WASHINGTON — The plus/minus numbers from the Seattle Storm’s 69-58 Saturday night loss to the Washington Mystics are staggering.
The Storm’s four bench players, Alysha Clark (+14), Dominique Malonga (+9), Tiffany Mitchell (+8) and Lexie Brown (+4), averaged a +8.8, while the players widely considered to comprise their top four, Nneka Ogwumike (-25), Skylar Diggins (-20), Ezi Magbegor (-20) and Gabby Williams (-19), averaged a -21. Starter Erica Wheeler, who led the team in minutes with 32, saw time with both groups and was a -6.
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What does this mean for a 15-11 team that missed out on an opportunity to move into a tie for third in the WNBA standings by falling to an inferior (albeit not by much) opponent? Let’s take a closer look.
The comeback fell short … but it featured a bench mob that brought it!
A Shakira Austin layup put Washington up by its largest margin of 19 with 1:36 remaining in the third quarter. Six minutes and 34 seconds later, the Storm cut their deficit to four, capping a 17-2 run with 5:02 to go in the contest.
With Clark, Malonga, Mitchell, Brown and Wheeler on the court, this run was largely responsible for the ridiculous plus/minus advantage Seattle’s second unit had over its first.
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Wheeler scored 10 of her 12 points during the run, including two triples to get it started and close out the third. Her first 3 was unfortunately answered by a Lucy Olsen inside score that put the Mystics back up 18, but she heaved and buried a deep one that cut it to 15 with one tick remaining before the final frame. She then had a short shot from the paint bounce around and in to cut the home team’s advantage to 13 points less than one minute into the fourth.
Malonga would score six of the game’s next seven points, including a fast-break layup off her own midcourt steal on the very next possession. This triggered a Mystics timeout as head coach Sydney Johnson had already seen enough, starting to get worried with his team only up 11. After a Mitchell free throw cut it to 10, Malonga made good on an offensive rebound by drawing a foul on a putback attempt and sinking two free throws of her own. Then, another steal from the rookie led to a fast break that saw Wheeler get the ball back to her for a tough transition layup.
Wheeler capped the run with a driving layup.
All five players on the court for the Storm deserve credit for holding the Mystics scoreless during this stretch. It was an impressive showing for some very capable WNBA vets in Wheeler, Clark, Mitchell and Brown, and a rookie with a high ceiling in Malonga. Though Seattle lost the game, head coach Noelle Quinn can now have some more confidence that her second unit can perform in the big moments:
I thought that unit gave us what we needed in that moment. We just talked about kind of chipping away. I thought Dom gave great minutes, running the floor hard and really rebounding well. E(rica) gave us a lift; she was the offense that we needed within that group. I thought that they fought hard to hold the Mystics to a nine-point (fourth) quarter; that was indicative of the defense picking up a little bit and getting stops. Tried to capitalize off those stops. I thought there was good energy. For them to be able to fight hard like they did, it was a great effort.
Ogwumike had this to say:
We came out in the second half, and the first unit just was not getting it done. Today our bench mob showed some serious resilience. We gotta do better starting things off, we gotta do better sustaining things. But I think a big takeaway is that we have some strength coming off the bench.
Give Quinn credit for showing faith in that second unit well into the fourth, not checking one of the big four back in until she did so with Ogwumike at the 4:26 mark. It was as if the big four were cursed Saturday night because Wheeler would miss a trey upon Nneka’s return, and then a Kiki Iriafen free throw would put Washington up by at least five points the rest of the way.
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Magbegor checked back in between Iriafen’s free throw attempts at 4:03; Diggins and Williams re-entered at 3:06. It seemed like the perfect moment for the Storm stars to come to the rescue after the second unit had put them in position to complete the comeback. But after Magbegor returned, Austin made a statement with a monster block on Wheeler that had CareFirst Arena rocking.
Diggins and Williams couldn’t help either upon their returns, as a Wheeler layup at 2:23 that cut it back to five was Seattle’s final score; the Mystics closed on a 6-0 run.
After the game, Quinn defended her decision to put her stars back in the game:
(The second unit was) gassed. E was gassed, Dom was gassed. And, at the end of the day, hindsight is 20/20, right? If the game went the opposite way, you would be telling me I did a great job. Today it didn’t. I just thought that even (with) that unit … we couldn’t hit shots. And when fatigue is setting in—not even starters play eight, 10 consecutive minutes—it starts to wear on you when you’re trying to utilize a lot of energy to make a comeback. It was a decision for me to roll with our All-Stars, our starters (to) see if they could connect and hit some shots. And, ultimately, we couldn’t.
All eyes on Dom
Even with as much success as Paige Bueckers is having in Year 1—she was sixth in my last MVP ladder—it still remains possible that Malonga will have the best career in the long run out of player from the 2025 draft class. That’s saying a lot. So the pressure is on Dom. While the loftiest of expectations are more for the future than they are for this season, if she can keep up her improved play, she could be an X factor on a 2025 Storm championship team. Yes, championship team.
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On Thursday, she became the youngest (19 years, 250 days) player in WNBA history to record a double-double and also the youngest to reach 100 career points. She had 14 points, 10 boards, three assists and two blocks in just 17 minutes in a blowout win over the Chicago Sky. She was also efficient, shooting 1-for-1 from deep and 6-for-9 from the field overall. It was her first career 3-pointer.
Malonga followed up that performance with eight points (3-for-4 from the field and 2-for-2 from the stripe), nine rebounds, two steals and two rejections in just 14 minutes Saturday. She was fantastic on defense, getting a lot of stops that don’t show up in the box score. She did make one mistake with a lane violation that took a Mitchell free throw off the board at a critical moment, but, overall, she should be commended for again being a key contributor. We may look back at this stretch for Malonga and say that this is when she arrived as a key contributor; it’s really her first solid back-to-back stretch of the entire season. Her 17 and 14 minutes played constitute her second- and third-highest minute totals.
Consistency issues
The Storm got blown out by a bad Dallas Wings team in their first game back from the All-Star break, and that was at home, albeit without Diggins. They then defeated the Sky by 38 points, but regressed back to their struggles on Saturday, at times looking like they were destined for another blowout loss.
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Poor shooting and poor efforts on the glass defined the Dallas and Washington losses. Strong shooting and strong rebounding were present in the win over Chicago. Clearly, consistency is needed. Seattle has alternated losses and wins over their last seven games, causing them to be stuck in a tie for fourth in the standings instead of making moves on the third-place Phoenix Mercury and second-place New York Liberty.
Perhaps it’s hard to blame the Storm for losing to a Mystics team that had more rest than them, having been off since Tuesday. Our editor-in-chief, Cat Ariail, mentioned them as one of the teams being unfairly tested of late by the WNBA’s new 44-game schedule.
Yet, Nneka Ogwumike is not one to make excuses:
I think it’s really about mentality. Having the attitude to come out and the focus to come out and sustain 40-minute play. … At this point, I really do feel like it’s identity. Who are we, and who do we want to be? What is that that we can lean on every single day? Not just on game days but every single day. We had it in the beginning, but I think that we’ve kind of lost our way. And there’s no time to do that with the amount of talent that we’re seeing day in and day out on these different teams.
Quinn had this to say:
We have to have better starts in quarters. We know about the start of games, but starting and ending quarters throughout the entire game. We can’t have lapses defensively and then we have to execute offensively. It’s about discipline; doing the right thing consistently is what we have to be better at. And we will be better in that area.
The would-have-been-key stretch that wasn’t enough to prevent the deep hole
The Storm ultimately lost on Saturday because they dug too deep a hole to climb out of. The game might not have gotten away from them had they capitalized on a couple of key momentum plays in their favor at the end of the first half.
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First, Diggins put in extra effort after her own missed layup and Washington rebound by coming up with a steal in the backcourt, leading to a Magbegor layup that cut it to five. Then, after the Mystics pushed it back to seven, Ogwumike scored on a driving layup at the buzzer. It seemed at the time like these hustle plays by Seattle had prevented the game from getting away. But the Mystics opened the third on a 10-0 run that saw the Storm go scoreless for 5:20.
Nneka’s hot start
Ogwumike’s layup at the buzzer capped an 18-point first half for the former MVP. Fourteen of those points came in the first quarter alone, putting Nneka on pace to break her career-high of 38 points set in that MVP season of 2016. This year her high is only 26, so a 30-piece would have been a big deal.
However, she was held scoreless in the second half; she also did not earn a free throw in the final three frames after going 5-for-5 over the first 10 minutes of the contest.
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