Liga Feminina Playoffs

According to p_d_swanson over at RebKell, I was right about the Spanish League playoffs being both a four-team affair and an eight-team affair. Here's why:

The top four teams play for the league championship. The semifinal round is a best-of-three series where the following teams play:

#1 Ros Casares vs. #4 San José
#2 Perfumerias vs. #3 Rivas Ecópolis

The five-through-eight teams play for two spots in the Eurocup:

#5 Olesa vs. #8 Hondarribia
#6 Joventut vs. #7 Ibiza

I don't know if the series ends after the best-of-three series or if the two winners go on to play for an imaginary fifth place in the Spanish League. All I know is that Erika de Souza and Sancho Lyttle will be that much slower getting home.

LFB (Spain) 26/2008 - Estudiantes 75, Zaragoza 50

Estudiantes celebrates after being assured a place in the LFB next year.

The great thing about relegation - the movement of the lowest finishing teams out of the league - is that it makes the games that take place between the worst teams in a league important. Those teams are literally fighting for their future.

This made the most important game in the final week of the regular season of the Liga Feminina the game between Estudiantes (6-20) and Zaragoza (6-20). The two worst teams in the Liga Feminina are relegated to the Liga Feminina 2, and the top two Liga Feminina 2 teams move up. Extrugasa was doomed to relegation. This left room for one more team. The winner of Estudiantes/Zarazoga would be rescued. The loser would be consigned to the lower league. For Nikki Teasley and Estudiantes, it was the outcome they desired as Estudiantes crushed Zaragoza 75-50.

The box score is here. For Mann Filter Zaragoza, a nine-year run in the Liga Feminina had just come to an end. They had made the semifinals twice in those nine years.

The defeat was fairly decisive. Playing on their own home court, Estudiantes took a 19-15 lead after the first quarter - and then held Zaragoza to just eight points in the second quarter - Estudiantes switched from the zone to the man-to-man in mid quarter - leading 37-23 at halftime. Both teams played evenly in the third quarter, with Zaragoza still down 14 at the end of thirty minutes - 54-40. Zaragoza would only score 10 points in the fourth quarter, and the hopes for a comeback were extinguished.

Estudiantes hit 46 percent of its field goals. Zaragoza only hit 30 percent of its field goal attempts. They were doomed. They lost in every aspect of the game to Estudiantes - Estudiantes out-rebounded Zaragoza, they held themselves to just nine turnovers and even thought they went a horrid 12-for-22 at the free throw line, they still made seven more points off free throws than the 5-for-7 Zaragoza.

Estudiantes

Brooke Wyckoff: 16 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists.
Elin Eldebrink: 17 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals.
Nikki Teasley: 6 points, 2 rebounds. Teasley only played 17 minutes.

Zaragoza

LaToya Thomas: 21 points, 6 rebounds. Thomas has played for both Detroit and Minnesota of the WNBA in 2008.
Paula Palomares Valiente: 20 points, 5 rebounds, 2 steals.
LaToya Turner: Zero points, and 7 rebounds with four personal fouls in 23 minutes of play from the Ohio State graduate.

WNBA and a Territorial Drafting System

Rod Steier at the US Sportspages.com blog writes about the WNBA Draft and suggests a system that the NBA and NFL used to use way back in the days when they were getting started - a territorial drafting system.

How did the Territorial Pick system work? From 1950 to 1965, if a team chose to it could abandon the right to pick in the first round and claim a player from the immediate territorial area of the team - the "immediate territorial area" being defined as a 50-mile radius from the team's home city.

The NBA used this system for 16 years - from every draft from 1950 to 1965. The rule was stretched in the cases of Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry Lucas. The Philadelphia Warriors argued that even though Wilt the Stilt didn't play college ball in Philadelphia, he was born there and played high school basketball there. The case of the Cincinnati Royals and Jerry Lucas was different - Ohio State was outside Cincinnati's 50-mile radius, but the Royals argued that shouldn't matter because there was only one NBA team in Ohio anyway. (The Royals could have used the birth argument, as Lucas was born in Middletown, OH.) In each case, the NBA agreed - Chamberlain went to the Warriors and Lucas to the Royals.

So how would such a system work? Who would get first dibs on who? It's way too complicated to calculate quickly, but the Atlanta Dream would end up with the rights to anyone from Georgia Tech, Georgia State, or Kennesaw State - sadly, the University of Georgia is more than 50 miles from Atlanta. No player from any of those schools has ever been a first round draft pick under the current draft system - the closest we've come is Chioma Nnamaka, Sonja Mallory or Kasha Terry, all of whom were second round draft picks from Georgia Tech.

The Connecticut Sun would love such a rule - they could pick any UConn player they wanted in the first round. Since Knoxville, TN is more than 50 miles from Atlanta, GA, let me say that I am in complete opposition to this rule. Now, if we could move Knoxville to 50 miles within Atlanta's borders....

Draft Acquisition Profile: Angel McCoughtry

Name: Angel McCoughtry
Born: September 10, 1986
Place of Birth: Baltimore, MD
Height: 6-1 (1.85 m)
Weight: 160 lbs (73 kg)
High Schools: St. Francis High School (Baltimore); the Patterson School (North Carolina)

Position: Forward

Kudos:

Baltimore Metro Player of the Year (2003)
Led St. Francis to Catholic League Championship (2004)
WBCA High School Star (2004)
Led Patterson to National Championship (2005)
Big East All-Freshman Team (2006)
Big East Player of the Year (2007)
Gold Medal winner for United States at Pan Am Game s(2007)
All Big East First Team (2007-08)

Nickname: None yet.

Profile

Angel McCoughtry was born in Baltimore Maryland, the daughter of Roi and Sharon McCoughtry. Roi was the head pastor at Holy Nation Tabernacle in Baltimore, and Angel got her ball playing genes from Daddy - he was a 6-5 center at Coppin State in his playing days.

Angel's mother Sharon said that Angel was a temperamental child, often driving her mother to tears. She found a way to work off this temperament in basketball, playing against boys in her Northwood neighborhood. She was the star of her high school team, even though Brenda Frese of Maryland felt she was raw in talent and that she was "difficult to like" - McCoughtry already had a reputation for being outspoken. However, Angel had a lot of desire with this temperament. At 16, she pestered her father to play on his men's team at the church. Roi didn't want his daughter to get hurt...but Angel ended up stealing the ball from him and ringing up points.

She decided to play for St. John's, but ran into a problem - academic deficiency. She couldn't post a good SAT score. McCoughtry wanted to move on to junior college, the tried-and-true way out for those with academic difficulties. The problem was her parents wouldn't have it. They sent her to Patterson, a Christian school in North Carolina where she would spend a year working on academics.

McCoughtry hated it at Patterson, comparing the place to a prison where there was no TV and nothing to do. She was forced to buckle down with the books, but her parents had to talk her into staying. Angel stuck it out and led Patterson to a basketball championship. It became time for McCoughtry to enter the recruiting process all over again.

Maryland was a natural choice. The problem was that Maryland would have Marissa Coleman as a freshman and Angel felt they were too similar - indeed, Coleman would be the #2 pick in the 2009 Draft after McCoughtry. Angel didn't want to have to compete with playing time. McCoughtry had taken a visit to Louisville just to get time away from the Patterson campus and she liked the place.

Her first year was a struggle where she had an attitude. She slept during workouts. She mouthed off to referees. She didn't shoot free throws. Tom Collen turned her attitude around by telling her that he didn't want her shooting at all after a bad performance because "You can't shoot!" She was determined to prove him wrong, working on her shooting whenever she could.

Jeff Walz became coach at Louisville after Collen left after McCoughtry's freshman year. This is when he put together the now-famous tape of McCoughtry's slouching, sighing and negative body language whenever her teammates missed a pass from her. McCoughtry was shocked when she saw it. She had never seen what other people had seen. She'll never have a "poker face" - she's too passionate - but she's a lot better at hiding her frustration than before.

Angel plans on writing a fiction book - well, more a roman a clef - called "The Angel Who Wanted to B-more". It's about...oh, a girl growing up in Baltimore who plays basketball and grows up to become a leader. The book is carried around on a flash drive and Angel continues to update it. Here's hoping that one of those chapters of the book is where the main character celebrates a WNBA championship in Atlanta.

A New Blog - WNBA Brasil

Listen, if you want to follow the WNBA and your native language happens to be Portugese or if you just want to follow the W from a Brazilian perspective, I'm adding the WNBA Brasil Blog as a left hand link. The blog is written in Portugese, but you should know how to use Google Translate by now. I hope to see you there!

LFB 26/2008 - Olesa 69, Ibiza 63

Like the Ros Casares-Extrugasa, one team had more to play for than the other. Olesa (17-9) had an outside chance of moving to fourth place if San Jose lost. For Ibiza (14-12), they could have possibly moved up if Joventut lost but the difference between fourth and fifth is bigger than the difference between sixth and seventh when eight teams go to the playoffs. Olesa secured the 69-63 win and home field advantage in the first round.

I keep reading that there will be only four teams going to the playoffs in the Liga Feminina instead of eight teams; I don't know what to believe. If there were only four places, Olesa had to fight all the much harder.

The box score is here.

Ibiza got off to a slow start, scoring only 10 points in the first ten minutes. Olesa was up 21-10 at the end of the first quarter, and by halftime, the lead was 39-27. Ibiza won each of the remaining quarters, but it wasn't enough to come back and win the game.

Both teams shot evenly well - Olesa hit 41 percent of their field goal attempts and Ibiza hit 40 percent. Ibiza had the edge in rebounding - that's invariably the case when Sancho Lyttle is on your team. Ibiza, however, would turn the ball over 19 times and they sent Olesa to the free throw line 19 times - where Olesa hit 16 of those 19 shots.

Olesa

Cristal Kelly: 14 points and 8 rebounds for the Sacramento Monarchs forward.
Olga Podkovalnikova: 9 points, 9 rebounds.
Anna Cruz Lebrato: 18 points, 7 rebounds, 6 turnovers.

Ibiza

Sancho Lyttle: 17 points, 14 rebounds. Are we really surprised by Sancho's double-doubles anymore?
Silvia Morales: 16 points, 9 rebounds. However, 33 percent shooting.
Shannon Johnson: 4 points on 2-for-10 shooting. Shannon's shooting might be why Ibiza lost the game.

LFB 26/2008 - Ros Casares 84, Extrugasa 82

A reunion for Iziane Castro Marques (pictured) and Erika de Souza.

Extrugasa (5-21) might not have been fighting for survival - perhaps their designation to the Liga Feminina 2 was ordained as they finished with the worst record in the Liga Feminina (the bottom two teams go to the lower league). Perhaps they were playing for pride. Perhaps Ros Casares (25-1), which clinched the best record in the Liga Feminina weeks ago just didn't care. Whatever happened, Ros Casares came close to being beaten at home during the last game of the season with an 84-82 loss.

The box score is here. The win closes Ros Casares's best regular season in their history. A gallery of the game is here.

Extrugasa came out strong at the beginning of the first quarter. They led 14-7 before Amaya Valdemoro warmed up with a couple of 3-pointers and El Ros closed the gap to 19-14 at the end of the first quarter. Ros Casares, however, has too many weapons and Candice Wiggins gave Ros Casares some fresh blood, with Ros Casares only down by two, 40-38 going into halftime. Ros Casares finally took the lead in the third quarter and led 66-60 with ten minutes to go.
Extrugasa managed to get close - a 3-pointer by Iziane Castro Marques closed the gap to 82-80 - but there wasn't enough time to finish off Ros Casares.

Ros Casares hit 52 percent of their field goal attempts compared to 46 percent for Extrugasa - but Extrugasa went 10-for-21 in 3-pointers. Furthermore, they managed to out-rebound Ros Casares 36 to 32. However, Extrugasa turned the ball over 16 times and only hit six free throws - free throw shooting has been a problem for Extrugasa all year. Maybe Extrugasa will do better next year in LFB 2.

Ros Casares

Erika de Souza: 19 points, 7 rebounds. 7-for-11 shooting.
Delisha Milton-Jones: 20 points, 7 rebounds, 4 turnovers.
Amaya Valdemoro: 3 points, 4 steals, 4 turnovers.
Candace Wiggins: 5 points.

Extrugasa

Iziane Castro Marques: 28 points on 10-for-19 shooting. Iziane made a valiant effort, but she can't be a one-woman team for Extrugasa.
Elisha Turek: 10 points, 11 rebounds, 3 steals.
Maria Gomez Novo: 16 points, 6 rebounds, 5 turnovers.

LSBL Finals 3/2008 - SK Cēsis 88, TTT Rīga 57

You should see what the coach was drinking!

This Thursday, the potential deciding game of the Latvian League's Finals were being played on the same day that new player were being drafted in the WNBA. There was a danger of the finals being overshadowed, and with SK Cēsis holding a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, that danger was all the more. SK Cēsis would make short work of TTT Rīga on its own home court, winning 88-57 to sweep the Latvian finals and become the new Latvia Women's League Champions!

The box score is here. With the Latvian championship decided, the only thing left for SK Cēsis this season is to take the Baltic Women's Basketball League championship.

There are two galleries: a game gallery and a championship gallery.

Good rebounding got SK Cēsis off to a 7-0 start. TTT Rīga fought back to take a 12-10 lead of their own but SK Cēsis raced out ahead to take a 25-16 lead at the end of the first quarter. The second quarter was horrible for TTT Rīga as they were held to nine points and by halftime, the visitors led 47:25 in front of a crowd of disappointed TTT Rīga fans. In the second half, the Latvian press reported that TTT Rīga came back onto the court a defeated team, going though the motions as SK Cēsis won each of the remaining quarters.

SK Cēsis hit 53 percent of their attempted field goals - and TTT Rīga only hit 34 percent of theirs. That was the game right there. TTT Rīga was outrebounded 42-31 but had more offensive rebounds than their opponents. TTT Rīga would turn the ball over only nine times...but SK Cēsis only had five turnovers. SK Cēsis went to the free throw line 25 times, hitting 20 shots.

TTT Rīga

Aija Brumermane: 10 points, 17 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals.
Zane Eglīte: 7 points, 7 rebounds
Merike Anderson: 20 points on 8-for-20 shooting. 5 turnovers, 4 personal fouls.

SK Cēsis

Kristen Mann: 20 points, 14 rebounds, 6 assists. 8-for-13 shooting, an amazing game.
Kelly da Silva Santos: 12 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists.
Tamera Young: 14 points, 9 rebounds in just 18 minutes played.

The WNBA Draft Experience, Part I

Subtitle: "Or, How I Defeated Shavonte Zellous"



Okay, you're all dying to hear about how my two days went at the WNBA Draft Event. So I'm here to tell you the whole thing.

I bid money on a two day package to attend the 2009 WNBA Draft. Here's what the package offered:

April 8th

- Player Meet & Greet at the NBA Store on 5th Avenue
- Following the NBA Store event, you will ride with the WNBA Draftees to ESPNZone in New York City. At the ESPNZone you will have dinner (alcohol not included) and the opportunity to participate in a pop-a-shot competition with and against WNBA Draftees.

April 9th

- 2 tickets to the 2009 WNBA Draft presented by adidas at the NBA Studios in New Jersey.
- Be in a photo with the #1 WNBA Draft pick taken the day of the Draft.

To my shock, I won the auction. I was having some misgivings - I would have to provide my own transportation and hotel space - but once you click that button, 'what's done is done'. To my surprise, I managed to win the damned thing. I would have to start making my plans.

My goal - to fly into New York City on Wednesday morning, zoom through two days of entertainment provided by the WNBA, and then return home on a red-eye flight to Atlanta that left LaGuardia at 6:30 am so that I could be back to the office on Friday. My wife outfitted me in the proper finery - the goal was to not look like I had misplaced my "WILL WORK FOR FOOD" sign - and I got on that plane and began the experience of a lifetime.

(* * *)

Wednesday, April 8 2009

I arrived at New York and ended up at the Sheraton New York a little earlier than expected. To top off my confusion, I found myself unable to calculate a 25 percent tip for a $29 cab ride from LaGuardia to the Sheraton. (The toll through the Lincoln Tunnel threw off my calculations.) As a result, I ended up paying the man $40. That cabbie must have thought I was the Prince of Men.

My arrival was a little earlier than expected - my room was not ready. So I stowed my luggage at the Sheraton New York and walked down to one of my favorite haunts back in the days when I actually lived in New York - Midtown Comics at 40th Street in Manhattan. After stealing some reads, I made my way back to the hotel, picked up some McFood, bought some soda for myself at the local Duane Reade and began to prepare myself for the experience.

As it turned out, the NBA Store is exactly two "long blocks" to the east of the Sheraton New York, so I simply walked there. I'll review the NBA Store. If you like clothing related to the NBA, it appears to be a fantastic place. There are all kinds of clothes, accessories and clothing (including replica uniforms) related to the NBA. One feature of the store is a "center court" where one walks down a long circular walkway with the surface of a parquet floor and down to the lower level.

The lower level is where they keep their WNBA stuff. Frankly, there's not much there. There were no replica uniforms of Atlanta Dream, but there were replica unis for other team. Whalen for the Sun, Ford for the Shock, Bird for the Storm...there was generally one replica uniform per represented team. There were some bumper stickers and other knick-knacks. That's it.

In a store, you come face to face with the economic realities of the WNBA. A big store like the NBA Store can only put things on the shelf that they think will sell, and clearly, WNBA merchandice doesn't have the selling power of NBA stuff. However, there's just so much more NBA stuff. The NBA has been around for over 50 years; the WNBA has been around for just ten. Even so, one can buy all kinds of variety of throwback uniform at the NBA Store. If you're an NBA fan, the place is heaven; if you really just care about the WNBA and not about the NBA, there's not much of a point to visit.

(Idea: Someone might be able to run a small store in New York devoted to WNBA merchandise only. They probably wouldn't need a lot of space, but it would probably be more intimate than the crowded NBA Store. They might not be able to sell a lot of it, but the racks would be full.)

At the time, I only had two more goals - to meet RebKell message poster Queenie (known as Rebecca on the Game Notes of Dooooooom blog and to meet Christine, who was my contact for the event. Christine worked for NBA Entertainment and would be shepherding the two of us through these events.

One question you might be asking is, "You're married. Why didn't you take your wife?" First, my wife has only recently found a job as an executive for a concert and event planning company in Atlanta. She had been hired so recently that it probably wasn't the best time to drop everything for two days. Second, there was cost. Third, my wife doesn't care very much about basketball or really, any other sport. (Although she is partial to Roberto Clemente.) It wouldn't have been enjoyable for her, so she sent me off by myself with her blessings.

Finding Queenie wasn't very hard - she was the one wearing the 2009 Final Four T-Shirt. Furthermore, I got to meet her boyfriend, Happycappie25. The two of them were the second and third posters at RebKell that I had ever met - the first was BobScoutingReport. As for Christine, she met us at the appropriate hour, 5 pm.
Queenie asked if Happycappie could attend with the two of us, and Christine was able to swing it. Happycappie would be attending the "meet and greet" with us but would be unable to attend the studio event.

We each received a 2009 WNBA Draft T-shirt. The sizes were the only ones Christine had and I don't think either of us could have worn them. However, the shirts would be put to use in an ingenious way.

The first part of the night was to come down to a sealed-off center court event. The major draft picks were taking place in a pre-event "meet and greet" where they stood around and schmoozed with the elite. As hoi polloi both Queenie and I stood to the side and watched.

But we saw them. Hey, that's Courtney Paris! Hey, that's Kristi Toliver! Hey, that's Lyndra Littles, sitting by herself in a gold-colored sweater like a wallflower. It was a standing room only event and it didn't leave us with much room to move around. I made note of who was there and who was not. As it turned out, there were a couple of players who didn't make it. Renee Montgomery didn't make it - she was probably too busy celebrating her National Championship win with UConn - and I don't think Ashley Walker from California was there, either. Aside from that, the list of potential first round Draft Picks included:

Chante Black, Duke
DeWanna Bonner, Auburn
Marissa Coleman, Maryland
Briann January, Arizona State
Lyndra Littles, Virginia - in the gold sweater
Rashanda McCants, North Carolina
Angel McCoughtry, Louisville
Renee Montgomery, Connecticut - not there
Ashley Paris, Oklahoma
Courtney Paris, Oklahoma - in a sweater that was probably a bit too tight
Kristi Toliver, Maryland
Kia Vaughn, Rutgers
Ashley Walker, California - not there
Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton, Purdue
Shavonte Zellous, Pittsburgh

In the meantime, we were offered all sorts of hors d'oervres, but we didn't partake in any - well, we did try the sesame chicken with peanut butter topping. That was delicious.

It then became time for the actual event to start. Extra bleachers were brought in to accomodate some of the youngest fans. (I suspect some of those youngest fans were the children of event VIPs. Well, 'rank has its privileges'.)

The three of us were seated in a bleacher where the view, unfortunately, was partially obscured by a giant life-sized bobblehead of Allen Iverson (I should be thankful the Yao Ming bobblehead wasn't posted there.) The narrator was Sue Wicks, who spoke about the adventure of signing with the New York Liberty in 1997, where her contract was negotiated on a napkin. She stated that during the process of interviewing with each of the eight teams then in existence, she had always tried to cast doubt as to whether she would be a good fit anywhere except for New York. For example, saying something like "I'm not a Mormon!" to the management of the Utah Jazz. (/joke)

As she spoke, it seemed that Sue Wicks wasn't quite on script. Queenie suggested that she had had a little bit too much red wine. Wicks began to introduce each of the players as if she had been made familiar with their existence only just moments earlier. The faux pas was introducing Rashanda McCants as Chante McCants. True, the names are similiar, but the latter sounds like the shotgun marraige of a "Dookie" and a "Tar Hole".

Angel McCoughtry, as you might have read earlier, missed her cue. While Sue Wicks was starting her seemingly endless introduction, McCoughtry simply wandered up to the semi-circle of chairs and took a seat. This seemed to throw Sue Wicks off even more than usual.

Afterwards, the players were asked some questions. One of them was what players would miss from their playing days. Lyndra Littles volunteered to take that question, saying that she missed the private charter planes she had flown while a member of the Virginia Cavaliers. She spoke of calling her coach and letting her know that. Donna Orender, who was in attendance, mentioned that she too flew on chartered airlines in her WPBL playing days. "Southwest Airlines! My seat has been marked! It's labeled '39-A'!"

Courtney Paris got off a good one liner. She was asked who she'd like to play against. Most of the other players chose the standard players - Lisa Leslie, Sue Bird, etc. - but Paris mentioned Kara Lawson "because we're both point guards", whichi got the biggest laugh of the night.

As this conversation took out, fans were lined up along the spiral walk down to the Center Court, listening in on the fun. When Sue Wicks opined at length about the joys of the Liberty, she got a few shout-outs from the Amen Corner. After the closure of this part of the night, fans were invited down into center court for autographs.

The fans seemed hesitant. Furthermore, I realized that a) we would have had to either break the line or go to the very back of it to get autographs, and b) the first part of the semi-circle of players suddenly had a lot of time on their hands because it would take quite a bit for the fans to get to them. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by starting at the opposite end of the semi-circle and hopefully finishing before the fans really got started.

My second idea was that I now had a use for my 2009 WNBA Draft shirt. I would have the players sign it and I would have a fully (well, except for Montgomery and Walker) signed T-shirt.

The plan seemed to work. However, there were a few bumps along the way. First, some reporters had "squatted" in the middle of the semi-circle and holding improptu interviews. I suspect that the reporters had simply shown up at the event as press and then decided on their own to get question time with the draftees. I've been told that this is something that is very bad - neither players nor franchise PR offices like it when the media decides to interview a player at a PR event outside of the designated place-and-time. They don't mind players being interviewed per se; they just don't like it when players are unexpectedly interviewed, when some doofus shows up with a tape recorder and starts asking you questions when you, as a player, are trying to sign autographs in a line. Some players were good at this multitasking, others weren't.

Second, the line began to move a bit faster than we expected, so we had to barge our way to the last few players - furthermore, some fans wanted to have converstaions with the players, who seemed a bit nervous and could only make small talk. However, I was successful in getting the T-shirt signed.

Christine patiently waited for us, and we prepared to take the same bus to the ESPN Zone event that the players would take. Actually, it would be players in the back, players' families in the middle and us somewhere near the front, which was fine with us. It was definitely cool - I know that you can't really feel like a player, but you sort of could in a way. Chief of Basketball Operations and Player Relations Renee Brown was on the bus, and she announced to the players that due to time and due to the nature of the event, the players could not stop and sign autographs. Family members had been asked to leave the bus first, so they'd have a chance to form a protective gauntlet so that the players could make their way to the 3rd floor of the ESPN Zone event unaccosted.

Christine waited for us at the ESPN Zone, and we made our way to the third-floor for the Pop-a-Shot Competition. Some other contest winners would be joining teams with WNBA players, and Queenie and I would be joining a team with Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton of Purdue and Shavonte Zellous of Pittsburgh.

Let me tell you something: WNBA players are competitive. One of the players - I don't remember who - complained that her dress top gave her arms no mobility. Rashanda McCants and Lyndra Lyttles were already jumping the gun and taking a few shots before the event began. Not every player was that competitive, but some were.

If you don't know what Pop-a-Shot is, it's an arcade game where you throw basketballs into a fixed hoop, and you try to hit as many shots as possible before time expires. At some point, the backboard moves backwards to a point where "3-point shooting" is simulated.

I haven't even made a field goal even by myself in a good 15 years or so. I certainly hadn't played Pop-a-Shot, not ever. So you can imagine what I was thinking when Rashanda McCants scored 49 Pop-a-Shot points (*) and the machine christened her as some kind of New Record Holder. I just wanted not to embarass myself.

When the whistle blew, I knew it would be number of shots taken that would be the clincher, not quality. I just kept shooting and shooting and shooting. This is the final score the way I remember it:

Wisdom-Hylton: 27 points
Me: 23 points
Queenie: 22 points
Shavonte Zellous: 22 points

Which means that an overweight blogger who hasn't even played basketball competitively outshot Shavonte Zellous. I don't care if Zellous wasn't trying, I'm taking it as a win. I got some swag as a present - a nice bag with the WNBA logo, a WNBA water bottle, some trading cards and some tickets. I had to fill out some papers, so I'm assuming that some swag might be coming by mail.

The next event was dinner. We wouldn't be eating with the draft picks, but Christine treated me, Queenie and Happycappie to dinner. Narrating the dinner event (!!) was Nancy Lieberman herself! She asked the crowd trivia questions. I thought they would be really difficult questions, but they were relatively easy ones if you've followed the WNBA:

"Who is the all-time points leader in WNBA History?" (Answer: Lisa Leslie)
"Who is the only WNBA Player to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same year?" (Answer: Candace Parker, Sparks)

I got the second one and a cute little girl walked up with my price - an autographed basketball card of Nancy Lieberman, complete with smiley-face written on it. Queenie won one of Tangela Smith, and Happycappie won one of Jennifer Lacy.

The rest of the night, the three of us chatted with Christine about message boards, how we had all met, WNBA rumormongering and gossip, fan experience, etc. I can honestly say that Christine treated us like royalty. I felt really special. Corny to say that, yes I know, but it's the truth.

(The meal, by the way was great. ESPNZone knows how to make a bacon cheeseburger. This might be the Special WNBA Draft Day Auction Winner's Bacon Cheesburger, and not a cheeseburger accessible to the general public, but it was a good cheeseburger. I recommend a visit to the ESPNZone when you're in New York.)

We said our goodbyes and Christine would meet us at the NBA Entertainment Studios the next day in Secaucus. I walked down to Madison Square Garden with Queenie and Happycappie, and they showed us their traditional meeting place - which would be a good place to meet with Queenie before the event. We would walk the distance from Madison Square Garden to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, which had a bus that went from Manhattan to a location not that far away from NBA Studios. It was a great end to a very long day...but there was more to come.

And now, what you've been waiting for: THE PICTURES!

You can find the gallery of pictures here: The pictures, from left to right:

Courtney Paris chats up some VIPs.
Our seat behind Allen Iverson.
Draft Day Family and Friends. Briann January is in the blue sweater, front row.
Can you see Sue Wicks?
Chante Black is at the far left end, with someone unknown, then Briann January and Lyndra Littles.
Angel McCoughtry takes the mike. I believe it's Rashanda McCants in the glasses.
The back of WNBA Commissioner Donna Orender.
Briann January at the mike.
Now it's Chante's turn.
The bus to the WNBA Event at ESPN Zone.
See the far-away figure holding the mike? That's Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman.

(*) - Verified by contest winner PattyforPresident over at RebKell. I had her scoring 46.

Separated at Birth?

Iziane Castro Marques and Angel McCoughtry.


(Suggested by the fine folks at the Painel do Basquete Feminina).

About Ashley Shields

One day the Commissioner is shaking hands with you, the next....

Initially, the Atlanta Dream had two picks in the second round for the 2009 WNBA Draft. With roster sizes being cut from 13 to 11 and with the chances of non-veterans making a team diminishing, that second second-round pick became one pick too many. Enter Trader Bill Laimbeer, who needed a second-round draft pick that we just happened to have and wanted to get rid of.

Therefore, he traded Ashley Shields to us. Detroit used their brand-new second round pick to pick up Britany Miller, formerly of Florida State and now of Valosun in the Czech Republic.

So who is Ashley Shields? Shields was a first-round Draft Pick in the 2007 WNBA Draft by the Houston Comets, and was probably one of the reasons there isn't a Houston Comets anymore. She was a guard chosen out of Southwest Tennessee Community College; I have no idea if she graduated.

I'll look at Shields by Wins Score and by John Hollinger's PER. In Career Wins Score, she is fourth from the bottom in WNBA history - and since Wins Score is an additive metric that takes away points for doing bad things, she has a worse score than those players that literally played for just a few minutes. The only active player worse than Ashley Shields is Tan White. Most likely, Shield's low rating comes from her horrible 27.5 percent percentage shooting inside the 3-point line - she's 34.5 percent shooting from behind it. Her 72.8 percent free throw percentage isn't that impressive.

PER Ratings:

2007: 6.44
2008: 1.90

Both of these are what we euphemistically call "below replacement level". Let me put it this way - Shield's PER for 2008 was below that of Chioma Nnamaka. In 2007, it was above Chioma Nnamaka's 2008 stats, but that was the only player on the 2008 Dream she was above.

I suspect - strongly - that Ashley Shields will not see her way on a Dream roster, unless the Dream either a) knows something about the talents of Ashley Shields that two franchises weren't able to see, or more likely b) have lost their damn minds. We basically burned the second round pick; I'll guess we'll know for sure when those training camp invites come out.

The First Blurb

Work promises to be busy today, so I'll provide the barest of information. I woke up at 3 am in New York City, took the plane out of LaGuardia at 6:30, and was back to work at 10:15 am. So obviously, I have a lot of work to catch up with. Blogging is light today.

* As you all know, Katie Mattera was waived by the Dream. Somewhere in Atlanta, Art Eckman is wearing a black armband.

* In exchange for one of our extraneous second-round draft picks, Ashley Shields was traded to the Dream. More on that later.

* Atlanta gets an Angel. Angel McCoughtry, that is, who becomes the very first #1 Draft Pick for the Atlanta Dream in the 2009 WNBA Draft.

* Shalee Lehning out of Kansas State and Jessica Morrow out of Baylor become Atlanta's second and third round draft picks.

Dream Waive Katie Feenstra/Katie Mattera

I get off the plane, check my hotel room, check what's going on the day before Draft Day, and guess what happens?

It's true. Katie Mattera, formerly Katie Feenstra, has been waived by the Dream.

It's starting to look a lot like Snow and Anderson as our centers. What does this mean for Draft Day? Who knows?

Good luck, Katie. You might not have been the best center in the world...but you were a lot better player than a lot of people gave you credit for, which sadly includes some Dream fans. The best of luck.

Whatever Happened to Madinah Slaise? - The Sequel!

At the beginning of the year, I asked the question "Whatever Happened to Madinah Slaise?" If you click the link and go to the comments section, you'll find out the answer to this question...from Madinah Slaise herself.

If you read the comment, you'll find out that Madinah Slaise has not stopped giving back - not only has she served in the Army, but she's a registered nurse. Furthermore, you'll find that her competitive fire has not diminshed. There's life after the WNBA - and I think Madinah has just proved it.

And Now, A Hiatus

...okay. I'm about to do some well-deserved vacationing over the next two days. So you'll have to go elsewhere for your Dream fix. On Friday...well, let's just say we'll know the name of the next player to enter the pantheon of the Atlanta Dream.

And you know I'll have something to say about that!

Down to Four

According to this Associated Press article, one of these four players will be the Dream's #1 Draft Pick:

Marissa Coleman
Angel McCoughtry
Renee Montgomery
Courtney Paris

Maybe part of the puzzle will be decided tonight in St. Louis.

New Rethinking Basketball Post

Q at Rethinking Basketball has written one of the best articles I've read from him about gender and marketing in the WNBA.

The title is "What Difference a Year Makes: Why Ahistorical Analyses of Sport Perpetuate Misrepresentations of the WNBA". He writes about the recent placement of Candace Parker on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine, about all of the brouhaha about the first paragraph of the article about her discussing her cup size (of all things), and delves into an analysis of basketball and gender narratives.

My comments:

1. From a paragraph:

"However, the big difference this time around is that given all the media attention given to Parker and the Olympics last year, speaking from a place self-imposed ignorance about the WNBA no longer carries much credibility. Parker's arrival on the national (and international) sports scene last summer was one of those special moments in sports history that even the below-average lunkhead male would have had a hard time just ignoring. This does not mean we suddenly have a whole lot of enlightened, gender-conscious WNBA commentary...it's just a new sort of ignorance I guess..."

I concur. I don't think a person can pass themselves off as a sportswriter anymore without at least a basic knowledge of the WNBA. Part of the task of being a sportswriter these days is that you have to know a little bit about everything...or at least, you have to be able to fake it. In the old days, sportswriters were assigned one beat (baseball, or whatever) and rarely wrote about other manners. With the rise of television, with the power of syndicated columns and with cutbacks in press coverage, sportwriters are expected to be a bit more ranging in their knowledge. Even if they're called upon to comment upon golf or tennis, they had better know at least the names of the major names in those sports.

Q believes the days of calling yourself a sportswriter and bleating "I don't know anything about the WNBA" are pretty much over. The W might not make the news that much, but it makes it enough. You'd better know something about the league other than the same old tired arguments before you pontificate about its success or failure, not just "I watched one game and I didn't like it."

2. The back half of the blog post elaborates on two different subjects that aren't so much contradictory as that they have a tenuous connection: first, the idea of women as athletes. Second, the idea that other sports have greater gravitas and therefore deserve more attention.

With regard to the first, Q writes that the problem is not so much that men's basketball is inherently exciting because men can do more with a basketball, but the problem is that for many people - even some females - the concept of "female" somehow does not include "athlete". When some people try to put the two together, you can almost hear the computer in their head smoke and belch, with an electronic voice shouting "Does not compute! Does not compute!"

For those unenlightened (and I choose the word deliberately) persons, female athletic achievement can only be understood in comparison to male athletic achievement. Even when outsiders write about the sports and how to improve the WNBA, they either a) make suggestions so that it becomes a version of the male game played by smaller people - lower the rims, etc., or b) fall back on the baseline definition of female as "someone attractive to men" - wear unitards, etc.

(On most threads filled with comments by the red-bellied-woodpeckers (RBWs) among us, one of the suggestions - term defined loosely - for the WNBA is that everyone should be dressing like the women's volleyball players, bikinis and all. At first, I thought this was just gender-bashing, but with the announcement of an actual season of the Lingerie Football League, I'm not so sure...I'm coming to believe that these RBWs thought they were actually giving rational advice!)

The second part - the part about the legitimacy of a league in the public eye - I've written about before. Particularly, in the first two decades of baseball, basketball and football the new-born leagues were racked with franchise relocations, collapses, and other embarassing failures.

I believe that the acceptance of the WNBA is closely linked to Kubler-Rosses Five Stages of terminal illness - in this case, not so much as an illness as a paradigm shift and the death of an idea that Women Are Supposed To Be In This Box and Never Come Out of It. It's about being forced to expand one's perception not just about athletes and athletics, but about gender roles:

1. Denial: "The WNBA? What's that? Who cares?"
2. Anger: "God, that league sucks! It's nothing but a bunch of lesbians! David Stern should do something about that league! I swear, if ESPN reports one more time about the WNBA, I'll go to CBS Sports!"
3. Bargaining: "You know the WNBA is inferior. Therefore, you should go along with me and no one should follow it." "You can't win. The interests against the WNBA are too entrenched. Give up."

And when that doesn't work, "I'd like the WNBA, but why do they have to shove it down my throat? Why does ESPN have to report on its front page? Why does ESPN have to show this on TV when they could show (soccer, more baseball, D-league)? If the WNBA just wouldn't do (X) I could put up with it."

I expect in the next 20 years, we'll hit the Depression stage.

"What ever happened to women at least trying to be attractive? Who could it hurt?"
"Women have completely destroyed sports. It used to be that a man had a refuge."
"Remember the days when you didn't have to put the word 'men's' in front of a sport?"

However, don't lose hope. I suspect a few have moved on to Acceptance. "Acceptance" doesn't mean watching the WNBA, it just means not getting your underwear all wound up about it. In the same way that I "accept" NASCAR. (Sorry, it's just not my thing.)

But I digress. Good blog post. Go read it.

Atlanta Dreaming of 2009 WNBA Title

Yep, it's a big dream, and we know it. But dreams can come tru. 2009 WNBA Draft Net looks at the 2009 Atlanta Dream and tries to do a little draft predicting as well.

This Week's Schedule

Here is this week's schedule of known games involving Atlanta Dream players:

Wednesday

LFB (Spain) - Extrugasa (5-19) vs. Perfumerias (18-6)

Thursday

LSBL Finals: TTT Rīga vs. SK Cēsis (Game 3)

Saturday

LFB (Spain): Olesa (16-9) vs. Ibiza (14-11)
LFB (Spain): Estudiantes (5-20) vs. Zaragoza (6-19)
LFB (Spain): Ros Casares (24-1) vs. Extrugasa (5-19) *

Sunday

Greek Women's A1: Paghiakos (8-17) vs. Paleo Faliro (16-9)
LSBL Finals: SK Cēsis vs. TTT Rīga (Game 4) **

* - Record as of April 6, 2009
** - game played if necessary

SK Cēsis-TTT Rīga Gallery - Game Two, LSBL Finals

Tamera Young stops to admire the hair of an opposing player.

The gallery from Game Two of the Latvian finals can be found here. There are some good Tamera Young pics here, so dig in...if SK Cēsis wins Game Three there might not be many more galleries!