Lacking effort will end playoffs for Storm before they start
The Seattle Storm’s starting lineup rallying after being rewarded a trip to the free-throw line. (Photo by Kevin Ng)
Seattle, WA - The upper echelon of the WNBA have one thing in common the Seattle Storm does not share — strong starts to games.
Throughout the second half of the WNBA season, Storm stars and coaches alike have noted how slow starts have been a nuisance, yet they haven’t been able to escape them. With the Las Vegas Aces beating the Indiana Fever on Friday night, they maintain a one-game lead over Seattle for the fourth and final seed that guarantees homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Since the current playoff format was adopted in 2022, the Aces have yet to lose at Michelob ULTRA Arena in the first round.
Storm coach Noelle Quinn knows where her team sits with three games left in the regular season after an 83-81 win over the Dallas Wings, and she knows it’s not good enough.
“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.”
Her words may seem harsh, but as Quinn said, it’s a reality that the Storm must face.
The trend of slow starts continued on the road against the Wings when the Storm allowed a 14-4 run to start the first quarter. Dallas had a mission to exert as much pressure on the rim as possible, shooting three of their first five attempts in the restricted area. Seattle’s lack of aggression and inability to penetrate the defense didn’t help matters on the other end, allowing Dallas’ stars Satou Sabally and Teaira McCowan to rest on their assignments and combine for 19 of their team’s 28 first-quarter points in the paint predominately as they led by nine at the end of the opening frame.
The second quarter was much of the same as Seattle failed to build any resemblance of momentum until the latter end where Storm guard Skylar Diggins-Smith ignited a 7-0 run, scoring or assisting on two of three possessions. She finished with a team-high 21 points on 50 percent shooting with 4 helpers and four steals. Sabally and McCowan once again combined for half of Dallas’ points in the quarter with 12 out of 22 scored. The Wings took a 50-37 lead into halftime.
The Storm came thundering out of the gates in the second half on a 19-0 run that eventually ballooned into outscoring Dallas 34-13 in the third quarter. Diggins-Smith and Gabby Williams combined for 18 and Jewell Loyd contributed eight of her 15 points on the night.
Seattle seemed to have rightened their ship for the first time since the game started. The defensive intensity was day and night compared to the first half. Still, it was said too soon as Dallas jumpstarted a 14-2 run in the last several minutes of the quarter that extended into the fourth.
Despite being outscored 18-12 in the final frame, four clutch free-throws from Diggins-Smith and Mercedes Russell clipped the Wings and sealed the win.
After the victory, Diggins-Smith spoke in a manner that she shouldn’t have to as often as she has in post-Olympic play.
“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.”
Diggins-Smith has been talking the talk and walking the walk since returning from break. In five of the last six games alone, she’s led the team in scoring, averaging 19 points, 2.3 rebounds, 5.8 assists, and 3.8 stocks. The bump in production speaks to the player Diggins-Smith is. Over the last six games specifically, there’s been a lack of movement without the ball, which makes Seattle’s offensive flow appear sluggish and prone to turnovers due to miscommunication. Diggins-Smith took it into her own hands and led the team in shot attempts in the paint in this span. This statistic says one important thing above all else.
Diggins-Smith is doing her best to open up the offense as the point guard for her teammates. She’s forcing the issue and inviting them to make a cut and utilize the attention she attracts from the defense. More times than not as of late, it doesn’t end in a fruitful possession.
From a leadership standpoint, players have touched on how she’s been the engine behind the team since the season started. When they played well, she championed her teammates. When the team loses in ways they think are preventable, she holds everyone accountable, including herself. Should she have to as often as the team has required it?
After a 74-72 loss to the Mystics on Aug. 26, Diggins-Smith led a passionate call to action.
“In this league, if you aren’t ready to play, you will get beat every [expletive] night,” she 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. It’s unacceptable how we’re playing on both sides of the basketball. We all got to step our game up. In this league, it only gets harder after the break. And that’s fine, but if we don’t come ready to play from the start. we’re going to [expletive] lose.”
At that point, Seattle had lost three of their first four games after returning from break. From that point on, they lost the next three of their next five games before the current three-game win streak.
After a road loss to the Sun on Sept. 1, Loyd and Ogwumike spoke out about the team’s trajectory as well.
“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.”
Storm forward Nneka Ogwumike during a break against the Atlanta Dream at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. (Photo by Kevin Ng)
“For a majority of us in the league, we’ve done this multiple times where we had Olympic breaks. We understand the schedule and we understand that’s part of being in the W. We know it, we have a feel for it. That’s why I have respect for people in this league because we know how it is to go overseas, come back, be a professional. At the end of the day, it’s basketball. You can group a random team together, they play hard, they could probably execute. If they do those things, it comes down to that. Just regrouping and understanding our value for this team, who we are, why we’re here, and find our next push. We know this time of the season where every game and possession matters. It’s a little bit more amplified, and we understand that. Having Gabby [Williams] back, that’s a plus. We obviously know that, but for all of us, we’re still growing in our game. I have so much confidence in every single teammate that we have here and what we’re trying to do. That hasn’t changed. The mindset hasn’t. That’s not an excuse. We understand what that is and how to be professionals.”
Despite being one the best teams in the league in hustle stats like points off turnovers and fastbreak points, which became the fuel that runs the Storm, they never appeared to have figured out how to get into their process at the onset of games and execute it. The delay in these situations forces the team to spend second quarters vying for position within their actions and finishing them. By that point, Seattle either builds a run to cut the deficit before halftime or comes out swinging to start the second half as they did against the Wings on Friday.
Through a portion of the first half of the season, what ailed the Storm was an inability to maintain connectivity and productivity sustained in the first twenty minutes. With three games left in the regular season, the issue remains but in different segments of the game. It all boils down to a lack of effort and a want-to mentality that has been missing since July.
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.
The signs of irregularity regarding the level of effort displayed were visible as soon as the team took to the court after the break.
At first, dropping a few games appeared to be the ebbs and flows of developing chemistry on the fly with several new players from free agency. After failing to achieve a post-Olympic record above .500 until Friday night’s win over the Wings, it’s clear that Seattle won’t have a long stay in the playoffs if something doesn’t change.
Even though the Storm is currently riding a three-game win streak for the first time since mid-July, the effort and mentality that carried them have not made regular appearances as they did in the first half of the season that propelled it to a 17-8 record. Since, the Storm is the only team with championship aspirations to lose as many games as it’s won.
There is no overnight fix because the problem isn’t a lack of talent or coaching experience. Like Quinn said, she and the staff aren’t on the court. The players have to be willing to take a stand and perform in the way that they championed as their new direction in a world without Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart. For this team to make it past the first round, a sense of urgency needs to be applied to their approach, or like Quinn said, they won’t have an extended stay in postseason play.
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