2008/11 - Silver Stars 81, Dream 66

Another day, another bad game by Atlanta. We seem to be masters at finding more ways to lose ballgames. The loss brings up to 0-11 on the year and we are just two games away from the record of the Detroit Shock. (Guess who we play on our 13th game? Hint: This motor city team was mentioned in the previous sentence.)

My thoughts, brief as they are:

1) Our first shot was a "stuck bucket" shot -- one of those shots where the ball wedges between the rim and the backboard. We knew it was going to be an omen, but not for whom.

2) Stacey Lovelace had an amazing game. Thirty-one minutes, 18 points, 5 rebounds. She scored six points in the first quarter. Although, I suspect, one of her baskets was a "walk-in".

3) Every game there is a focus on a fan favorite. The Dream, being no fools, put Tamera Young on the scoreboard. If she can keep it up, she'll be a future WNBA superstar, but she might have hurt her knee during this game. Fans are holding their breath that this is not the case. She went back out on the floor anyway.

4) Then, in the second quarter, we got the shaft. The Silver Stars put Ann Wauters and Ruth Riley in, and the Dream were forced to figure out some way behind these two gigantic fenceposts. We traded the rights to Ann Wauters to the Silver Stars for Camille Little, I believe. That will give the Dream two first round draft picks in 2009, but somehow I feel that we got hosed.

5) End of first half:

Betty Lennox: 2 points
Ivory Latta: 1 point

I think the last time either of those players were held to two points or less in a half was in preschool. (Hey...remember heaving the basketball up at the goal in second grade?)

6) In the third quarter, it continued to go awry. Tamera Young picked up her fourth foul. Lennox was trying to get back into the swing of things, but tried to make some freak shot from under the backboard that Shaq himself couldn't have made.

7) They put Ann Strother back in the game in the third. I think she fouled someone less than a minute after they put her on the court. She got less than two minutes in the game. I'm beginning to suspect...hard...that Ann won't be with us next year? (How long does a WNBA contract last, anyway?)

8) More crap in the fourth quarter. Lacy picks up a couple of fouls to start off the fourth. Lennox picks up foul number four on the way to a nine-point game. The only bright spot in the fourth was, oddly enough, Feenstra who made three out of four free throws in the quarter.

9) The refs love Hammon. She gets called for traveling in the fourth quarter...so she confers with one of the referees. Clearly, the refs have seen the error of their ways. The call gets changed to a "jump ball" call. When you join the Hammonite cult, superpowers come with the package. It's like being a Jedi.

("You saw no traveling. There must be a jump ball." "I saw no traveling. There must be a jump ball.")

10) There were at least a couple of Hammon fans in the crowd carrying signs saying,
"WE SUPPORT HAMMON", and "HAMMON IS MY GOLD". Well, Hammon had nine assists so we can certainly call her a "medium of exchange."

10a) Number of Dream signs sighted in the crowd: zero.

11) The crowd was slightly over 6,000. Most of them came in in the second quarter. Atlanta traffic was as rotten as usual. It took me 40 minutes to get to the game. And the people behind me were kids...who were cheering they're little hearts out for the Powder Blues.

12) While driving home, I saw someone wearing a gold vest, with blond hair and bushy eyebrows, walking down the sidewalk with a realllly tall girl. Damned if it didn't look like...Becky Hammon. I thought it took three hours to recover from one of these games, but Becky's out on the town in thirty minutes. (It's superpowers, I'm telling ya.)

13) We shot 36.1 percent from the field and 18.2 percent from the free throw line. Those are San Antonio's stats (well, the field goal percentages are anyway). As for San Antonio, they shot over fifty percent.

Well, to quote a rap song:

For all you suckers - liars, your cheap amplifiers
You crossed up wires are always starting fires
You grown up criers - now here's a pair of pliers
Get a job like your mother - I heard she fixes old dryers
You have no desires - your father fixes tires
You try to sell ya equipment - but you get no buyers
It's you they never hire - you're never on flyers
Cause you and your crew - is only known as good triers

Somehow, I felt like Chuck D. was dissing the Dream. Could have been worse. Could have been Flavor Flav. The Dream is good triers. And that's about all.