July 6th, 2006: Sacramento at New York

Sacramento Monarchs 79, New York Liberty 58

Half a Yolanda Griffith is better than a New York Liberty frontcourt, lots of shot selections blow, and Becky Hammon has apparently had it the fuck up to here.


I'm starting to understand Jayda Evans's frustration with the inaugural Storm, and we're at less than half the number of losses she had to cover. Jayda, I raise a Diet Coke to you.

Note- honoring the emergency services people is shiny and brilliant and awesome. In the future, though please ask them not to bring their bagpipes. The arena was dead enough, it didn't need to be deadened further. Also, the anthem singer? So very glad he doesn't rely on his voice to save lives. I liked the full color guard, though. Very nice touch.

Yolanda looked like HELL during shootaround. When she came off the court, she had a look on her face that suggested that she might sign autographs for us, but she would either much rather be lying in bed with bonbons and painkillers or hot-wiring people's innards. Obviously her knee was bothering her. And yet, on one good knee, she was better than our entire frontcourt, which has about six healthy knees among them. Ugly as this was, it would have been ugly as an old hooker if she'd been fully healthy, because then she would have hit more shots and stopped more Liberty shots. As for Erin Buescher… someone seems to have neglected to tell the Liberty how well she's playing. Holy shit that girl is good. (And sweet, too; she was the only Monarch to sign autographs before getting on the bus.) Can we trade Erins with you guys? Please? We'll even remember to FedEx Nicole Powell's game back to Arco for you… because it was here all along, who would have imagined? Very solid game for her. Ticha wasn't her old self, but she had some very nifty passes, especially one over the shoulder near the end of the game to Yo. (Wow. Players who have spent eight seasons on the same team play well together. It's like they know each other's tendencies or something.) I wasn't impressed with Dorrell, although wow, is she a showstopper looks-wise. DeMya *does* look broader in the bottom than I remember, but it probably does help. I wasn't paying too much attention to her feet, because she was mastering the bankshot all over again. Gawd, and she comes off the bench. I love the hustle this Sacramento team shows. Even though Brunson and Lawson didn't really have statistically great games, they kept a LOT of balls alive. Tante did her defensive thing, and that was about it, although she was also in the mix when it came to going after balls- there *was* a reason they outrebounded us by 13. Wasn't impressed with Smith (or her autograph- initials are NOT ON, young lady!) and I can see why she's slid down the depth chart.

Y'know, I thought and I thought Shameka was having a great game driving for midrange shots and lay-ups… and then I look at her shot selection and 6/9 are threes. I still don't get it. She gets to the line or gets space for a sweet little jumper when she goes inside… why, oh WHY does she persist in long bombing? STOP IT. Also, please stop with the passes to people in colored jerseys. Becky couldn't buy a bucket tonight, although I'd like to credit the Sacramento defense for that. Lots of bad passes in this game- either that, or lots of great reads. Schuey and Barb were driving me crazy with the bunnies they missed; also, guys, again with the being outrebounded by guards, which is frelling ridiculous. I'm glad Loree's laying off the excessive three-point shooting… now, if we could get her to hit her free throws, that would be shiny. And if we could get Coyle to stop dragging out the hook every time she makes a mistake, that would be super. Sherill seemed at times to be suffering from 1-on-5 syndrome; there were quite a few plays where she seemed to have forgotten that she had teammates. Otherwise, I was impressed with her aggressiveness. Cathrine did some scoring, and we had a Screen of Death (or at least a Screen of You Will NOT Be Hawking My Ballhandler, Bitch) sighting versus Haynie, but no rebounds in 19 minutes is unacceptable. Back inside, woman! Ashley made with the scoring and the hustle, woo-hoo! We had a Christelle sighting, two rebounds and a coupla points, and she should have been credited for a third rebound. We also had an Erin Thorn sighting, and she looked awfully out of it. Obviously Iciss kicked the puppy this week- a 21-point blowout, and you get a DNP-CD? Either that, or Coyle thought she was still on IR. Or possibly Coyle was medicated not to give a shit; from upstairs, it looked an awful lot like she was barely paying attention to the game.

God, this is getting nuts. This team is 4-12. They've lost three-quarters of their games. WTF? What the holy fuck?