2008/23 - Monarchs 77, Dream 73

Not even Pigtail Power could help us. Photos provided by SPMSportsPage.com.


Let's face it. There's no way to put lipstick on a pig. Until the fourth quarter, that game stunk. The Dream stunk, and the Monarchs stunk.

Back when the San Francisco Giants were playing at Candlestick Park, they faced the challenge of wind off the bay in addition to whoever the Giants were playing that night. Temperatures would reach teeth-chattering extremes at Candlestick. Late night extra-inning games would be torturous on the fans. Any fan who survived a late night game received the "Croix de Candlestick", a small medallion given out by the Giants organization as a tribute to endurance beyond the call of fan duty.

Anyone listening to that game - or attending it - should receive the "Croix de ARCO" or the "Dream Cross" or the "Order of the WNBA". That game wasn't to be watched, but survived.

Comments:

1) At the beginning of the game, Art Eckman interviewed Coach Meadors. She gave us a hint at the kinds of stats she looks at. I believe Eckman said something about Kristin Haynie having a good turnover-to-assist ratio," and Meadors quickly answered back that Latta also had a good turnover/assist ratio. Clearly, Meadors is using metrics of some type in evaluating talent instead of just using her eyes.

Why would you damn a coach using her own eyes? Because, as any stathead knows, the eye can fool you just as well as a stat line.

2) Meadors gave a preview of the Phoenix game tonight. She said that Phoenix would most likely stay in its 2-1-2 zone and that the key to winning would be rebounding. If we rebounded, we'd win.

3) Erika de Souza ran yesterday. This is very good news, not just for the Dream, but for Brazilian fans. No word as to whether or not Erika experienced any pain, but I assume not.

4) Now on to the game. Once again, as Jaye said, the Dream should just spot their opponents 10 points and start the bench players instead. It was another one of those abysmal starts with the Dream not able to hit anything they were shooting at. Izi Castro Marques started again, and she disappeared again. Four points. Only 13 minutes played.

Castro Marques alternates between good basketball and aweful basketball every other day. Which means that Phoenix should be very very worried. My suggestion: just start Izi every other game.

5) We must have had two throwaways in the first quarter, primarily because someone botched an offensive assignment. The Dream players were literally throwing the ball to players that weren't there.

6) At least Meadors kept a promise. Eckman said that Meadors told him, "If we get down six points early I'm calling a timeout." And so, she did. It didn't help. We were down 18-6 at one point until the Dream shot a couple of threes at the end to make it 18-12 at the end of one quarter.

7) Once I saw the numbers, I knew this was going to be a horrible night. Atlanta went 5-19 in the first quarter. Sacramento went 7-22. No team could hit the iron, which meant that any team that had even a modicum of success shooting would have a chance of winning.

8) In particular, Betty Lennox had a horrible start. She was 0-9 at one point in the second quarter.

9) During one run between the first and second quarters, Sacramento missed at least ten consecutive shots. It seemed like the scoreboard absolutely refused to budge.

10) As Art Eckman said, "My goodness! The passing is horrible!" Atlanta kept coughing up the ball. But that was okay, because in the first half, Sacramento scored zero points on Atlanta turnovers.

11) Another sign of desperation: both sides had already gone through the entire active roster in terms of substitutions before the end of halftime. Both teams were trying to desperately find someone who could shoot. Atlanta was 9-31, at 29 percent shooting. Sacramento was 10-36 at 27 percent shooting. This was a junior high school game.

12) Free throws were particular telling on the Dream. They went 2-9 at the charity stripe in the first half and finished 13-22 at 59 percent for the entire game. The road lag must really be getting to the Dream. I hope no one in Phoenix gets the idea to play Hack-a-Feenstra tonight.

13) Do you remember that Family Guy episode? The one that jokes about the WNBA and goes: "That's up for the fan to decide?" and the next scene is one lone fan in a section of empty bleachers going "Yay?" I think he was watching last night's game.

14) Atlanta then started to get hot in the third quarter. Relatively speaking.

I'm reminded of an old baseball staying regarding the 1944 St. Louis Browns, when the manager made some substitutions and was asked if he felt his benchwarmers were getting hot. "No, I feel those bums on the field getting cold," he said.

The Dream went on a 10-2 run, with Kristin Haynie scoring a couple of baskets. More on Kristin later.

15) Then Sacramento went on a 15-3 run. The only sign of life during this run was a three-point basket by Strother. Art Eckman said that Marynell Meadors told him that basketball is "a game of runs". Yes, Coach Meadors, it's a game of runs when neither team is consistent. Other than that, it's just terrible.

Lacy went in the wrong direction offensively during one play. Scholanda Robinson once stripped the ball out of Kasha Terry's hands. The Monarchs had a 19 point lead at one point in the third quarter and led by 16, 57-41, going into the fourth.

It was after 11 pm. Let me tell you that this game was certainly not helping me stay awake.

16) Telling shooting stats at start of fourth quarter:

Castro Marques: 2 for 8
Latta: 1 for 8
Noox: 0 for 9

17) However, the Dream had one secret weapon. The Monarchs were just as inept as the Dream. Atlanta then went on a run. And what a run! It was a 20-4 scoring extravaganza.

What caused it? I don't know. Maybe Atlanta was just saving up its strenght. With the score 67-50 in favor of the Mnonarchs, the Dream began hitting everything. Lennox and Latta came back to life. Sacramento was once called for a 24 second violation.

Fate tilted everything in the direction of Atlanta. By 1:28 left in the fourth quarter, we were behind by one point, 71-70. Kristin Haynie took the shot that could put the Dream in the lead....

...and missed it. However, the ex-Monarch led all members of the Dream with 12 points.

18) However, this was the high point of the night. We would only score three more points. Robinson was yanking passed out of the air. Ivory Latta lost the ball at one point. Katie Feenstra committed a foul setting a block, although that could have simply been referee Michael Price noticing that his whistle was momentarily dry.

If I'm right, our final three points were made be free throws, all by Betty Lennox.

19) On the whole, this is a game we could have won. Losing 77-73 on the road when both teams can't shoot 40 percent means that pretty much both teams were playing at equal levels of ineptitude. Sacramento's four point victory could have been attributed to home court advantage, such as it is.

20) Attention Betty Lennox and Ivory Latta: when it takes at least 17 shots each to score 11 points for each of you, there's no reason to be proud of your double-digit numbers. It only took Kristin Haynie 10 shots to score 12 points. (I'm not even going to mention Nicole Powell's 12 points in 19 attempts.)

21) I went to the WNBA game site to read comments. I got a message: "Sorry, this forum was not found." I think the WNBA is just trying to hide it.

22) So what was the key to the game? Well, there weren't many keys to the game, since both teams were awful. Let's look at Dean Oliver's four factors in order of importance:

Shooting: Atlanta 36 percent, Sacrament 37 percent. Nothing there.
Turnovers: About the same, Dream 20 and Monarchs 19. Turnovers are about as half as important as shooting overall.
Offensive rebounds: Here you go: The Dream was outhustled on the boards not only in offensive rebounds (15-9) but overall rebounds (45-34). Neither Alison Bales nor Katie Feenstra stepped up on the offensive end. Each had zero offensive rebounds. Jennifer Lacy led in that category with three.
Visits to the foul line: As opposed to "free throw percentage". Sacramento only had slightly more visits (25-23), but we only shot 60 percent from the stripe. The Monarchs shot 80.

(* * *)

In short, when both teams are awful at shooting, the game is going to hinge on "which team does the little things right?" In this case, one team -- Sacramento -- did a little thing like getting offensive rebounds right. And the Dream did something that every team usually automatically does right -- make free throws -- and did it wrong.

This is why we didn't get the win we wanted. However, we came mightily close. For all of you who listened to this game in its entirety...awards for everybody!!! Yay!!!

Vikings Football: A Place Where Guys Make Out

Apparently there's some guy in Minnesota who opened mouth and inserted foot. He's a conservative talk radio host who stated "You know what [the WBNA] is? That's a place for lesbians to make out when they score."

You can read the dirty details yourself. Frankly, I'm not surprised. Anyone on talk radio, liberal or conservative, sure ain't being selected for their intelligence. I went to this guy's blog and I'm surprised they don't let him out with a protective helmet so that he doesn't hurt himself.

However, this provoked a new line of thought. According to the radio website, they are the flagship station of the Minnesota Vikings. I'm sure this guy follows the Vikings, Twins, Wild, men's college basketball, like most of the "jock crowd".

Have you ever noticed that most of these guys follow men's sports exclusively? And don't you notice that most of the audience for those sports is men? (Go to a Braves game, for example.) And that most of these men are drunk, to lower their inhibitions?

I don't know, buddy. As Neil Patrick Harris would say, "Sounds like a real sausage fest to me."

Friendly Calls

From Frisco Del Rosario's journal, regarding the trials and tribulations of being a Sacramento Monarchs fan:

[16 Jul 200811:01am]
Traci Westmoreland called as part of the customer service aspect of her job as Sacramento Monarchs business development executive/season ticket account manager.

"Are you getting all the mail? Did you receive the media guide? And the gift for season ticket holders?" she said.


I don't know if our season tix holders have ever gotten friendly calls. One of the Atlanta tix holders will have to answer that.

"Yep, yep," I said. "Gonna wear my Kristin Haynie jersey Friday, and my Phoenix Mercury jersey next Thursday."

I'm hoping that you'll occasionally cheer, "GO DREAM!" It's easy once you get the hang of it. (/ducks) Although if you get another call, you might ask Sacramento either to update their official blog (one month old now), or just take it down.

On the Road Again....

Let's take a look at the last 20 WNBA games: the home team has beaten the visiting team 16-4. (Atlanta was one of those visiting teams that escaped the axe.) '

The 20 games before those 20 games, the home team has won 14-6. (Once again, Atlanta got a win on the road.) I don't want to look at home vs. away win percentage for every team in the WNBA, but I suspect that the grind of the WNBA season is really starting to get to a lot of teams. Just looking at the June results, it seemed that the visting teams had a better chance in June than they did in July. Furthemore, from looking at the Hollinger Rankings, there's a lot of parity in the WNBA and just being the home team can be a decisive advantage.

As we've learned from following the Dream, during the Chicago game, the road Dream didn't even have time for a practice, just a walkthrough. With road teams having to play back to back games and with everyone exhausted it's a good time to be at home in the WNBA.

Our next trip is Sacramento tonight, and it's probably one of the worst situations: the Monarchs are finishing a four-game home stand, and they've won two out of three of those games. They lost to the Storm, but have beaten both the Sparks and the Mercury. The situation against Phoenix on Saturday will be no better -- they'll be finishing up a three-game home stand, and we know that Phoenix doesn't respect the Dream. Remember when they declined to dress Cappie Pondexter when they beat us at home by 18 points? The message was, "we can beat you with one hand tied behind our back."

If I can have a win against one of these two teams, I'll take it against Phoenix. It would be nice to beat them at the home court and put some doubts in their minds that they can repeat as champions. But if I have to get my win at Sacramento....well, let's just say I won't complain.

Dream Rejections

More interesting stats from Swanny:

Most FG Attempts Blocked, 2008 Season

1. Swin Cash, Storm and Katie Douglas, Fever: 23
5. Betty Lennox, Dream: 20
18. Ivory Latta, Dream: 18



Lowest Percentage of FG Attempts Blocked, 2008 Season
(min 50 attempts)

1. Cathy Joens, Sky: 0 percent (0-74)
8. Camille Little, Dream/Storm: 1.4 percent (1-70)



Most FG Attempts Blocked in One Game, 2008 Season

Nicole Powell, Monarchs at Silver Stars, July 3 -- 5 blocked
...
Ivory Latta, Comets at Dream, July 3 -- 4 blocked

2008/22 - Dream 81, Fever 77

Way to chase that biscuit, Izi! Pic courtesy of SPMSportspage.com.


Once again, I didn't get a chance to see -- or even hear -- the last Dream game. I was at work and sadly enough, not only was I engrossed in a time dependent project but my computer is not set up for streaming radio sound. (And I suspect that the workload today will keep me from updating the blog, which irritates me.)

So once again, all I had to go by were second hand accounts and the team boxscore. As it turns out, the blog Rethinking Basketball turned me on to one of the best statistical writers in basketball, a man by the name of Dean Oliver. You can find his article archive right here. Sadly, he doesn't do fannish writing anymore -- he's been hired by the Denver Nuggets and has become their Director of Quantitative Analysis. Sadly, all of his future work is proprietary, all rights reserved by Denver.

Dean Oliver had this to say about boxscores:

A boxscore gives you something else. It provides a summary of the entire game. It's a bigger picture than what a game recap typically gives. It cannot show a crucial run that "decided the game," as the popular press likes to say. It cannot show Joe Dumars going 3-3 in the last minute to seal a victory. It really tries to show the foundation of the game before that last minute or before that last run. It includes information on that last minute, but it doesn't emphasize it. Because it doesn't emphasize much of anything, the boxscore can be overlooked by people not interested in the whole game. For me, however, the boxscore is very valuable.

So the first thing we'll do is get and idea of the pace of the game.

Possessions are defined as

[(away FGA - away Off Reb + away TO + 0.4 * away FTA) + (home FGA - home off Reb + home TO + 0.4 * home FTA)]/2

Plugging in the numbers we get:

[(67 - 7 + 14 + 0.4*15) + (72 - 13 + 15 + 0.4*26)]/2 = 82.2

This estimates that each team had the ball 82.2 times. Before you reply, "Why do I have to do one of these constipating math problems?" I'll quote Dean Smith who quoted the great Frank McGuire from the University of North Carolina: "A quick glance at three figures (our points per possession, opponent's points per possession, and total possessions) helps the coach to determine any changes he must make."

Now, we look at points per 100 possessions:

Atlanta: 98.5
Indiana: 93.7

Since the damned WNBA site won't provide league totals, the points per 100 possessions last year was 92.6. This means that this was primarily a game where offense dominated on both sides. Atlanta dominated offensively, but not defensively.

Let's take a look at the flow of the game:

Atlanta: 20 20 15 26
Indiana: 20 18 13 26

Clearly, this was a close game all the way. If any one team was behind -- as Indiana was at one time -- they came back to make it a real contest. Atlanat only won the game by four points.

The next thing to look at: starters minutes.

Only two players on the Dream played "starters minutes", and I make the cutoff at 25 minutes. Izi Castro Marques played 36 minutes and Alison Bales played 33. Betty Lennox came close. Atlanta is still having to rely on the bench to provide much of its offense. Compare this to Indiana, where five players played starters minutes. Atlanta relied on four of its starters -- Douglas, Hoffman, Sutton-Brown, and Bevilaqua to do the lion's share of the work. Only guard Tan White failed to get "starters minutes" for Indiana.

We know one thing: this was no rout by the Fever, or the starters would have been taken out early.

Now we can start looking at individual offense of the Dream players.

Stats will be listed in the order of MIN, FG-FGA, FT-FTA, OFF REB, DEF REB, TOT REB, AST, PF, ST, TO, PTS.

Castro Marques 36 10-20 2-2 1 2 3 3 1 3 3 24

After her last game where she scored zero points, Izi picked up 24 points. She came very close to her career high of 26 points.

Was she efficient? One way to determine this is to use some complex metric like floor percentage. The cheap and easy way to do it is to count the number of shots taken and compare it with the points scored. If shots taken is less than points scored, she was efficient.

24 points scored. 22 shots taken. Yep, Izi had a good day.

Bales 33 3-5 2-2 3 8 11 1 1 1 2 8

Even Bales was efficient offensively. When she took shots, she made them.

Lennox 23 5-9 2-2 0 5 5 2 1 0 2 16

Lennox was very efficient offensively, scoring 16 points on 11 shooting attempts.

(* * *)

Unfortunately, there is one thing that a box score cannot tell us. Defense. All you can do is begin to match up players and try to guess who was guarding who. However, I suspect that defense was lacking on both sides in this game. Maybe Indiana just got tired. Maybe it was Izi's hot shooting hand. Either way, we can simply look at the most important stat in the boxscore: Final points scored. That got us the win, and I'm glad to get it.

Dead Blog Walking

The official link to the Sacramento Monarchs blog has been pulled. The blog hasn't been updated in over a month and I officially consider the blog dead. If you're a Monarchs fan and you detect signs of life in the blog, let me know.

This is the second official team blog that is dead in the water. The Houston Comets official blog hasn't been updated since May. Houston, Sacramento, you're looking like real chop-house organizations from my P. O. V.

The Two Towers

It appears that work is not only picking up, it will stay picked up until around July 27 -- which is when I go on vacation with my wife. I'll try to keep the blog updated, but I can't make promises. I will try to keep the Hollinger Rankings updated on Rebkell, at minimum.

There's some great reading at Score Atlanta (or is that "Score Atl"). Josh Bagriansky writes:

Another revelation has been the combination of 6-foot-8 Katie Feenstra and 6-7 Allison Bales in the post. Although she didn’t use them together much against Chicago, Meadors said she expects to use the duo in certain situations, starting against the Fever tomorrow.

Unfortunately, this combination hasn't worked all year. We're not Ruth Riley and Ann Wauters, no matter how much Meadors wishes it were so. Then again, maybe today is the day for it to all come together.

Flagrant Foul

Work has picked up again. Maybe no blog posting today.

Did Houston's Early Dominance Hurt the WNBA?

While netscouring, I found an interesting opinion about the WNBA found in a blog about NASCAR, of all things. As Julie Bork says it....

Let me explain:

How many people remember when the WNBA was emerging a couple of years ago? It had a great start and there was lots of interest, and there were many basketball stadiums that were built and remodeled to accommodate a national women’s team. So what happened? The Houston Comets dominated the first five years of the sport, and people lost interest. So you say what about those people from Houston, they did not loose interest, right? WRONG! The ticket sales declined to almost nothing even in the Comets home town. You can hardly give the tickets away for free now. I am from Houston, and I lost interest too.

There's no way to prove that hypothesis, of course. But it's a very interesting one.

2008/21 - Sky 79, Dream 66

A hair raising afternoon. Courtesy of SPMSportsPage.Com.

"we put in what should be the starting five after we're down 8..... why don't we just start with them and spot the other team ten...."
--Jaye


I usually make notes while I'm watching a game. When a game is close, I generally write a lot; when a game is out of reach my paper looks blank. And let me tell you something, this was one blank looking paper. Which matched the way the Dream looked on CSS last night - blank, for the most part.

All right, my game notes:

1) Iziane Castro Marques. Started. Nine minutes. Zero points. Her last four games have been something like 10 points, 0 points, 7 points, and 0 points. Either Izi shows up, or she doesn't.

There are only three reasons I can figure Izi gets a start:

a) After the debacle in Madrid, Meadors is trying to restore Izi's confidence,
b) Meadors believes that Izi provides "veteran leadership", or
c) Meadors is trying to apologize for her belief that Izi spoke Spanish and not Portugese.

2) And...Katie Feenstra. She played fifteen minutes and scored 21 points. Let's not talk about the six minutes Kit played over the first three quarters, where she scored only two points. I suppose they were the anomaly, but God, these confidence-building exercises Meadors is trying are just killing me.

3) Interesting stat of the first quarter: with 5:57 left in the first quarter, the Sky took a 12-2 lead.

Atlanta never came to within 10 points of the Sky for the rest of the game. The Sky took an early first quarter lead and never abandoned it.

4) We finally got to see Chioma Nnamaka, probably as a mark of Coach Meadors's desperation.

Four minutes. Zero points. One rebound. And in Coach Meadors's mind, the Chioma Nnamaka Era is over.

5) I believe Atlanta was 3-20 in field goals for the first quarter. Trust me...it wouldn't get any better.

6) We brought in Haynie. We brought in Strother. But unlike the past few games, bringing in the reserves did absolutely bupkus.

7) We scored a measly six points in the first quarter, and added 11 more measly points in the second. By haltime, the Sky had a comfortable 44-17 lead. The Sky shot 16-29, 55 percent from the field with 19 rebounds. The Dream shot 6-33, 18 percent with 11 rebounds.

There are very few teams that can dig themselves out of a hole that deep, and we're not Jordan, Pippen, and Rodman over here in Atlanta.

8) In the third quarter, we tried more experimentation. We put Feenstra and Bales in at the same time, a combination that has never worked. We had at least four unforced turnovers in the third quarter...and those were the ones I counted.

People really underestimate the impact of unforced turnovers, like double dribbles. This sounds like elementary school basketball, but you have to keep your hands on the ball when you're down by 27 points.

9) Now, let's talk about Katie Feenstra's amazing fourth quarter. Her 19 points in the fourth is the third most points scored in a quarter by any player in WNBA history, and surpasses the 18 points Betty Lennox dropped on the Lynx in the fourth a month ago.

I've complained before about the fact that when referees in the WNBA see two players grappling, they seem to give the foul to the person who tries harder. You can punch someone in the throat, and the referees will call the foul against the person whose larynx you just flattened.

For some inexplicable reason, Chicago decided to play "Hack-a-Feenstra". Katie is a foul magnet, and they figured -- probably for laughs at this point -- that it might be fun to see if they could get Kit to foul out.

When you foul someone who is trying to score -- as Kit was last night -- three things are going to happen.

a) They're going to score anyway,
b) They'll get sent to the foul line, or
c) They'll get charged with the foul (this is the WNBA, remember?)

This works against Shaq in the NBA, as he's likely to miss both free throws -- Phil Jackson once said that missing both free throws is just as good as a turnover. Kit is a 69 percent free throw shooter. Not as bad a Shaq, mind you, but 69 percent isn't anything to write home about.

The problem was, Kit hit every free throw she scored. She went 11-for-11. The Dream wisely gave her the ball, and we actually cut the Sky's lead to 13 points. The Sky, however, didn't have to rue the day they sent Kit to the free throw line, as they led by 27 points going into the fourth.

POSTSCRIPT: Feenstra also had eight rebounds.

10) Ivory Latta: 23 minutes, and only three points. She went 1-5 for shooting. There's another indicator as to why we lost.

11) If you look at minutes played on both sides, you'll see that non-starters are getting a lot of minutes. This is because Meadors was desperately trying to substitute and because the Sky felt free enough to give their non-starters minutes.

(* * *)

Okay. The best we can do is forget about this one. One of our problems is that we can't just can't shoot. Of Dean Oliver's four keys to victory, shooting is 50 percent. I don't know if the reason why we're wearing blindfolds out there is because everyone else is so much better defensively or because we can't find the bucket. However, according to the WNBA, we have the second worst shooting percentage in the league.

On Wednesday, we go to Indiana to play the Fever. The Fever probably have the slowest, take-it-easy offense in the League. Washington scored 14 points against them in a half, then came back and won. If our three-point shooting is hot and if we actually figure out how to put the ball in the metal hoop, we could beat the Fever. However, I suspect that on most days, we need a compass and a map to find the hoop.

Let's just hope the needle points to "north" on Wednesday afternoon.

2008/20 - Silver Stars 82, Dream 74

Okay. As you all know, I wasn't able to either watch or listen to this game, so all I have to look at are box scores and newspaper articles. Still, I'll post a few thoughts that come at random.

1) This isn't a loss to be ashamed of. On my current version of the Hollinger Rankings, I have the Silver Stars ranked as fifth in the league. Coming into this game, the Silver Stars had won six straight and were a very difficult squad to beat at home. We had a goal of winning three straight games, but they had a goal of setting a franchise record for consecutive wins. The fact that we almost beat them despite being 2-17 going into the game is not something to be ashamed of.

2) The boxscore: the first thing that jumps out is that Alison Bales had 10 points and 9 rebounds. If there are any doubts about what Bales can bring to the table, I think they've been put to rest. I think she's contributed more to the Dream in the last three games than Feenstra has contributed in the last twenty.

3) Aside from that, we didn't have one of those "six players in double figures" nights. What's surprising is that Ann Strother didn't play at all in San Antonio. Strother has been a part of the last two wins; I can't see why we'd sit her for this game. My rule as a coach is always "go with what wins and keep going with it until experience proves otherwise".

4) From what I've read about the game, personal fouls stole the game from us. We certainly outfouled them, 23-16. On the other hand, they barely outrebounded us, 37-32, and they tied us in offensive rebounds with five apiece.

What were Dean Oliver's four keys to success (from Rethinking Basketball)?

a) Field goal percentage: The SASS beat us here, decisively, 44 percent to 36 percent.
b) Free throw attempts: We lost, but not by much. The Silver Stars went to the line 29 times, we only went 24.
c) Offensive rebounds: Five each.
d) Turnovers: They actually turned the ball over more than we did, 11-7.

It might have been sending the Silver Stars to the free throw line that was the most obvious fault -- regardless of whether the refs gave the home team the fouls or not -- but the real reason we lost the game is that we just didn't shoot that well. The Stars went on a 17-1 surge in the third quarter. If we had actually hit a few baskets -- we missed twelve consectuive buckets in the third quarter and one free throw -- we would have won. The usual hole we dig ourselves in came in the third quarter, not the first.

New York Times Article about the Dream

Looks like we made the pages of the Grey Lady.

An excerpt:

Meadors was brought on board partly because she had endured W.N.B.A. start-ups as a coach with the Charlotte Sting and director of scouting for the Miami Sol. Prospective players were screened for character. Bolen said a spiritual foundation was not a factor in roster selection, but many of the players said prayer sustained them during the drought, which set a record for W.N.B.A. futility when the losing streak reached 14 games.

“I hate to get all religion on you, but I try to have faith in whatever he has planned for me,” forward Jennifer Lacy said.

A must read, so go read.

P. S. Heads up to the Women's Hoops Blog.

Takin' it Easy

My mother got a chance to come down to Atlanta for the very first time on Friday to see my wife and me. She hasn't been down here in two years, and I couldn't just say, "Sorry Mom, but there's a Dream game tonight." Even for a superfan, some things just have to take precedence.

So...I didn't get to hear, much less see our loss to the Silver Stars. More on that later.

Now that Mom's headed on to Florida, I'm taking it easy. I added a link to Score Atlanta and the work of Josh Bagriansky. (God, I hope I spelled that right.) Also: a YouTube clip of one of our favorite ex-Mercury players.

Enjoy!

DeSouza in Spain for Rest...or Recuperation?

It looks like Érika de Souza might be back with the Dream soon. She's in Spain right now. Here is part of the article, translated by Google Translator, from clicabrasilia.com.br.

Érika is in Spain since the beginning of the week, and reviewed with the supervision of experts from Ros Casares, with the Spanish team which has contract until 2010. Provoked by repetitive effort, the pivot of the fracture was detected in May, when I was in the United States participating in the WNBA for the Atlanta Dream, and requires rest for recovery.

"She is stopped for nearly a month and has no more pain," says (Brazil Coach Paul) Bassul, who maintains frequent contact with the player. According to him, the athlete already has some activities such as cycling ergométrica, but no activity on impact.

Bassul believes that the situation of athlete should be resolved this week. "We will wait until Friday, when the results come out. Hence we have almost 90% of the definition."


My only question is why did she go to Spain for a check-up? Why not Atlanta? Maybe since Spanish and Portugese have some language similiarity, she might have felt more comfortable. But if I'm reading the translation right, we have a 90 percent chance of seeing de Souza back by the end of the week.

Sparks Become Duds in Fourth Quarter

Some stats from the official Los Angeles Sparks blog regaring the Sparks fourth quarter performances in their four home games:

OUTSCORED - 124-59
OUTSHOT - 60%- 30%fg
OUTSCORED - + 16 FT points
OUTSHOT - 10-20- 3PT FG to 3-17- 3PT FG

Egad. If I was a Sparks fan, I'd be perturbed, too. But most likely, the Sparks are going to the playoffs in 08.

The Baltimore Lottery

Rumor has it that Baltimore is wanting to add a WNBA team, and there has been talk of relocation an existing team, but not adding a new team.

Frankly, I don't put much credence in this. But suppose it happens? So which WNBA team will go to Baltimore?

Baltimore Comets: Baltimore didn't really want the Comets. However, Hilton Koch was offering low, low prices and they just couldn't resist.

Baltimore Dream: Ron Terwilliger falls in love with a new sport after his dalliances with soccer and women's basketball. Philips Arena becomes the home of the Atlanta Double Takeouts of the Women's Professional Curling League.

Baltimore Fever: During renovations to Conseco Fieldhouse, Coach Lin Dunn told to move the team to Baltimore, Indiana temporarily. Gets confused.

Baltimore Liberty: "Well, we didn't really want to give up the Liberty, but we felt sorry for Baltimore. If they don't cheer up, we'll give them the Jets too."

Baltimore Lynx: Because who wants to play basketball in a clean city full of friendly people? That's no fun! Besides, once winter is over no Minnesotan goes back indoors until October.

Baltimore Mercury: Believed that average height of Mercury guards would increase 2-3 inches after exposure to water.

Baltimore Monarchs: ARCO Arena lease lost in foreclosure crisis. City offers backup location at Churchill Downs Community Park, complete with blacktop court and chain nets. New site deemed unacceptable for WNBA due to lack of restrooms.

Baltimore Mystics: Because Baltimore has had a grudge for years against Washington for losing the Bullets. "Hah! Take that Washington!"

Baltimore Shock: Bill Laimbeer spends most of season watching old Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire episodes. Decides that Detroit just isn't tough enough any more for either him or the Shock. Later shoots a man just for snoring.

Baltimore Silver Stars: The move was part of Becky's contract. She likes crabcakes, by the way.

Baltimore Sparks: The Sparks need to save on gas money. Have you seen those prices? In car crazy L. A., the Sparks need to penny-pinch. "We can either pay for Lisa's contract for another year, or we can play next year's games in her living room, now which is it?"

Baltimore Storm: According to Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird got tired of hanging around those dirty, filthy hippies.

Baltimore Sun: The Mohegan Sun signs singing legend Celine Dion for one year. Sun forced to vacate arena to make space for Celine's new dressing room, complete with regulation size basketball court.

Baltimore Sky: "We wanted to go somewhere where we'd be @#$@ing appreciated." Besides, with Baltimore's city government it will be like the Sky never left Chicago.

Lovelace Signs With Shock

According to a poster on the Rebkell Message Boards, Stacey Lovelace has just signed with the Detroit Shock.

Stacey should be happy there -- she went to high school in Detroit -- but frankly, we should have gotten something for her. We gave her away for nothing. What the hell was that all about?

2008/19 - Dream 73, Lynx 67

Do the Dream have all their problems behind them?

Amazingly, the Dream have won a second straight game. Who would believe that after seventeen straight losses the Dream would have a winning streak? (Hey, two games is a winning streak!) I just hope that these fumes don't go right to our heads when we play the Silver Stars in San Antonio tonight.

I decided to enjoy the night at Front Page News in downtown Atlanta where the viewing party was. Unfortunately, there was a problem: most of the attendees were in groups, and when you're the lone guy out with no one to talk to it can get mighty damn lonely. To further add to the humiliation, I was assigned a table -- sort of like the lone kid in kindergarten.

The guy I was sitting with was nice, but neither of us could get a conversational vibe started. The food wasn't that great. (Although I knew that going in.) And then I just told myself, "Why am I sitting here feeling lonely when I could go home and watch the game on CSS?" At which point I skedaddled sometime after the beginning of the third quarter.

Maybe I'll meet Curtis at the next Dream game and say hello. In the meantime, here is my somewhat abridged report of our second win ever, and first win on the road. It's kind of hard to take notes in a festive atmosphere with a lot of distractions.

1) Starting for the Dream: Iziane Castro Marques. There's been a lot of complaints that Iziane didn't deserve to take Tamera Young's sport from her. My only explanations for why Coach Meadors went to Izi instead of Young are

a) Coach Meadors's explanation -- the Dream have had crappy first quarters, and Izi brings veteran experience. It also shakes up the first quarter lineup.
b) Meadors knows Izi from before this season, and likes her. Favoritism.
c) Izi has a deep seated psychological need to be the center of attention. As any Brazilian women's basketball fan can tell you. (See: Madrid Olympic Qualifier, 2008.)

2) This plan, as might have been expected, fell flat. Izi was a massive bust. She scored one rebound, one assist, two field goal attempts (one from three point land), and zero points. She would be replaced by the person who should have started, Tamera Young -- Izi would make another no-show appearance in the third quarter.

Which leads me to my rant. IZI MUST GO. After she bailed out at Madrid, abandoned her team and has never apologized for it, I think she's a head case.

3) It stayed bad. By 4:27 in the first quarter, we had scored a grand total of two points and I had flashbacks to that Fever-Mystics game I watched on TV where the Fever scored like 14 points in the first half. Coach Meadors was forced to call a time out.

Feenstra came in for Lacy. Kit missed two jump shots. She got a rebound, but had it ripped out of her hands. Meadors, flashing back to the effectiveness of the Ruth Riley/Ann Wauters combo in San Antonio, put Alison Bales out there with Feenstra. Bales lost the handle on the ball to Vanessa Hayden of the Lynx, but when Lindsey Harding went up for the layup for Minnesota, Bales was already on the other end and blocked the shot! Amazing. Given what I've seen of Bales and what I've seen of Feenstra, I know who I like better.

4) Despite Bales's heroics, we were down 19-6 at the end of the first quarter. Incidentally, at one point in the Dream-Sky game we were down 19-6. First quarter shooting was horrible. We were down 3-18 or 3-21 or something like that.

5) As the second quarter got under way, the Dream began to dig their way out. After being down 21-6, we went on a 10-2 run. Young made a last second bucket. Then Bales. Then Latta. Then Bales again. Then Latta again.

Candice Wiggins made a couple of free throws and Charde Houston made a bucket, but Ivory Latta answered back with a three-pointer. Back and forth it went.

Bales made two buckets. She had eight points, and they would be the last points she scored during the game. The Lynx ended with a fastbreak bucket by Candice Wiggins as time expired and the Lynx led 38-26 at halftime.

6) Free throws in first half: Lynx 8/9, Dream 1/4.

7) With the score 42-30 Lynx in the third quarter with 7:12 to go, I decided to make my escape. I would have to depend on good ol Art Eckman on AM Radio 1230/1340 to keep me company on the drive back. I wouldn't get a chance to turn the game to CSS until the fourth quarter.

The further I got from Front Page News, the more the signal began to fade out. It was then that I missed Noox deciding to kick some serious Lynx ass in the third. From what I can tell by reading the boxscore and the play by play, Noox scored 14 of her 24 points in the third quarter and closed the third quarter with two free throws that put the Dream only five down, 54-49 going into the fourth.

8) By the time I got home and flipped on CSS, there was 6:42 to go in the fourth quarter. Lennox had just hit another couple of free throws to bring her point total to 22 and close the Dream to within one point with Minnesota leading 57-56.

To say that I was optimistic doesn't capture my mood. I knew that Minnesota had only beaten us by four points at Atlanta. I knew that Minnesota had a lot of rookies. I knew that we rallied against the Sky and that we were fresh off that win.

9) With the score 62-58, the CSS announcers were commenting how tired Noox was. They were right. She would only score 2 points in the second half of the fourth.

10) Down by four with 2:36 remaining, Alison Bales -- who finally had a name on the back of her jersey -- picked up her eighth rebound of the game. With eight points and eight rebounds, she was threatening a double-double.

11) With under two minutes, the Lynx were leading by three. Wiggins made a three point shot and missed it. Bales picked up her ninth rebound! The Dream went back down the court quickly, Kristin Haynie threw it to Jennifer Lacy, who made the layup. We were down by two! And Lacy was fouled by Nicky Anosike!

12) Lacy makes the free throw. Tie game. 66-66. Crunch time.

13) Lacy fouls Nicky Anosike with 1:37 left. The Tennessee rookie has only been shooting about 70 percent from the free throw line.

Neither of Anosike's two free throws fall! And Bales picks up rebound #10!

14) Tamera Young makes the basket putting Atlanta in the lead for the very first time in the game, 68-66, with 1:30 to go. Nicole Ohlde makes a jump shot for the Lynx that misses with 1:14 left. Pigtails gets the rebound, and Noox gets fouled by Quinn with 1:02 to go. Lennox makes one of the two free throws and scores her final point of the night. The Dream are up 69-66.

15) Minnesota can't hit anything. Augustus tries a shot and misses. Nicole Ohlde gets the rebound, and Lacy picks up her fourth foul of the night.

Minnesota needs these two free throws. She misses the first one! However, she hits the second.

Dream lead 69-67. Only 50 seconds left, and they have possession.

16) Kristin Haynie gets the ball and magically drives right in to the bucket for an easy layup! Something broke down in the Minnesota defence! 71-67 Dream!

The ball goes back into Nicole Ohlde's hands. With 24 seconds left, Nicole Ohlde tries for a shot -- and it's blocked by Bales! Who gets the rebound! It's then Lennox to Lacy and we make the next shot which kills any chance of a combeack. 73-67 with fifteen seconds left.

It's been an awful fourth quarter for the Lynx. Seimone Augustus has the ball, and she makes a pass that ends up in Kristin Haynie's hands.

FINAL SCORE: Dream 73, Lynx 67. It is the first ever road win for the Dream, who go to 2-17.


WHOA. What a game, for everyone watching it. The Dream have learned the motto of Galaxy Quest: "Never give up. Never surrender."

With Alison Bales to help out, not only did we outshoot the Lynx 44 percent to 36 percent, we rebounded them as well, 43-33. Minnesota's starters are so talented that that score is hard to believe.

The Dream won the last three quarters. We picked up momentum and after that, we were hard to stop. Two wins in a row. Who could have thought it? Now let's get that third win on Friday night. I want at least four wins this year! I'm starting to get greedy!

Airball

Work picking up again. May not make another post either today or Friday. Of course, you know how much I lie about that. (/smile)

Our Happy Cult

More on our astonishing second win of the season later.

Interesting comment from Frisco Del Rosario in his Livejournal entry of 10 July 2008 at 1:23 am:

...which brings to mind those poor slobs whose business was scalping tickets outside Key Arena.

The WNBA fanbase is a cult. We weirdos don't need to buy tickets when walking up, because we've had 'em all year. (The dilettantes are big groups -- 5th grade girls teams plus guardians -- who deal with group ticket salespeople.) In the unusual case of an out-of-town cult member who doesn't have a ticket -- me last weekend -- I waited for a non-professional to unload a ticket s/he couldn't use, then relied on knowing people inside who could get me closer to the floor. In fact, I was surprised that professional scalpers tried working an WNBA game at all -- you'd think with a bit of experience, they'd know it's difficult to give WNBA tickets away for nothing (a friend had to persuade her mother to take mine).

I've only been following the WNBA for one year - this year - but those comments have the ring of truth. To my fellow cult members out there, let's just say I'm happy to be drinking the grape Kool-Aid -- and I hope that if I'm ever in Sacramento, a fellow cultist can get some tix for me.

Are the Dream Atlanta's "Loveable Losers"?

There are two teams that are struggling in the WNBA Eastern Conference. One is the Washington Mystics, and the other is the Atlanta Dream.

It seems that everyone has pretty much kind words for the Atlanta Dream. Other teams want the Dream to win -- just not to win against them. However, hardly anyone has kind words for the Mystics -- not even Mystics fans. The fans and the organization always seem to be in turmoil of some sort.

I'm thinking of awful teams like the 1962 New York Mets, who only won 40 games in a 162 games season. The city of New York fell in love with them. They were "lovable losers". The '62 Mets have only a few counterparts, because most of the time when a team loses the emotion is not love, but anger, disgust, or indifference.

So what makes a team a lovable loser? I found this list at Roar 34, which is a Baltimore Orioles blog. The author has a list of what makes a team a "loveable loser" as opposed to just a loser. I took the lessons of this list and applied them to the Dream.

1. When they lose, they lose in style.

We've lost every possible way imaginable. We've had big leads and thrown them away. We've had games where we couldn't get into it. We've had games where the starters did well, but the bench didn't. We've had games where the bench did well, but the starters didn't. If there's a way to lose a game, we've mastered it.

2. They make us laugh. They make us cry.

Katie Feenstra, the ultimate big fencepost of a player, can lose her game so quickly that fans of "LET'S GO DREAM! LET'S GO DREAM!" actually changed to "LOVELACE IN! LOVELACE IN!" during one part of the game. However, there's been no hostility displayed toward Feenstra, and the crowd always cheers her on. You have to laugh because you'd cry otherwise.

As for making us cry, I don't think Betty Lennox has smiled all year.

3. (Sometimes they actually cry.)

See Ivory Latta, also called Our Lady of Perpetual Distress.

4. For a while there, they fool us into thinking they're actually good.

Usually the Dream can play two or even three quarters of good ball. That last quarter, however, is an abomination to the fauna of the Earth. Luckily, this horrible quarter is usually the second or third quarter. If it were the fourth quarter all the time (See Dream vs. Liberty) it would be unbearable.

Betty Lennox and Ivory Latta have had career shooting games -- in Dream losses. And until Saturday, it seemed that one player was always having a career game of some sort, but everyone else was sucking.

5. Unbelievably ridiculous misfortune befalls them.

Let's see. We drafted Ann Wauters but she didn't want to come. Neither did Yelena Leuchanka. Erika de Souza had an 18 rebound game against Detroit. She only played in two games since then, and has been out with a foot injury for most of the season.

Of course, how much misfortune can you have in just one season? I'm sure other teams might have a better argument, but I'll go with the Dream as the "loveable losers" of the WNBA.

Stacey Lovelace Waived

It's official. She's missed the last two games with "personal reasons", and now she's gone. (Look under July 8th.) The last game she played was the home game against Phoenix, when she scored two points.

For the Dream, she averaged 17.2 minutes a game, 6.1 points per game, with 3.6 rebounds per game.

Whatever her problems are, I hope she is able to put them behind her and be in the WNBA next year.

P. S. This would have been posted earlier, but whenever a drop of water falls outside I lose my wireless internet. They should call it "waterless internet".

My Favorite Dream Pic

This is a great picture of the Dream. I've already posted it on the Atlanta Dream Message Board, just to make sure I get the names right. Better safe than sorry.

Rear row, left from right: Ann Strother (with hand on right shoulder), Jennifer Lacy, Katie Feenstra, Alison Bales, Kasha Terry, Erika De Souza.

Middle: Kristin Haynie (eyes shut)

Front row: Ivory Latta (pointing), Betty Lennox (pointing), Tamera Young (bottle), Chioma Nnamaka (pointing), Iziane Castro Marques.

UPDATE: Here is the larger photo. From the the Painel do Basquete Feminino.

Castro Marques Earns Starting Spot

From this link.

The scoop:

While Meadors said she is pleased with Young's effort, the coach decided it is time for Castro-Marques, a six-year veteran, to reclaim the spot she left behind when she departed for Spain in late May.

"You want your veterans to start the game because they've been there, done that," Meadors said. "Hopefully this will get us solidified in the beginning of the first quarter. First quarters have not been real kind to us lately."

And Jenna Marina asked Iziane about the brouhaha in Brazil for the first time:

Ask Castro-Marques what went down with her coach and all she will reveal is that the incident was a "coach-player disagreement."

"Just tried to put me in. I didn't want in. And that was all," she said.

In a post-game interview with Bassul that was posted on YouTube.com, Bassul said Brazil's bench was tired. When he tried to sub to keep up the energy, he said, "She said no. She didn't come back to the court. As a coach, I cannot accept that." He added that he wouldn't take her back for the Olympics.

Castro-Marques, who was a starter for Brazil's 2004 Olympic team in Athens, did say that the disagreement tainted her experience.

"I'm not going back," she said.

Ever?

She nodded her head.

(* * *)

Tamera Young only had the job part time. She had 10 points in her 24 minutes, but Izi had 10 in just 12 minutes.

Just goes to show you: when you're 1-17, there's no such thing as job security.

Where in the World is Kym Hampton?

In Thailand, of all places.

(Heads up to Tara Polen and SPMSportspage.com.)

Review: the 1997 WNBA Elite Draft

Remember this fine lady?

The Elite Draftees were a second class of draftees. One step below the allocated players, the distinction of this group was that it wouldn't be required to attend any combines or tryouts.

Liberty: 4th pick

Kym Hampton (7.5), Vickie Johnson (17)

Hampton graduated from Arizona State in 1984 and was already in her mid-thirties when she was drafted. She was a great field goal shooter, which made up for her 69 percent free throw shooting. In 2000, when she stepped into training camp, she noticed swelling in a knee, swelling which ended her basketball career.

Vickie Johnson, the second round pick, would stay with the Liberty for nine years. She went to San Antonio in 2006 and is currently playing for the Silver Stars. She would become the first Liberty player ever to reach 2,000 points and at the end of 2007, she was first all-time in Games Played. Picking up Johnson in the second round was a wonderful pick by the Liberty.

Comets: 5th pick

Wanda Guyton (0), Janeth Arcain (23)

Guyton graduated from the Univesity of South Florida in 1989. After some pro experience overseas in Italy and Germany, Wanda Guyton had a great first year with Houston, both in rebounds and rebound percentage. Unfortunately, back spasms were a problem for Guyton in 1998 and she only played one game for Houston that year, then finished her WNBA career in Detroit in 1999. She is probably best remembered for landing on her head fighting for a rebound during a playoff game in 1997 against the Charlotte Sting and being carried off on a stretcher.

A New York Times article implied that players like Hampton and Guyton hoped that the WNBA would pay well enough to keep them from having to play in Europe. Waived by the Shock in 2000, Guyton went back overseas and played her final six years in Germany, supposedly playing her last game in November 2007. (But her name is still on the roster!)

As for Janeth Arcain, the Brazilian played eight years for Houston, although she did not play in 2004 in order to prepare for the Olympics. A great shooter and ball-handler, Arcain was another integral part of that four-year Comets dynasty, but she was overshadowed by the presence of so many other great players. She would play overseas in Spain after she finished her WNBA career in 2005, and played her final game in the summer of 2007, on the Brazil squad at the Pan-American Games.

Sting: 3rd pick

Rhonda Mapp (8), Michi Atkins (--)

Rhonda Mapp graduated from Maryland in 1992. She would play four years for the Sting, from 1997 to 2000 and shoot 47.9 percent from the field as a center during her career. At the end of 2000, she was traded to the Los Angeles Sparks but never made her way into the starting rotation.

Then it began to fall apart. Mapp missed the 2002 season for "personal reasons", then was booted from the league near the end of the 2003 season for violating the anti-drug program, and would not be allowed to reapply for two years. She played for an Israeli team in 2003-04. What happened after that is unclear, but as of 2007, Mapp owned two women's wear stores and was opening a third in Charlotte.

Michi Atkins graduated from Texas Tech in 1996. She played briefly for the Israel League, and her WNBA career was over before it started, as she was waived by the Sting in 1997 without playing a game. She now works for TD Ameritrade in Texas.

Rockers: 2nd pick

Isabelle Fijalkowski (7.5), Lynette Woodard (-1.5)

Isabelle Fijalkowski played only two years for Cleveland -- but they were very good years. Fijalkowski had a field goal percentage over 50 percent. Then a contractual dispute sent the French center right back to Eurpoe, where she played until 2002.

Lynette Woodard had a lot of great accomplishments. She graduated in 1981 as the major scorer in women's college basketball. She helped the US win a gold medal in Los Angeles in 1984. She was the first woman Harlem Globetrotter. But by the time she got to the WNBA, she was 37. She played one year for Cleveland, one year for Detroit, and then retired.

Sparks: 8th pick

Daedra Charles (-0.5), Zheng Haixia (2.5)

Daedra Charles graduated in 1991 from Tennessee, played for the Olympic Team in 1992, and was a member of three US national teams. After playing overseas, she'd play for the Sparks in their inaugural year, but it was the only year she played. She would be waived by the Sparks the next year.

Afterwards, she would coach at high school, in Detroit and Auburn before being signed this year to coach at her alma mater, Tennessee. Charles is a member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

At the time she was signed, Zheng Haixia was the tallest player in the WNBA at 6'8" tall. (Margo Dydek would later exceed her in height; Haixia is tied for second.) She started in 1983 as the youngest player on her team and participated at the Olympic level. She might be arguably the best woman's player China ever produced. She is currently a coach in the Chinese Women's Basketball Association (WCBA).

Monarchs: 6th pick

Judy Mosley-McAfee (-1.5), Mikiko Hagiwara (-1)

Mosley-McAfee would only play one season for the Monarchs, and then go to Europe to play for a team in Hungary. Her only distinction in the WNBA would be that she was the first player from the University of Hawai'i to play in the WNBA, having graduated in 1990. She sort of disappeared after that.

As for Mikiko Hagiwara, her only distinction was that she would be the first player in WNBA history to be traded, in mid-1997 to Phoenix. She would conclude her career in Phoenix in 1998, where she would only play in 10 games. She has been a coach in Japan since 2001 and has coached the Japanese Women's National Team.

Starzz: 1st pick

Dena Head (-5.5), Wendy Palmer (-1)

A graduate of Tennessee in 1992, she would play in Europe before heading to the WNBA. She would play two years for the Starzz in 1997-98 and one year for the Mercury in 2000 before retiring. She was a great free throw shooter, but didn't provide much offense, with her best year 1997 where she averaged 5.7 points per game. After her WNBA career, Head would serve as an assistant coach at Central Connecticut State University until 2007.

Wendy Palmer graduated from Virginia in 1996 and would go right to the WNBA the next year. She averaged around 17 points a game while with the Starzz, and was traded to Detroit in the 1999 season. Palmer was a top ten career rebounder whose last active year was with the Seattle Storm in 2007. She was not re-signed in 2008 after the achilles tendon injury she suffered the year before deceased her production.

Mercury: 7th pick

Bridget Pettis (-5.5), Nancy Lieberman-Cline (-2.5)

Pettis graduated from Florida in 1993. Bridet Pettis had two good years with the Mercury, but she wasn't the best field goal shooter and starting with 1999 her minutes and production began to wane with each successive year. She ended her WNBA career with Indiana in 2003. Pettis continued to play overseas and tried a comeback with Phoenix in 2006. She would be hired as an assistant coach for the Mercury in 2007.

Nancy Lieberman-Cline went to Old Dominion, but did not graduate. She might be the only WNBA player who also played in the Women's Pro Basketball League, which existed from 1978 to 1981. By the time she got to Phoenix, she was already 39 and her best years were behind her. A member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, Lieberman-Cline would go on to coach the Detroit Shock and is currently a basketball commentator.

2008/18 - Dream 91, Sky 84

Present in spirit.

No, you're not reading that incorrect. We are winners. We have won a game. The fear that we might have gone the entire year without a single win is no longer justified. And with that win, there is the promise of more wins.

1) As I was walking in one direction at Philips Arena, I encountered a fan walking in the other direction. As he passed, he muttered in an African accent, "Please, God, let them win tonight."

2) It looks like Latta jerseys are the big sellers. I saw three Latta jerseys on un-Latta-esque bodies among the fans.

3) They're going to have to call us the Atlanta Music or the Atlanta Rap or the Atlanta Crooners. Recording artist Gwendy Joysen sang a couple of songs to the crowd, but set up too early. She started when the seats were mostly empty. Having better luck was a fellow called "Quinn" who sang the National Anthem. Quinn is an R & B singer and gave one of the smoothest renditions of the National Anthem I've ever heard.

4) And, despite Ivory Latta's animation...we got off to a sucky start. Kasha Terry made two back-to-back turnovers in the first quarter and we were down 19-6 in the first. Turnovers were killing us. Coach Meadors had to put in Ann Strother and Izi Castro Marques to spark an 8-0 run, hitting a three, grabbing a steal and scoring an easy layup to bring us back to within four, 21-17 at the end of the first Q.

5) We had Lacy, Feenstra, Haynie, Castro Marques and Strother on the floor, and we began to kick it in with Jennifer Lacy hitting the shot that tied it at 23-23. Another three-pointer and we led 26-23. Chicago had to call a full time out.

6) We learned from the Jumbotron that Katie Feenstra's superpower, if she had one, would be to be invisible. To which I say: NO SHIT. Atlanta Dream fans are quite familiar with Kit's invisibility.

7) We just had great ball handling in that second quarter. Then B-Money came back in and we began to aerially bombard the sky.

Strother for three.
Lennox for three.
Lacy for three. Lacy had 12 points at the end of the half.

Chicago was in shell-shock. Alison Bales didn't even have her name on her #33 jersey, but she blocked a shot to end the second quarter with us up by 46-35. Dream fans were "cautiously optimistic".

8) Atlanta Hawks "star" Zaza Pachulia was in the audience. He didn't look particularly entralled. Then again, maybe people from the country of Georgia are just naturally reserved.

9) We put Latta, Lennox, Young, Lacy and Terry back on the court to start up the third. Naturally, the starters @#$#ed it up again. By about three minutes in, we were over the limit in fouls. We had to put the Second Team in again, but our rebounding was just lazy, or maybe we were terrified of making a foul and sending Chicago to the free throw line again.

We were playing as if we were trying not to lose instead of trying to win. Chicago tied it on a basket scored off a Noox turnover. At the end of the third quarter there was some bogus shot clock violation, and Candice Dupree hit a shot to put Chicago in the lead. By the end of the third, Chicago was up again 66-64.

10) Recording artist Akon was in the audience. On the other hand, according to his Wikipedia entry he has two near-identical brothers. Akon wants to start a reality series where his near-twins try to get into clubs, get privileges, etc. by pretending they're Akon. Maybe our collective chains were just being pulled.

11) The first part of the fourth quarter...oh baby. Chicago would be up. Then Atlanta. Then Chicago. Then Atlanta. Chicago went over the limit with about four mintues left and the Dream up 79-77. The fans at Philips were collectively holding their breath.

12) Bales. Wow. She had a steal in the fourth quarter! We were all over the Sky in terms of defense. I suspect that Bales caused a lot of problems defensively for the Sky.

13) After the referees called a ticky-tack foul on Feenstra for the crime of being 6-7, I've come to the following conclusion: twenty percent of the games in the WNBA are decided by whatever the referees ate that evening. You might as well flip a coin during those games. And that is just too many damn games.

14) With Atlanta ahead 86-81, another ticky-tack over and back foul called on Ivory Latta. You know guys, I think you'd impress your future NBA refereeing masters by calling the exact same fouls when its close as when one team is leading by fifthee points.

15) Jia Perkins hits a 3-pointer. 86-84 Dream. 20.3 seconds left. Now I was praying the same prayer that that African guy was praying.

16) Bales is fouled. Hooray!

No, she misses the first shot.
No, she misses the second shot!

17) Candice Dupree commits a foul with 17.5 seconds left. Tamera Young hits a free throw, we go up 87-84, we get possession of the ball...and after that, we rest easy. We hit free throws all the way down.

18) I got to hear a Kool and the Gang song at Philips for the first time. "Cellllllebrate good times, come on!!"

19) The Mighty Streamer Cannon is used for the first time. The crowd goes wild.

Atlanta 91, Chicago 84.

DREAM WIN! DREAM WIN! DREAM WIN!!

WE DID IT! FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! THANK GOD ALMIGHTY, WE'RE FREE AT LAST!

There's a Biblical saying -- Romans 8:26 -- that says:

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness: for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words"

I'm going to turn it on its head. My words are too shallow for the depth of my feelings on our win. I've documented so many horrible games, so many hopeless nights. I thought that this chronicle would be a chronicle of The Team That Couldn't Win. I thought that there would be no balm in Gilead in 2008.

Well, now there is balm. No matter how bad things get for the rest of the season, we can always look back on July 5, 2008 when the Dream made history during their very first franchise win. I can tell you brothers and sisters: I was there. I WAS THERE!!

2008/17 - Comets 72, Dream 65

Climbing the mountain to our first win.

This might be a very brief writeup. After all, I play on attending the Sky-Dream game tonight. If I stop typing, or if this seems strangely incomplete, well I just ran out of time...just like the Dream did in the game against Houston.

1) With Chioma Nnamaka and Kasha Terry, we now have two Georgia Tech players on our roster. Go Ramblin' Wreck.

2) There were a few Houston fans in the audience. Two guys were whooping it up whenever Houston did something noteworthy on the floor. They were carrying the Lone Star flag and waving it about. I saw one guy with a Sheryl Swoopes jersey. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Swoopes wasn't on the team....

3) An horrible first quarter. I think we went 1 for 17 from the floor, and it wasn't until 2:20 to go into the quarter until Kristin Haynie scored a free throw that finally put the third point on the scoreboard for Atlanta.
3a) I believe the real reason Kristen Mann was traded is because Coach Meadors kept confusing her with Kristin Haynie.

4) An odd sight -- Kasha Terry trying to "back it in" from the front of the basket.

5) What the hell happened to Betty Lennox and Ivory Latta? They had three turnovers each and no points at the end of the first quarter. Coach Meadors suspected that something was stinking up the joint and put their asses back down on the bench.

6) Ann Strother appears in a game! Amazing! I didn't know she was still alive! I thought her face was on a milk carton somewhere!

7) Coach Meadors threw the reserves out on the floor. "You've probably been @#$#ing all year about not getting a chance to play. Well do something!" And they did! They started to haul our asses out of the pit! Betty Lennox's only significant contribution to the second quarter was finding out on the Jumbotron that her favorite food was crab legs.

8) The Dream bring it to 22-16. Houston calls a full timeout. The fans collectively smile.

9) At one point, Katie "Fencepost" Feenstra was leading with 6 points. The guy who writes for SPMSportspage.com said that Feenstra and Meadors had been working together over the season, and it looks like it finally paid off.

10) During halftime, we learned that someone had climbed Mt. Kilomanjaro and unfurled a banner of the Atlanta Dream. My guess is that he must have displeased the mountain gods. Find this man's name and burn him.

11) Then they put the starters back in. The score was 35-25 going into the third quarter. By the time that Coach Meadors swapped out the starters and put the reserves back in, it was 44-28 Houston.

12) Haynie. Izi. Kit. Lacy. Strother. This is a lineup that exists only in people's nightmares, but it was a nightmare for Houston. We brought it back to 51-45 by the end of the third quarter.
12a) Feenstra actually got a rebound, and declined to let one of the Houston players rip it out of her hands. Simply amazing.

13) During the beginning of the fourth quarter, there were all sorts of bogus calls. There was some bizarro backcourt violation call at the end of the third. Coach Meadors and one of the referees exchanged words at the beginning of the fourth and she got a technical foul.

All year, there have been complaints about the refereeing in the WNBA. I've figured it out. These are young referees wanting to earn a shot in the "bigs", so when a game gets very close, they begin to call every conceivable foul just to show the powers that be that they are on top of things. This screws everything up.

14) Michelle Snow earned a technical foul for throwing a basketball at Kasha Terry's face. It was funny to see the Dream all grab Kasha and drag her in the other direction. "Hold me back, now!"

15) Meadors, probably having no other choice, unleashed Lennox and Latta for a third time. This time, they did the job. Lennox hit a three. Then Latta answered with a three. Then Terry scored a basket. Within an eyeblink, the score went from 62-49 Comets to 62-57 Comets.

16) With only nine players, any fouls were going to hurt Houston more than they'd hurt Atlanta. Michelle Snow got her sixth foul and fouled out. That was when I got to hear this sweet music for the first time....

Na na na na
Na na na na
Hey hey hey
Goodbye!

17) We managed to close the score to 66-62, then 68-65. Houston called a full time out. Unfortunately, there were 18.7 seconds left and the only way we'd get the ball was to foul. Houston made their shots, end of story.

18) The crowd of 7400 enjoyed the hell out of that game. People were dancing, shouting, getting down. It was like a church social. Once again: Dream fans are the best fans in the WNBA.

God help the league if we start winning games. We'll be insufferable.

The Mann/Bales Trade and More Crazy Stats

I was very much influenced by a post at Rethinking Basketball that was used to evaluate rookie talent in the WNBA. The point of the post was to determine which rookies had the potential for success given their limited playing time and which were likely to fail. This inspired me to do the same regarding Mann and Bales. Neither gets starters minutes so the tools used by Q to test rookies could be useful.

The first tool I want to develop is something called "Wins Score". "Wins Score" is what we call a linear metric. All that means is that Wins Scores is one of those tools that gives a player x points for something something good, y points for doing something bad, and adds all the points together for a final total. (Remember 3x - 2y in algebra? Just like that.)

If you just can't stand not knowing the metric, here it is:

(Points + Rebounds + Steals + ½Assists + ½Blocked Shots – Field Goal Attempts – Turnovers - ½Free Throw Attempts - ½Personal Fouls)

The WNBA uses a similar metric called "Efficiency"

((Points + Rebounds + Steals + Assists + Blocked Shots) - ((Field Goal Attempts - Field Goals Made) + (Free Throw Attempts - Free Throws Made) + Turnovers))/Games

There are two differences in the two formulas. The second divides by "games" at the end. All this does is reduce the second formula to a "per game" basis.

The other difference is that Wins Score only gives half credit for assists and blocked shots. It ignores field goals and free throws made, only gives half credit for free throw attempts, and unlike Efficiency, Wins Score takes points away for personal fouls whereas Efficiency ignores personal fouls.

Most Basketball APBRmetricians like "Wins Score" a lot better than they do "Efficiency". When I switched to "Wins Score" the following results popped up.

Betty "Noox" Lennox: 26th in Efficiency, 55th in Wins Score
Ivory Latta: 40th in Efficiency, 58th in Wins Score
Tamera Young: 51st in Efficiency, 53rd in Wins Score

Furthermore, Stacey Lovelace pops up to 56th in Wins Score, above Ivory Latta. Why does everyone take such a hit in Wins Score?

First, Wins Score doesn't care how well you shoot, as opposed to Efficiency. Wins Score just cares how many points you put on the board. Secondly, turnovers hurt you in Wins Score, and they don't hurt you in Efficiency.

Betty makes a lot of turnovers for the points she makes. As the end of 2007, she was 12th in turnovers all time in the WNBA. Wins Score appropriately devalues her overall worth to the team. With Tamera Young the highest overall Wins Score leader for the Dream -- at 53rd in the wNBA -- it's no wonder that the Dream is 0-17.

All right. Let's assume that we agree that Wins Score does a better job than Efficiency in predicting a player's worth. Where do we go from there? What does this mean both for Kristen Mann and for Alison Bales?

The first thing we need to do is create some way to answer the question, "if these two players played starters minutes instead of sub minutes, what is their potential for upside?" As it turned out, this question had already been answered by a man named Kevin Broom.

He created something called a "Diamond Rating". The point was to find "diamonds in the rough" which had been overlooked, players who might be able to make something happen if they had playing time.

The formula is a bit more complex, so I'll just summarize how it works. I changed Broom's formula and assumed that a WNBA starter would play 33 1/3 minutes per game. (His formula is an NBA formula, and he uses 40 as the starter's benchmark.)

a) Figure out what the Wins Score would be if the player played 33 1/3minutes and divide that by games played,
b) Subtract their current Wins Score per games played,
c) Add the difference between their win score per 33 1/3 minutes divided by games played and the league's average win score per 33 1/3 minutes divided by games played.

A and B determines how close the player comes to a starter. C gives them credit if they're producing more than an average player.

We then exclude certain groups of players. Anyone who's playing less than 2.5 minutes per game is chopped off -- we don't have enough data on them. Anyone playing more than 21 minutes per game is chopped off -- they're earning close to starter's minutes already.

WNBA leaders in PADR (Petrel Adjusted Diamond Rating)

CON Danielle Page 39.83
HOU Sancho Lyttle 19.28
MIN Vanessa Hayden 13.25
NYL Tiffany Jackson 10.95
WAS Crystal Langhorne 10.52
PHX LaToya Pringle 9.89
SAC Crystal Kelly 8.96
LAS Sidney Spencer 8.54
CON Tamika Raymond 6.98
MIN Kristen Rasmussen 6.66

As it turned out, Sancho Lyttle is lighting the league up now that she's had a chance to play. She lit up the Dream for 18 rebounds on Thursday. (Danielle Page is an outlier, as she barely makes the 2 1/2 minutes per game cutoff. I'd ignore her.)

Let's look at the Diamond Ratings of Alison Bales and Kristen Mann.

Bales 6.31 12th
Mann -0.61 67th

According to the Diamond Rating, Bales might have something extra to offer if you give her time. (We don't know yet where the cutoff in Diamond Rating for the WNBA rests. In the NBA, "diamonds in the rough" usually score eight or better in Diamond Rating.) Whereas Mann, according to Diamond Rating, doesn't have much to offer if you give her extra time.

Is Bales a real "Diamond in the Rough?" Is this going to be one of those trades that's going to work out very well for the Dream in the end and help us turn things around? The only way we'll know is that if Alison Bales is given significant minutes on the floor. We probably won't see that happen in todays Sky/Dream game, but we might see it later on in the year.

And just remember...sometimes the statistics lie...!

It Happened Elsewhere!

Silver Stars 68, Monarchs 67. With five seconds left, Sophia Young of the Silver Stars hits a bucket that ties the game, and is fouled by Adrian Williams-Strong of the Monarchs in the act. Young hits the free throw that wins the game. Ticha Penicheiro of the Monarchs missed a shot with seven seconds left, a miss which led to the Silver Stars win.

Storm 84, Liberty 71. Lauren Jackson of the Storm scored a season high 33 points in a game the Storm led from the beginning. The Storm shot 46.5 percent from the field. The Liberty managed to cut the Storm's lead from 20 to seven with 3:40 left on the clock, but the Liberty would not hit another basket for the rest of the game.

Lynx 88, Sparks 70. The Lynx started a 12-0 run at the top of the fourth quarter that put the game out of reach for the Sparks. The loss put the Sparks in second place in the Western Conference. Candace Wiggins had 19 points and Seimone August scored a season high 36 points.

Kristen Mann Traded

The big news among Dream players is that Kristen Mann has just been traded for Alison Bales of the Indiana Fever.

We'll take a look at the stats to see if either side got a clear advantage in the trade.

Efficiency

Kristen Mann: 3.85 in 223 minutes
Alison Bales: 3.79 in 126 minutes

So we can see that Mann and Bales basically have the same output for their respective teams, with the caveat that Bales has played about half as many minutes as Mann.

Versatility

Kristen Mann: 1.76
Alison Bales: 0.84

Egad. Then again, Bales's versatility stats might be in a cocked hat. She's had a grand total of two assists, but she only plays nine minutes a game. For players who have at least ten minutes a game, the least versatile player is Lisa Willis of the New York Liberty.

Now, we're going to introduce a new stat called "usage". Usage basically counts turnovers, attempted field goals, assists (times 0.33), free throw attempts (times 0.44), multiplies the sum of all of those by 40 and divides by minutes played.

What does this algebraic mess add up to? It estimates "possessions used while on court" and tells how much the player participates in the offense.

Usage

Kristen Mann: 11.63
Alison Bales: 13.85

Here's an interesting statistic: of Atlanta Dream players, Mann is second to last in possessions used, contributing little to the offense in terms of minutes played. Whereas on the Fever, Bales is third from last. Bales contributes more to an offense in her minutes played than Mann does.

Furthermore, Alison Bales is 6 feet 7 inches tall. She's a center and she's a friggin tower. Imagine a night when Bales and Feenstra are clicking on all pistons.

So was this a good trade or a bad one? We'll know more when Bales gets more minutes. Who knows, it might be for the best.

Ivory Latta will be interested in reuniting with Allison Bales. Of course, they've met before....




Postscript: Usage values for all Dream players:

Lennox: 29.58 (fourth in WNBA)
Terry: 20.69 (all teams)
Latta: 20.28
Feenstra: 20.06
Castro Marques: 19.00
Lovelace: 18.24
Young: 18.23
Lacy: 18.17
De Souza: 15.66
Nnamaka: 14.78
Haynie: 14.69
(Mann: 11.63)
Strother: 7.25 (last in WNBA)

Happy Fourth of July

Happy Fourth of July. If blogging is light, I'm attached to a hamburger.

Thompson, Dixon, Mabika All Out for Tonight's Game

Some good news heading into tonight. The following players should be out for the Dream/Comets game tonight.

Tina Thompson -- fractured finger. She is currently on the inactive list according to the Houston Roundball Review.
Tamecka Dixon -- sore Achilles tendon. Will be in uniform, but will not play.
Mwadi Mabeka -- has a right knee cartilage tear. Underwent arthroscopic surgery. Out for 4-6 weeks.

The last time we played Houston, we lost at Houston 88-79. Thompson and Mabika were both active in that game. They won't be active in this one. Furthermore, as the Houston Roundball review points out, Latta and "Noox" combined for 50 points in that game.

It Happened Elsewhere!

Fever 74, Sky 67. The Fever (8-8) led by 18 points at one time in the fourth quarter and the outcome was hardly in doubt. Tamika Catchings of the Fever scored a season-high 18 points while coming back from a right Achilles tendon injury. Candice Dupree of the Sky (5-10) had 20 points and 13 rebounds.

The Agony of Defeat Leads to the Thrill of Victory

While looking for the latest column by Josh Bagriansky in Score Atlanta, a local sports magazine, I bumped into a column by Tad Arapoglou called "History Says Dream Won't Struggle Forever". He gives several examples of teams that ran into terrible years or horrible luck that managed to turn it around in a positive way just a short time later.

(The magazine is available here. Go down to "Latest Issue" and click. Bagriansky is at page 11, Arapoglou is at page 22.)


1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers

Ignominy: Started year 0-15. Finished with 9-73 record, worst in NBA history.
Three years later: Went 46-36. Won divisional championship following two years.

1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Ignominy: Went 0-14 first year. Started 0-12 following year.
Three years later: Reached NFC championship game.

1988 Baltimore Orioles

Ignominy: Started season 0-21.
Next year: Led AL East for most of season. Finished 87-75, two games short of making playoffs.

2003 Detroit Shock

Ignominy: Started season 0-13.
Next year: You have to ask?

2008/16 - Mercury 97, Dream 79

"Whose foot?"

"They say our love won't pay the rent/Before it's earned our money's all been spent..."

Oh. Sorry. I was flashing back to the movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray plays a man who is forced by fate to live the exact same day of his life over and over and over again. Just like the Dream, except that Bill Murray's character was a jerk and deserved his fate. The Dream didn't deserve this.

Who among the basketball gods have we offended? How long, oh Lord, how long?

Some thoughts.

1) The game was not just about who showed up, but who didn't show up. With each team forced to dress only eleven players, Phoenix chose to sit Cappie Pondexter out. Atlanta chose to sit Katie Feenstra out.

For Phoenix to sit Cappie out was a real slap in the face. Yes, Phoenix wants to win it all again and they want Cappie well-rested. Well...how about playing Cappie fewer minutes, huh? The message to Atlanta from Phoenix was "We're going to win this one with one hand tied behind our backs."

I no longer hate New York, or Detroit, or even Connecticut. As far as I'm concerned, I'll be sticking pins in my Cappie Patch dall for the rest of the year.

Now, let's talk about sitting Katie Feenstra out. This left Chioma Nnamaka and Ann Strother dressed for combat. Neither of them came into the game.

An article I linked to earlier mentioned Coach Meadors saying that she had four centers to start the year and due to circumstances beyond her control, she was left with one...Feenstra. Sitting Kit left us with no centers. Kasha Terry played over half the game, but beyond that it was the Center-of-the-Moment. "Are you over six feet tall and have female genitalia? Come and play center for the Dream!"

I don't know why Katie wasn't dressed. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe she's just not suitable for the running game. Maybe she's in Coach Meadors's doghouse. But there's no excuse not to put Nnamaka and Strother in the game. Hell, put them in late in the fourth quarter. That game was lost anyway. Phoenix was throwing their scrubs in, why shouldn't we throw in our scrubs? If you consider Kristin Haynie's minimal contribution (two minutes, two points), we basically played this game with eight players.

1a) Make that six players.

Stacey Lovelace: 20 minutes, 2 points.
Izi Castro Marques: 21 minutes, 0 points.

We need to call an Amber Alert. (That's a Georgia joke.)

2) Comcast handed out rally towels during the game. They did not work. Steelers, we ain't. I suppose there will be no Terrible Towel for us, except for the kind that dries our tears.

3) Taurasi got the most cheers of any Mercury player. I suspect she had her own cheering session of what seemed to be a bunch of frat guys in the upper deck. One was holding up a sign asking Taurasi to marry him.

4) Since this was an ESPN2 game, they brought out the dry ice machine and everything. Even the injured Erika de Souza tried to help, futilely trying to wave some smoke around.

5) We got off to what seemed to be a rousing start. Betty Lennox (note: I spelled it "Noox" for a few seconds -- maybe it can be a new nickname) hit a three-pointer and Tamara "Pigtail Power" Young scored a basket for the Dream to take a 5-0 lead.

6) They put Kasha Terry out there in her first hometown game in an Atlanta uni in the first quarter, and we immediately saw the difference between Feenstra and Terry. Feenstra lets balls get ripped out of her grasp. Terry doesn't. She simply keeps pushing her way in, usually drawing fouls. (She scored 11 points last night, probably because she drew zero personal fouls.)

7) We had it tied 25-25 going into the second quarter. Then...well, I won't say that Phoenix turned on the juice. Rather, a magic wand was waved and the Dream turned into the Washington Generals. They went 7 for 10 to start the game, but they only scored 9 points in the second quarter (Phoenix scored 33).

Betty Lennox went AWOL. There were tons of missed assignments, bad screens. Atlanta must have been the most patriotic team in the league last night, because to them, the word "defense" is French! As late as 3:19 in, we had only scored two points for the quarter.

The only highlight of the second quarter was learning that Ivory Latta's favorite food is meat loaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. I swear I'll send the Powder Blues some meat loaf if that's what it takes to win games!

8) As halftime started, and we were down 24 points, I saw a fan with a T-shirt that said WHY? My thoughts exactly.

9) Assist to turnover ratio for halftime:

Mercury 18/6
Dream 11/13

10) Terry had scored her 10th point in the third quarter -- it would be a career high game for her -- but Taurasi was on her way to 20 points and more. Highlight of the third quarter -- the cheers from the crowd when they learned that felonious rapper T. I. was in the house.

11) However, the Dream managed to close it to 12 points at one time, 71-59, in the third quarter. When you're leading by 24 points, you start to ease up. I supposed we committed the ultimate sin -- reminding the Mercury that we existed.

12) That was when the Mercury started whipping our asses again. I took some guff for saying that we got whipped during a game on the Atlanta Dream Message Board -- but I defy someone to tell me that we didn't get whipped. The Mercury went on a 13-0 run in the fourth quarter.

Usually, the haters say, "my rec league team could beat a WNBA team". Well, buddy, you're wrong. That hypothetical rec league team couldn't have beaten 11 of the 12 WNBA teams playing on Tuesday night. I'll let my readers guess who the 12th team is. Maybe they couldn't have beaten that unnamed 12th team any other night, but last night? That 12th team were @#^&%&@)+!

13) Highlight of the fourth quarter: learning that Kristen Mann's dog is named "Mr. Sawyer".

14) Fast break points for the game:

Phoenix 24
Atlanta 1

What fast break?

15) To grind the heel in our eyes for a final time, they brought in Yuko Oga, the WNBA player who broke up The Beatles. Having limited time all year, she came to make the most of what Phoenix was going to give her. With just a few seconds left on the clock, Oga made that "slow dribble" that signifies to the court and the crowd that the clock is going to be allowed to run out and the game will end.

Then the little #^$&* tries a three pointer with a second left as time expires and the Dream are basically standing around. If she had hit it, Phoenix would have had 100 points. Little rat. Bet Coach Gaines put her up to it.

16) The attendance: 9,795 fans saw something called "basketball" -- and still loved their Dream. They were waving signs! They were dancing! They were cheering! We were down by 24 points and the crowd still wasn't out of the game.

Face it: Atlanta Dream fans are the gods and goddesses of the WNBA. When 9,700 people will come to see an 0-15 team, that means something. No one may love the Dream, but we do, and we always will.

(* * *)

Okay. Let's not see that again on Thursday. I might have to bring eyewash if I do.

For what I think about Coach Meadors, go back to #1, above. If we go 0-17 on Thursday, drop the axe. We can lose our remaining 17 games just as easily without Coach Meadors as with her. Maybe we should just give Ivory Latta some chalk and let her draw up plays.

For now, I'm going to ask my wife about incense and magic spells. I might have to rub the ol' cabbit's foot in order to get the Dream a victory on Thursday night.

It Happened Elsewhere!

Liberty 89, Sparks 78. Scoring 38 points in the fourth quarter will definitely break up a tight game, with the Liberty (8-7) erasing an 11-point gap to win the game. The Sparks (10-5) would miss 10 of 15 fourth quarter shots wile Shameka Christon of the Liberty scored a career high 28 points. Candace Parker had 18 points and 10 rebounds for the Sparks.

Sun 78, Comets 68. Despite being behind by 14 in the first quarter and drawing three technicals in the second half, the Sun (13-5) hung on for a win. The Comets (7-9) managed to cut the Sun lead to one with 5:37 remaining, but Jamie Carey of the Sun would hit a three pointer and the Sun would never look back. Asjha Jones led the Sun with 15 points. Lindsay Whalen had nine assist to set the Sun career assists record.

Sky 73, Lynx 71. In a game where both teams shot under 70 percent from the Line, the Sky (5-9) managed to edge the hometown Lynx (8-8). Candice Dupree led the Sky with 26 points and 10 rebounds. The Sky managed to overcome 16 turnovers in their win.

Silver Stars 79, Shock 72 (OT). Becky Hammon of the Silver Stars (10-6) scored 10 of San Antonio's 14 overtime points to beat the Shock almost (12-6) by herself. Eight of Hammon's 19 points came on overtime free throws. Deanna Nolan missed a shot with one second left in regulation that might have won it for the Shock.

Monarchs 87, Mystics 81. The Monarchs (8-8) beat the Mystics (6-10) for the eighth straight time they've faced each other. Despite Alana Beard's 31 points for Washington, Ticha Penicheiro of the Monarchs made the difference, putting the Monarchs ahead for good with a basket at 1:30 left in the fourth quarter, then adding the next bucket and two more free throws.

Illegal Number on Jersey

Blogging might be light today. Work has picked up again. No promises either way.

Chat With Ivory Latta

ESPN just posted the results of their chat with Ivory Latta. There are the typical mix of game questions and personal interest questions, but this one stuck out in my mind.

Mike (Washington, DC): Seems like the tempo and fast break game has really picked up the last 5 to 6 games. Has this become a point of emphasis as the season has continued? Or do you think as you've become more comfortable leading this team you've been able to implement Coach Meadors' plans with more success?

Ivory Latta: (11:41 AM ET ) As the games go on, I've become more confident and Coach Meadors has a lot of confidence in me. I definitely love the uptempo game like we had at North Carolina. I like that we're playing this way in Atlanta. The uptempo game allows us to get some easy baskets.

Latta also mentions that there's a need to control the tempo of the game against Phoenix tonight. Phoenix still has a lot of "run and gun" left in the Mercury from the Westhead era.

However, the implied change to an uptempo game makes me wonder if Coach Meadors is adjusting the game plan to fit into Ivory's strengths as a player. If so, good decision.

Assisted and Unassisted Field Goals

Some interesting stats by Swanny. Go for the complete list at the link.

Swanny has three list where Atlanta has players on the top 10 or 20. The first is Highest Percentage of Assisted Field Goals. We have two players on that list. Stacey Lovelace is fifth with 85.7 percent of her field goals coming on assists (30-35). Katie Feenstra is eighth on the list with 82.8 percent (24-29). (The leader? Noelle Quinn of the Lynx, with 88.9 percent assisted.)

The second list is Highest Percentage of Unassisted Field Goals. Ivory Latta is ninth on that list with 65.6 percent (40-61). (The leader? Ticha Penicheiro of the Monarchs with 88.1 percent unassisted.)

The third list might be the most interesting...Top Assist Pairs. Tied for tenth with two other pairs is the pair Betty Lennox FROM Ivory Latta. Ivory, when she isn't making her own shots, has assisted Betty 19 times this year. The top of the list is Lauren Jackson FROM Sue Bird, an amazing 44 times.