June 14th, 2016: Dallas at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Up by as much as 10 and down as much as eight, the New York Liberty finished with strong defense to win 91-88 over the Dallas Wings. Tina Charles had 28 points to lead the Liberty, with Sugar Rodgers adding 18. Karima Christmas led Dallas with 21 points, while Courtney Paris notched a 13-point/10-rebound double-double.

For hammer time in the stands, the t-shirt feeding frenzy, gutless wastes of flesh, schadenfreude, Stooookes, good neighbors, taunting, and bad decisions, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.
It's game day at the Garden, as the Dallas Wings return to New York to take on the Liberty. Undoubtedly, there will be tears, and a moment of silence, and probably more rainbow flags in the crowd than usual even for New York after what happened in Orlando. Our fan base is very gay and very proud- and also very black and Hispanic, with plenty of intersection amongst all those descriptors. These were our people. These are our people.

(And then there's the Zellous family's close call. Shavonte says it way better than I do: http://www.theplayerstribune.com/6-14-16-shavonte-zellous-pulse-i-am-orlando/ )

In other news, the Q59 is evil and children need to be taught not to scream on public transit. On the other hand, holy crap in a peach basket, when did they start adding the L train to the wi-fi stations? This is awesome!

The pregame entertainment consists of young girls in what appear to be Rosie the Riveter inspired costumes. They need to get that routine on ice...

There are two women here in Canadian Hammer shirts, wielding a Canadian flag. Bless their hearts. (Eh? Can I just say that I love the increase in Canadians in women's basketball? I love cheap, easy, Canadian jokes about verbal tics and Tim Horton's and hockey and unshakeable politeness and beavers and lumberjacks and geese.) (Almost typed geeks there. Ruth Hamblin is a geek, or at least a nerd, but that's not related to her being Canadian.)

Nice choral anthem, though I'm not sure why they followed it with "God Bless America" instead of the other way around.

The moment of silence was profoundly silent, and the rainbow-striped Liberty flag was debuted a week or so early. Maddie waved it for long enough that people weren't sure whether they were supposed to cheer or remain quiet and respectful.

That scoring pace from the first half was fun. Unsustainable by either team, but fun. The pattern that's become more and more apparent in Liberty games is that we'll shut down a star player, but then the role players will step up.

Case in point, the pesky Erin Phillips. She drove Sugar Rodgers nuts on defense, hassling her and pinning her on the sideline. And then she was bombing threes, even when Shavonte Zellous had a hand up in her face (I think it was after that play where Shavonte stood with her arms outstretched, as if to say, "What more could I do?"). I would appreciate if she would avoid undercutting Shavonte, though. This appeared to have been the night Aerial Powers was assigned to shoot threes, because it's a range she needs to add to her game and something that's still a bit lacking in her game. I love her athleticism, though.

I'm not sure if they consider Jordan Hooper a forward or a guard, but I talked more about the guards, so she'll get stuck in with the forwards here. She had a nice little stretch in the late third and early fourth- I think it may have helped her to have Shoni on her. It looked like she might have taken that block a wee tiny bit personally. She's a useful part, but not much more. Theresa Plaisance played very briefly in the first half and was unremarkable- she took her three-point shot during a stretch when everyone on Dallas seemed to be hitting a three, and since she opened up a can of whoop-ass against us the last time out, I was a bit worried that that was going to blow the doors open. But she missed, and that was pretty much the end of it for her. Glory Johnson has funky shot selection, but more than makes up for the impossible contortions of her shot with her active, quick hands on defense. She was all over Tina Charles, making things very difficult for her.

I like when Skylar Diggins misses lots of shots. Petty? Damn right. I spent four years watching her get every call in the book and then some, and watching her whine every time she got called for one. It's nice to see the shoe on the other foot sometimes. She had a couple of nifty moves on defense, including a beautiful steal off Sugar Rodgers that was absolute petty larceny, but her shot definitely isn't back yet. As much as they held her back in the first month, I'm not so sure she was ready yet. Perhaps keeping an eye on this will help the Liberty decide what to do with Epiphanny Prince after the Olympics. Odyssey Sims couldn't seem to miss, whether it was from outside or driving pell-mell down the lane. I admire her toughness, though I could do without her doing the three goggles; on the other hand, she probably wouldn't do them if we guarded the perimeter.

In a weird way, I enjoy watching Plenette Pierson play because she looks so odd on the court. I don't know whether it's the precision of her moves, the extreme kick that jackknifes her body as she takes a jumper, or the conscious effort she puts in to stand up ramrod straight on the floor, but there's something fascinating about the way she handles herself. She started the game, but I don't think she started the second half- the back must have been acting up again. She gave good hustle in the minutes she got, bringing toughness and bodying on the boards. Karima Christmas killed us, inside and out. She's developed herself into a very useful supporting player- she's not a star, but she does what Dallas needs of her. She hit threes early, she went hard to the rack, and she played solid defense. I don't know if she should be starting, but Dallas should keep her just as long as they can. Courtney Paris is a whole lot of woman, and I find it hard to believe any defender can lose track of her, especially when she's wearing electric lime green. That is a lot of bright green to overlook. She has very limited range on her shot- her midrange jumper, at least tonight, was coming up consistently short- but she has nice passing touch and can score when she's at the basket. She's as mobile as rush hour traffic, but sometimes it's better to be the immovable object than the unstoppable force.

What is with Dallas's obsession with rolling the ball on inbounds? They did it three or four times last night, and not in the usual scenarios where a team is desperately trying to scrap for every second they can get to keep their hopes alive. I'm talking about eight minutes left in the third quarter in a one-possession game.

Shoni Schimmel still needs to work on her defensive rotations, but that block on the Hooper three and the resulting fast break combined into one beauty of a play. She's a firestarter, and she'll earn playing time that way, but she's going to miss a lot of crunch time if she can't improve on defense. (Though she played when it was FT time, part of a four-guards-and-Tina set.) I'm worried about the mental part of Brittany Boyd's game. She seems to be missing that extra oomph in her shot and that extra step somewhere along the line (though her lack of fear is showing up in other ways- she had a bump and a staredown with Pierson after Pierson fouled her on a drive). It looked like she might have picked up a couple of tweaks to the knee and the wrist along the way, too. Shavonte Zellous didn't play her smartest defense tonight, and I was surprised at her free throw rate, but all things considered, she was solid. She made the backdoor cut beautifully and came up big late.

Amanda Zahui B needs to be more physical- if you're going to foul someone, make sure they feel it, especially when you're a broad-framed post. But we needed the minutes she gave in relief of Tina. Kiah Stokes threw a block party and everyone in green was invited. She had a huge one on Sims near the end of the game that helped slam the door- not just close it, but slam it with authority. I'd like to see her be more aggressive on offense and be more of an option, but she's such a force on defense that if that's all she's going to be, it's not the worst thing in the world.

Tanisha Wright's shot was way off- her jumper was coming up consistently short. Her passing eye was a bit off as well. She made up for it on defense, especially down the stretch when she laid the final block on Sims to seal the game. That was a thing of beauty. I joked during the game that she really wanted that 1000th rebound to get past the milestone- she had two o-boards off her own misses in the first few minutes of the game. Sugar Rodgers is at her best when she's finding her shots quickly, in the flow of the offense. While I love that pretty much everyone on my team is willing to drive the lane, that's not where her strength lies. I'd rather see her taking jumpers than driving pell-mell down the lane, trying to draw a foul that will never be called. (We really need to learn that the officials are going to give us nothing. It's good to draw contact, but we've got to stop prioritizing contact over the angle to actually make a reasonable shot at the basket.)

Swin Cash did work on the offensive glass- she didn't play a lot, but she did what we needed her to do, and that's why we needed her back. Carolyn Swords was solid on offense, but she was slow rotating defensively, which allowed Paris to go to town. Also, ball security, this is a thing that needs to be emphasized. In general, that's a thing that this team needs to emphasize coming out of this game, but Carolyn was pretty bad. (So was Kiah, but her bad-assery on the other end of the floor more than made up for that.) Tina Charles was her superstar self, hitting from all parts of the floor. I'm not sure how many threes she actually had, as opposed to long twos, since she was flirting with the line a lot and there was a scoring discrepancy. But Tina did all the things. It was starting to wear on her in the fourth quarter- her shot was falling short and she wasn't moving as quickly. Shockingly, being covered in triple-teams tends to wear a player down. But she had enough left to hit the game-winner.

Our perimeter defense continues to be an issue. They got more than half their points from beyond the arc. It may be a feature, not a bug, but it's one that needs to be developed out. And while we shut down Diggins, we got burned by Christmas and Phillips. The league's gotten to the point where role players can do that to you.

Officiating could have used a few more explanations- we never found out which of Tina's shots had the point taken off the board, or even the explanation for why there was a point taken off the board (it's my own theory that it was one of Tina's "threes" that was really a long two). Can't complain too much, as it really didn't make a difference in the game.

The only real blemish on the experience was the jerk in front of us. I'll admit that I didn't see the whole thing, but I came back to my seat to find the man in my husband's face, snapping at him to "tone it down" and making comments about how if he didn't, they'd have to talk about it elsewhere. Do not ever threaten my husband in front of me, and do not ever ignore me when I call you on it. We don't swear at games and we try to keep our language family-friendly, because there are kids (and the... gentleman... in question had a young girl with him). But we get loud and we get rowdy. We cheer for our team, we razz the opponent, we mock the opponent's mistakes and bewail our own. That's how we roll. Our neighbors stood up for us when we went to get security, and security handled it well enough (except for the one woman who asked us if we wanted to move- uh, no, we're not moving out of our season seats because one guy has a problem, he can damn well move if anyone needs to move).

I love my team, and I love my Garden.

I think we needed a game like this before a road trip. We just need to stop leaning quite so heavily on Tina.