Storm’s lack of second-half effort ended a promising season before it started
By Christan Braswell
During training camp, Storm All-Star Nneka Ogwumike coined “dangerously disciplined” as the motto for her first season in Seattle after 12 seasons with the Los Angeles Sparks. Signing with Skylar Diggins-Smith in the offseason to a group featuring fellow All-Stars Jewell Loyd and Ezi Magbegor, the newfound core believed they had what it took to establish chemistry on the fly and compete for a WNBA championship because of their extensive experience.
“We have a focus,” Loyd said. “We’re dangerously disciplined. That’s our motto. We’re here to work.”
“Not cutting corners,” Diggins-Smith explained. “We don’t say sacrifice. We say investment. It’s really about the habits we’re trying to form.”
During their introductory press conference in February, Diggins-Smith and Ogwumike said that the path to a championship started in training camp and throughout the season. They didn’t expect success overnight and wanted to earn their place in the hierarchy of championship contenders.
Through the first half of the season, the Storm’s motto fueled a shared approach to basketball as players and one unit. After losing three of the first four games to start the season, they went on to win six consecutive games.
The motto wasn’t only championed in moments of victory. For example, after losing three of the next five games after the streak, Seattle thrived during a WNBA-record nine-game homestand that defined the first half of the season by winning seven of them.
Capping off the half with a road win over the Sparks in Ogwumike’s return to Los Angeles, the Storm entered the Olympic break at 17-8, tying with the Minnesota Lynx for the third-best record in the league. Although they believed they had yet to play their best basketball, the Storm appeared to have figured out what worked best for them from a coaching perspective and the players on the court.
Hustle, heart, and limitless energy were at the crux of what made Seattle such a dynamic group. Boasting the third-best defensive rating in the league before the break, the team's success was attributed to its ability to generate steals, capitalize on turnovers, and create second-chance opportunities, among other scoring options predicated on its defense.
Understanding that three-point shooting couldn’t be a consistent source of offense, this was the recipe for success to produce nonetheless. It wasn’t perfect, but it was theirs. It yielded the third-best offensive rating (102.5) before the break. It didn’t matter who was on the court because every player displayed unending determination towards one goal — competing for a WNBA championship and having fun doing it.
Somewhere along the way during the break and the start of the second half, this was no longer the energy surrounding the Storm.
Seattle came out the gate in the second half playing like a unit that forgot that made it one of the best by losing five of the first seven games in post-Olympic play. After what was perhaps the most demoralizing loss during the stretch was a 74-72 loss to the Washington Mystics who only had seven wins to their record.
Diggins-Smith led the first of many second-half rallying speeches about the team’s play.
“In this league, if you aren’t ready to play, you’ll get beat every (expletive) night, Diggins-Smith said. “They were ready to play and we weren’t on both sides of the basketball. They deserved to win the game if we’re going to play like that. We need to be hitting our stride right now. We’re not there and it’s unacceptable how we’re playing on both sides of the basketball.”
“In this league, it only gets harder after the break. And that’s fine, but if we don’t come ready to play, we’re going to (expletive) lose,” she continued.
At that point, it was clear that this was not the same Storm team that went into the break ahead of the curve. For Diggins-Smith to publicly acknowledge that the team wasn’t playing with the effort that was expected of it should’ve been a cause for concern.
The Storm has several leaders on the roster and they all have different styles of displaying how they go about it. At one point during the second half, Ogwumike, who doesn’t necessarily lead as the loudest voice of the “Core Four”, shared how she felt about the team’s performance after a 93-86 loss to the Connecticut Sun on Sept. 1:
“We’re in the playoffs. We have people who haven’t been to the playoffs on this team. We have people that have won multiple times at the end of the season on this team. And I think the gap between that is the mindset. I think that’s what the gap is, whether it’s the eagerness of being together for the first time and putting together a lot of wins before the Olympic break or the perceived complacency coming out of the break. It’s not that people are complacent, but I don’t think that we’re playing with the effort that we need. People play hard, but I think it’s going to require something deeper that we need.”
Between Ogwumike and Diggins-Smith, they share 15 All-Star appearances, 12 All-WNBA selections, an MVP award, and a championship. For two veteran players with such accolades to come out and say they felt their team lacked effort at that point of the season should’ve sent shockwaves throughout the team and quelled the noise on what plagued it.
In so many words, the effort level that carried the first half disappearing overnight was one of many red flags along the way that proved Seattle hadn’t hit the stretch they needed to be at.
In the same press conference, a reporter asked Quinn how the coaching staff could get her team to hustle more on the court or if it needed to come from the players themselves.
“Hustle? I’m not on the court,” she replied. “We’re not on the court. It has to come from within. There has to be accountability to that. I wish. I can implore it. I can’t help them because I’m not on the court.
As Quinn said, the coaching staff isn’t on the court. These are professional athletes. Coaches shouldn’t have to coach effort. Once this becomes a normality, the plot is lost. In Seattle’s case, this trend became the sticking point of the second half.
After an 83-81 win over the Dallas Wings on Sept. 13, Diggins-Smith voiced her concerns about her team’s state of mind as the playoffs loomed closer:
“We’ve been talking about this all year, how we start the games, and it’s unacceptable,” she said. “You see the teams that’re great in this league for a reason. We want to be a great team. We didn’t have the start that we wanted to start, but credit them. They got off to 14 points halfway through the quarter. We got down big in the second quarter and we stayed together. Jewell [Loyd] got us together a little bit, Nneka [Ogwumike] got us together a little bit. We kinda came together like, ‘We can chip away at this game but things have to change’. At halftime, we talked about it. We shouldn’t need a pep talk from Noey, we shouldn’t need all these incentives to play some [expletive] basketball the way we know how to play.”
Like Quinn said, the coaching staff isn’t on the floor. There’s only so much that can be done from the sidelines. In the Storm’s case, every tool to be the best team it could be was available at every turn. From a state-of-the-art practice facility and headquarters, the Center for Basketball Performance, to whatever was needed, it was provided. It’s up to the players on the court to make the most out of it.
After being swept at the hands of back-to-back defending champion Las Vegas Aces in two games that were within their reach to win, the Storm didn’t capitalize on the season. The second-half performance says as much.
Starting games without rhythm was also a habit Seattle couldn’t shake in the second half. Without the effort and hustle from the pre-Olympic break, the second and third quarters were spent fighting to get back in games instead of playing the brand of basketball that became a staple. With that in mind, Quinn warned this would be the outcome if the pace of play didn’t improve.
“It’s reality,” she said. “It’s truth juice. I started the day off saying there’s truth in love in medicine. And the truth is we’re preparing to play in the postseason and if we’re going to come out and start the game like this, we will potentially not have an extended postseason, and that’s reality. Teams are too good, especially late in the season and in the playoffs. Way too good. I’ll keep it positive. It’s good to know we can be a resilient third-quarter team, but we need to find some energy and urgency. Not only that but concentration and execution too in that first frame of basketball because it can set the tone for the rest of the game. I love that we are able to be resilient and fight back. We know that about ourselves. Now, I want to be able to have that in the beginning of the game.”
Teams in the playoffs currently are certainly too good for the Storm to have a chance at advancing with the level of play displayed toward the end of the season in particular.
It’s easy to chalk the first-round exit up to the Aces being the Aces. While that may be true, Seattle was in both games until they weren’t, which Las Vegas didn’t have much to do with.
After three quarters of competitive play, the Storm simply didn’t show up in the final frame where it went 0-for-12 from the field. It’s the first time in WNBA history that a team was held without a field goal since the league switched to quarters in 2006. On top of that, the Storm tied the WNBA playoff record for the fewest points in a quarter (2).
In Game 2, after leading 65-64 via a Mercedes Russell layup, Las Vegas went on a 7-0 run before icing the game with free throws.
The trend of lacking hustle and effort that riddled both games was the second half in a nutshell and it wasn’t a secret amongst players and coaches.
"I don't like that, that it was a recurring theme because efforts should never be a thing,” said Quinn. “When you talk about playing in this league or this organization, I always take full accountability for anything that this team does, that isn't up to par to where we need to be. And I felt like there were players... I don't think it was everyone.
I think it was kind of, it became a little bit contagious. I wanted the positive effort and all those things to become contagious. And we were just kind of tugging and pulling a little bit. But moving forward, the appreciation for putting on a Storm jersey has to come in the way in which you value the game, and that is how you show up and play. So I will be better. Our team will be better. Effort will never, ever be a thing for us again."
The final nail in the coffin of Seattle’s season was Quinn saying the quiet part out loud. Reporters tend to shy away when it comes to holding players and teams accountable, but when those same stars and coaches say the effort level is subpar, then the truth is as plain as can be.
In the grand scheme of things, the Storm had quite the season achieving 25 wins after only totaling 11 in 2023. This is an improvement that should be celebrated because the foundation for success in 2025 was laid. Still, the belief that more could’ve been done in the regular season and into the playoffs is widespread.
Heading into an offseason that features Ogwumike and Gabby Williams, the Storm is the favorite to retain their services. Once these two crucial elements of the team’s approach are secured, bringing in shooting help, building on chemistry from the first season together, and truly making the most out of a terrific situation will make 2025 the season that 2024 once had the promise of being.
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