WNBA Notes of the Night, June 5: Wings Spoil Plum’s Return

The WNBA’s best game on Friday night — and thus, obviously, the biggest basketball game in the world — delivered all of the offensive fireworks I expected with Kelsey Plum back on the floor, even if the commentators clearly needed to read my Roundup and disabuse themselves of the notion that Dallas has been good defensively this season. Here’s how the Wings’ win in Dallas and two other WNBA games went down tonight:

Dallas took its fourth straight game and improved to 6-1 since a 1-2 start that got the Wings publicly challenged by their head coach, holding off Los Angeles in a game that was back-and-forth until the Wings created a bit of separation in the fourth quarter. It wasn’t all good news for Dallas, as both Aziaha James and Odyssey Sims had to be helped off the court with injuries (Sims was taken off in a wheelchair), which essentially left the Wings playing with six players as Li Yueru and Awak Kuier were already sidelined while Alysha Clark and JJ Quinerly played just 3 minutes combined. The starters picked up the slack, however, as all five finished with at least 11 points and made at least 47.6% from the field. That was Arike Ogunbowale’s number while hitting 10-of-21 from the field and 6-of-11 from deep en route to 30 points. Jessica Shepard continued her fantastic start to the season with 22 points, 15 rebounds and 5 assists, her second 20/10/5 game this season (the rest of the league has four combined and no one else has two). Paige Bueckers had 18 points and 14 assists, tying the franchise record for assists in a game (Ivory Latta set it in 2012 with the Tulsa Shock and Ogunbowale matched it last July). Rounding out the starters were Maddy Siegrist (16 points) and Azzi Fudd (11), who combined to make 12-of-20 from the field and 3-for-5 from deep on a night when the Wings hit 53% from the field and 40% of their 3-pointers.

Los Angeles led by as many as 9 points in the first half, but I think the main takeaway from this loss is that the Sparks should be thrilled to have seen Kelsey Plum back on the floor and picking up right where she left off before missing the last three games. As detailed this morning, this Sparks team needs to score at an elite rate if it’s going to have any real chance of overcoming its defense, and it was able to do the scoring part with its Spark plug back in the mix. Plum scored 27 points on 10-for-16 from the field while adding 6 assists, although she did have 5 turnovers, while the Sparks made 54% from the field as a team. It was a third straight loss, but Plum’s presence gave the Sparks a chance and they won’t play too many games against teams who can exploit their defense as efficiently as the Wings did.

Phoenix won its second straight since a six-game skid, despite the absences of stars Kahleah Copper and Alyssa Thomas, handing Portland a third loss in four games in the process. I won’t go so far as to call it a rock fight, but the offenses were decidedly less crisp in this one than in the Wings-Sparks game happening simultaneously, as and I do think that’s the proper framing as opposed to saying the defenses were better in this one (there was no good defense to be found in this window). DeWanna Bonner led Phoenix with a season-high 19 points while Natasha Mack added 16 on 7-for-11 from the field. On the plus side for Portland, at least from my perspective, is the fact that the Fire acquiesced to my repeated demands for more Sarah Ashlee Barker, as she made her first start of the season and led the way with team-highs of 15 points and 7 rebounds while going 6-for-10 from the field. The problem was that no other Fire starter scored more than 7 points while the four of them went 8-for-25 (32%) from the field. It was probably inevitable that the Fire’s results were going to regress to the mean given they were sitting near the bottom in both offensive and defensive rating despite their 5-3 start, and that regression appears to be happening before our eyes.

Chicago overcame an early double-digit deficit fueled by Diamond Miller’s 15-point first quarters, with Skylar Diggins’ 16-point second quarter keying the comeback (which mostly occurred before halftime, making the term “comeback” feel a bit overdramatic). Diggins finished with 24 points to lead Chicago’s first win since losing Rickea Jackson to a torn ACL, snapping a five-game skid.