August 2nd, 2007: Minnesota at New York

New York Liberty 71, Minnesota Lynx 66

The scorer's table is exceptionally stupid, Shameka Christon has no middle ground, the Lynx cubs are classy kids, and Tamika Raymond and Ashley Battle provide free comedy for all.


Connecticut and Los Angeles game notes are being posted backdated, so if you're curious, check the full journal.

Phew, finally! All we needed was a coach dumber than Patty, a team younger than the Libkids, a couple of friendly calls from the refs, and the worst case of yips I've ever seen a player pick up. And we still almost blew a fifteen-point lead. I tell you, Maalox is missing a golden marketing opportunity by not sponsoring this team, because they are and always have been the Maalox Moments. It's part of what makes the team so addictive and so frustrating.

Say what you will about the Lynx, but the one thing I've always observed about that franchise is that they always make sure that their players comport themselves with class towards the fans. I think the only player who didn't stop and sign was Amber Jacobs, and she always stretches her warmup out to the last possible second. Everyone else stopped, signed, was chatty when prompted- Tamika Raymond and Ashley Battle provided a free, impromptu sketch comedy show when they ran into each other in the passageway, Ashley coming out, Raymond coming in. I think that if I were an out-of-market WNBA fan who wanted to pick a team to cheer for, I'd end up picking the Lynx, because they seem like such nice kids.

Oh, and Ashley took my Sharpie. I mean, she gave it back, but one second I was watching the reporter who was interviewing Kathrin Ress to make sure I didn't miss my opportunity, and the next second the Sharpie was plucked out of my hand from behind. I was about to turn around and give whoever it was a piece of my mind, but then I saw it was Ashley and decided that I didn't actually feel like dying before tipoff. I mean, damn, though, at least holler before you grab it.

Anthem was average. I'm inclined to think that, between what I heard of the halftime performance and the anthem, Keke Palmer should stick to acting and have done with it. I had trouble keeping a straight face, though, because the row behind us had an old deaf man who was singing the anthem… loudly, off-key, out of tune, and out of time, with more warbles than a Christina Aguilera wannabe.

Like the Libkids, I think the Lynx cubs have potential. Noelle Quinn, while she might not be a point guard, is a playmaker, and at least for now that seems to be enough, both for that team and for this league, at least until they get Harding back next year. Seimone Augustus, when she could break loose, showed why she's so dangerous, but the Liberty covered her surprisingly well, considering that our defensive specialist didn't play on her for most of the game. I think it was a combination of bad luck shooting, some surprisingly good defensive plays from Shameka and Erin, and Zierden's inexplicable sub patterns. Abrosimova showed that she's back to her old form, for good and for ill- she's a scorer, no doubt, but she doesn't bring much at the other end of the floor and she lets her emotions control her game if she screws up. Tiffany Stansbury is tough out there- she's a great pickup for this team, because they needed someone as physical as she is. I think it says something about the state of that team that she's starting, though. Nicole Ohlde… what the hell happened to her? She had one good run in the second half, but during the rest of the game I wondered where she caught that case of the yips. I've never seen a post player miss as many chippies as she did that night. There were points in the game where they were looking to Stansbury as a more reliable offensive option in the post, which should freak you out a little bit if you're a Lynx fan. The Lynx bench doesn't impress me all that much- well, okay, except for Kristen Mann, who was insanely clutch in that last minute where the Liberty were practically begging the Lynx to come back and win the game. Too bad Stansbury's not quite big enough to play the five, or else I'd suggest starting her at the five and Mann at the four, bringing Ohlde in off the four. But that's really all I've got on the Lynx bench. The rest of them… Jacobs didn't get a chance to shoot, or if she did, she missed it. Raymond's still got a few tricks up her sleeve, but I think the game's gotten too big for her. The only thing that sticks out in my head about Murphy is one of her more remarkable flops that made it clear she'd been in LA too long. Ress did get in, and she's surprisingly physical for a Euro- I guess she had to be, to survive in both the BEast and the ACC. Big strong body- I'm not surprised they kept her, given Hayden's pregnancy and subsequent need for reconditioning.

We didn't see as much of Janel as we would have liked, since she got into foul trouble early in the game; once she picked up her third, she sat for the rest of the first half, and she spent extended time on the bench when she picked up her fourth. But when she was in, she was merciless, driving inside against the smaller lineup that Zierden inexplicably ran out there with Janel and Cathrine on the floor (we're talking Mann at the five, Abrosimova at the four small here) and taking outside jump shots when the opportunity presented itself. I recall one set of back-to-back possessions where she hit a matched pair of corner jumpers, one from each side, almost as if to prove she could do it from either side of the court just because. Cathrine continued this recent revival of her interior play; unfortunately, she also continued the recent bad luck of the inside shots not going in, but at least this time she was hitting her outside shots. Again, I worry that this is going to drive her further and further out on the perimeter, and if we need someone to take a stupid, ill-advised three-point shot with no rebounders in sight, we always have Shameka. I'm starting to understand what one of Shameka's problems is: she doesn't have a middle ground. She's either very good or very bad, too aggressive or too passive, too offensive or too defensive. Someone needs to show her that it's not so much an on-off switch as it is a dial, and she'll be fine once she learns that. Erin and Loree joinly made a very smart play at the end, after Erin had missed the second free throw of the first pair but got her own rebound- she passed it back out to Loree, who had a wide-open three- we're talking nearest-defender-in-Hoboken open here. But Loree recognized that a miss might be disastrous, since the lead was only three and the Lynx had shown that they were going to hit big shots if we let them, so she passed it back out to Erin. Between them, they let the clock run down from sixteen seconds to six, and even if Erin hadn't hit the second pair, that made it a lot harder for Minnesota to even consider coming back. That all being said, I was not happy with either of them for most of the game, as they were both guilty of really bad passes and questionable shot selection. Much as I like Erin, she's a placeholder at the point guard slot, nothing more. I'm not quite sure where That Moron's sudden infatuation with Martina has come from, other than the general impression of great height that having her on the floor instead of either Shay or Lindsay has. I mean, yeah, she's a sweet kid, but to play her over the one genuine veteran we have? WTF? This time Tiffany was hitting all those shots she missed against Los Angeles (okay, most of those shots; wasn't she the one who blew the shot after that gorgeous pass by Janel?). She still needs to get her body under control. Jess couldn't hit her shots, going too hard off the glass, but she was fighting for rebounds- God, I never realized how long her arms are, even for a woman her height. Brief Lisa Willis sightings, and not so brief in some fans' cases. ;) It took almost the whole season, but I think someone's clued Patty in to this whole nifty rotation concept. I think Cathrine was the only starter who logged above thirty minutes last night. We have a lot of young talent on this team, and if she can start realizing it, and using it, then she's a better woman than we've been giving her credit for.

The refs were… um, interesting. Yes, I think interesting was a good word for that crew. To be fair to them, most of the egregious errors came at the scorer's table; an Augustus free throw was never credited, for reasons that I still don't understand, and for a long time one of Stansbury's free throws was credited to the Liberty. They did correct that one eventually, though. There were some interesting calls, but I can't complain too much, as most of the most interesting calls were in the Liberty's favor. Having said that, even if the refs suck in favor of my team, I'd rather not have sucky refs, y'know?

Sue and Kym sightings in the crowd. Gee, I wonder why they didn't announce Sue's presence. Sue wasn't the only familiar face I saw for the first time in a long time. I saw a couple of other folks come out of the woodwork. (Running into a former junior high school classmate after several years- that was disconcerting, to say the least.)

I'm not sure whether the Lynx have as much talent as the Liberty, but I do think both teams are underachieving given what they have. Zierden seems to have some interesting ideas about his roster that don't match up to reality, and he's even worse at reacting to adjustments than Patty is. Up where we were, we suspected that the last score by the Lynx, off the steal, was a Teresa Edwards notion, as it's apparently an old Georgia trick. I'd love to see her as a head coach some day in the not so distant future. She's got the gravitas, and I think she's got the knowledge of the game as well.

We needed that win. We needed it bad. There might have been flaming torches ringing the Garden if we'd managed to lose to one of the most disorganized teams in the league. At that, damn, we almost choked. I'm hoping the Libkids take away the right lessons from this game and don't let the pressure up on the Mystics tonight.