Hello, hoopheads! I clearly spoke too soon about home teams’ revenge on Friday night, as their 3-0 start to Memorial Day weekend was quickly undone by an 0-3 Saturday. The first two road wins weren’t terribly surprising to me, which you know if you read yesterday’s Roundup — the Minnesota Lynx were favored in Chicago and I thought it should’ve been by more, while Portland and Toronto’s matchup looked like a toss-up to me. The Los Angeles Sparks’ win in Las Vegas over the reigning champion Aces, on the other hand, was probably the most surprising outcome I’ve seen so far this season. As a Sparks enjoyer over the second half of last season, I’m certainly hopeful that they’re about to get rolling after pulling back to .500 at 3-3 following a miserable ugly 0-2 start. That’s all I’ve got by way of recaps for Saturday, mostly because I got caught up watching the Knicks and then Six Feet Under and forgot to write them, but Notes of the Night will return in just a few short hours unless I forget again. And with that, on to this afternoon and evening’s three-game slate.
The showcase game, as far as the television situation is concerned, also happens to be the one I’ll be attending with Bestie when the Dallas Wings (3-3) take on our beloved New York Liberty (3-2) (3:30 ET, NBC/Peacock). The Liberty are coming off of a rather dispirited performance in their first home game in two weeks (and first game anywhere in one week) on Thursday night against the Golden State Valkyries, by a margin I don’t honestly remember at the moment nor feel compelled to look up, because it didn’t really matter. The Valkyries won the game some time early in the second quarter, when it was clear that the Liberty were just not going to be able to make enough shots, nor do enough to slow the Valkyries down, to put up any meaningful fight. The loss put a stop to a red-hot start at the offensive end, as New York entered the game averaging 100 points (the first WNBA team to do that through its first four games) and having hit at least 50% from the field in three of four games, albeit against teams nowhere near the caliber of Golden State (or Atlanta, Minnesota or Las Vegas, off the top of my head) defensively. The good news for the Liberty is that they appear to be getting another of their missing stars back after Satou Sabally made her team debut in Thursday’s stinker. Sabrina Ionescu — who hasn’t played yet this season after suffering an ankle injury during a preseason game three weeks ago — told the media after yesterday’s practice that she’s planning to play today. It doesn’t sound like the plan is for her to play in the back half of a back-to-back tomorrow, when the Portland Fire come to town for the first of two, but it’s still a big step in the right direction. Leonie Fiebich won’t play today, on the other hand, but tomorrow isn’t off the table, while Betnijah Laney-Hamilton remains out for at least today’s game while tending to a personal matter. Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our Libs…
Dallas is also coming off of a pretty uninspired loss, by a 17-point margin on Friday night in Atlanta. To their credit, the Wings did put together one strong surge late in the third and early in the fourth, briefly taking the lead, but the Dream went on a 23-5 run from there to slam the door on a game they’d basically controlled throughout (I just told you about both of the game’s lead changes). That loss denied the Wings a three-game win streak, and it isn’t particularly hard to figure out what went wrong. The star backcourt trio of Paige Bueckers, Arike Ogunbowale and Azzi Fudd scored just 16 combined points on 7-for-33 (21.2%) from the field. There’s really not much these Wings are going to be able to do to overcome nights like that. The good news is that Dallas probably doesn’t have to worry about all three of them being ice cold too often, particularly because not many teams have the length that Atlanta does to disrupt them. The bad news is that the Wings still haven’t figured out a way to get any kind of meaningful production from their marquee free-agent signing Alanna Smith. The reigning co-Defensive Player of the Year is averaging just 4.3 points per game and hitting 34.4% from the field so far, with some of the problem being that she’s been in seemingly constant foul trouble (she ranks 137th of 144 qualified players in fouls per 40 minutes according to Her Hoop Stats). That’s caused Smith to be on the floor for just under 18 minutes per game so far, down from 26.5 last season with the Lynx, but another problem is that Dallas has been worse defensively with her on the floor (defensive rating of 110 points allowed per 100 possessions according to WNBA.com) than with her off the floor (defensive rating of 104.4). It’s not just on defense, either. The Wings’ net rating is 32 points worse and well underwater with Smith on the floor (-16.1 net points per 100 possessions) than when she’s off, when it’s well above water (+15.9 net points per 100 possessions). It’s still very early in the season, perhaps even too early for on/off numbers to be meaningful, but it’s still hard to imagine Smith’s time in Dallas getting off to a worse start.
Starting a half-hour before the Wings and Libs, the Phoenix Mercury (2-4) visit the Atlanta Dream (3-1). Last year’s WNBA Finals runners-up, the Mercury have lost four of five since winning their opener at Las Vegas, with some pretty bad defense being the common thread throughout the defeats. Phoenix has allowed an offensive rating of at least 108.6 points per 100 possessions in each of its four losses, one shy of the most times allowing offensive ratings of 108+ so far — only the Sparks and Tempo have done so more, each having allowed five opponents to score that efficiently. Atlanta, on the other hand, is one of three teams that hasn’t allowed a single opponent to score at a rate that high so far, joined by Golden State and Minnesota. The Dream are, of course, coming off of the runaway win against the Wings on Friday that I already told you about above, paced by Rhyne Howard’s 25 points in her return from concussion protocol. My picks to win the WNBA title haven’t been scoring as efficiently as the rest of the league, ranking 10th with a generally fine mark of 100.3 points per 100 possessions, but I expect it’s just a matter of time with their level of offensive talent. It’s all relative anyway, as Atlanta leads the way in defensive rating allowing a paltry 92.7 points per 100 possessions. The Dream only need to score more efficiently than their opponents, and that task becomes quite a bit simpler when you don’t let them score.
The last game on tonight’s schedule sees the Washington Mystics (2-2) head to the state that bears their first name to face the Seattle Storm (2-4) (6:00 ET, local affiliates/League Pass). Washington is technically in the middle of a four-game road trip which started nine days ago with an instant-classic win in Indiana and also includes the Mystics’ most recent game, a 23-point thumping in Dallas at the hands of the Wings, but you’d have to think they went back to the nation’s capital in between stops, given that game was on Monday. The Mystics will finish up their stretch of road games with another matchup in Seattle on Wednesday. The Storm are coming off of a rout of the Connecticut Sun to avoid being swept in their previous pair of consecutive home games against the same opponent, and still won’t have Dominique Malonga back from concussion protocol. It does, however, seem like the co-centerpiece of their rebuild, Awa Fam Thiam, could make her WNBA debut after she was listed as probable on the latest status report as she assimilates into the squad following a season with her native Spain’s Gernika KESB. The 19-year old will eventually pair with Malonga to give Seattle nearly 13 feet of European unicorn in its frontcourt, which is quite a bit more than we’re used to seeing on this side of the Atlantic!