LAS VEGAS — The Phoenix Mercury have been here before. In the first round of the WNBA playoffs, they dropped the opening game to reigning champion New York, 76-69. Liberty guard Natasha Cloud scored 23 points, and Phoenix was quickly in a 1-0 hole in a best-of-three series. But they regrouped, blew the Liberty out in Game 2 and ultimately won the series to earn a shot at Minnesota.
In the semifinals against the Lynx, Phoenix again lost Game 1, and then found itself down by 20 points in Game 2. But the Mercury didn’t give up, and mounted a historic comeback to notch an 89-83 win. They rattled off three straight wins to take the best-of-five series, and earned the right to face Las Vegas for the WNBA championship.
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In Friday night’s Game 1, the Mercury took an early lead, but were slowed down by after the Aces switched from man-to-man to a zone defense. Las Vegas won 89-86, putting the Mercury down 1-0 in the first best-of-seven Finals series in WNBA history.
To even the score in Sunday’s Game 2, Phoenix coach Nate Tibbetts knows his defense needs to tighten up.
“Eighty-nine points is too much for us to give up. We’ve been the best defense in the playoffs. And we need to be better,” Tibbetts said. “There were some lapses, especially in the third quarter, the first six minutes, was not up to our standard, what we want to do at that defensive end. So just getting that edge back defensively would be extremely important.”
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On Saturday, the Mercury players who went through a light workout after talking to media didn’t hang their heads. They didn’t look defeated. They looked like a team that understood that Game 1 was just the start of a long series.
The Mercury know themselves well after an arduous season that saw Alyssa Thomas, Satou Sabally and Kahleah Copper each missing games with injuries, only playing together in 10 of 44 regular-season games. Part of this team’s identity is that they’ve learned how to take lessons from losses, but then keep the negative in the past.
“We have to play better defense. Just go back to what we do best, and then I think the results will show that we are the better team,” Sabally said after Game 1. “But I’m really not too down on myself like this. We’ll go back, we’ll practice tomorrow, we’ll walk through our mistakes and find better solutions for some things, and then we’ll just come back on Sunday, and win this game.”
Copper, Phoenix’s top scorer this season, had 19 points in the first half on Friday night, but cooled down and was limited to just 2 points in the second half. She’s averaged 15.75 points per game in this postseason, and knows her team is capable of pushing
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“We’ve lost Game 1s, but I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want to lose another game,” Copper said Saturday. “I know we can have success after losing a Game 1, and I wanted to do something different, but it’s fine. It’s just about our mindset every single day and I think that we bounce back so quickly.”
Both teams will have to adjust to a quick turnaround. With a 12 p.m. PT game time on Sunday,, Game 2 will tip off less than 48 hours after Game 1. Though no travel was involved, it still wasn’t much time for teams to recover and review tape, and it’s an earlier start time than most teams are used to.
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“I’m not a big fan of it, to be honest. I mean, I understand from a TV standpoint, and this is a business, right, but this is, this is part of it, right? This is the schedule,” Tibbetts said. “I don’t think it’s truly fair to the players, but like, from a business standpoint, if this is the most audience, this is how it works.”
Tibbetts’ players, though, don’t seem fazed. MVP candidate Thomas expressed plenty of optimism on Saturday.
“A lot of confidence,” Thomas said of the Mercury’s mindset going into Game 2. “We’ve lost every first game in the series [in the playoffs] and it’s about making adjustments. I think all series long, all playoffs long, we’ve done a great job of responding.”
