around while shooting free throws to end the session and several stuck around to play a quick 3-on-3 game afterwards. When the ball goes up tomorrow night, however, it will be all business.
Absent from the Storm's practice was guard Sue Bird, who had closed reduction surgery on her broken nose early this morning. Bird was resting comfortably at home during the practice. Officially, Bird is a game-time decision Tuesday, but the Storm continues to talk as if Bird will be in the lineup. The decision will be Bird's, as doctors have cleared her to play if she is comfortable doing so, and Bird is expected to show the same determination she has since the nose was broken last Monday and play through the pain.
"So far, so good," Donovan said.
A key player in Game 3 will be Monarchs forward Tangela Smith, who went from a team-high 24 points in Game 1 to just eight on 3-for-10 shooting yesterday. Smith did something similar in the first round; while she scored 15 points in Sacramento's Game 2 loss, she shot just 6-for-18 from the field. Both coaches attributed most of Smith's off night to Lauren Jackson's defensive effort.
"Lauren was really focused on her," Donovan said. "That first game, we helped off of her when we shouldn't have, gave her outside possessions. Then, in the post, I don't think Lauren battled her hard enough to keep low-post position."
"They just bumped her, were more aggressive," said Whisenant. "Tangela, when they neglect her, will score. But if they spend a lot of time on her, we have other people who can score."
Either the Monarchs or the Storm sits 40 minutes of basketball from the WNBA Finals. But only one of those teams will have the advantage of a raucous KeyArena crowd on their side. Playing Game 3 at home is what the Storm played all season to be able to do.
"It's huge," Donovan said. "Game 3 really comes into play now. Sometimes it helps you, and sometimes it doesn't. L.A. would say it didn't actually come into their favor. Both teams have to be incredibly focused, home and away. We were very aware that just coming back to Seattle didn't equate to a win."
"(We're) always comfortable playing at home," said Jackson. "We've got great fans, great support. This is our home."
"I made the mistake of going home after the game and watching tape," he said. "It made me kind of nauseous, I guess. I wasn't happy with (our play). I can always accept not being polished when we give great, intense effort, but we weren't at the top of our intensity game."
