September 24th, 2016: Phoenix at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: New York fought back from behind, but couldn't get over the hump in Phoenix's 101-94 win. Diana Taurasi's 30 points led four Mercury players in double figures. Tanisha Wright had 21 to lead the Liberty.

For farewells, baroque rants, girls who love baskets, the DeWanna Bonner brand pogo stick, rivers and rivers of denial, and the grim urge to finish the damn thing already, join your intrepid and ever so slightly melancholy blogger after the jump.
So here we are. A team I once dubbed the Maalox Moments gets to play a team rightly called the Mercury in a do or die game. If there isn't a heart attack somewhere by the end of this, I'll be surprised.

Shout out to Jay Parry for the accidental assist on DeWanna Bonner- she was about ready to run off the court without acknowledging any of the fans, but then Parry called her back because Bonner had forgotten to hug her, and when she attempted to leave the second time she was a bit slower.

We have towels! Three different colors of them, one color per section, to create a striped effect. Ours are white; my father-in-law's was green, and there are also orange ones. People have been snatching them off seat backs like they were made out of diamonds. One woman ran over here from section 108 and snatched up something like two rows' worth. Lady, the first quarter was barely half over, you can wait.

Stirring anthem by a firefighter. The Liberty linked arms; so did the Mercury, with Bone and Bass kneeling.

At halftime, Phoenix is up 52-41 in a game that has not exactly featured huge amounts of defense. This is not okay. I would like defense now, especially from the Liberty.

The seat poacher in front of us is rooting for buckets, no matter which team hits them, and it's very annoying. (I know she's a poacher because the seats in front of us are owned by a season subscriber, the Cowboys fan we had a run-in with some months ago.)

The guest DJ is pretty good. I'll take that.

Shavonte Zellous has learned how to incorporate the fiery torch into her pregame dance routine. Bit late in the year for it, but at least no one's on fire.

I think I may have expressed in some part of the Internet at some point that I am not a fan of the WNBA's new playoff format. In case I did not do so in any place where my faithful readers may have encountered it: I think the playoff format, with two single-elimination rounds, is incredibly, mind-numbingly stupid, and now that it has brought an untimely end to my team's season, it's safe to say that I loathe it with the power of a thousand fiery suns. It is a terrible idea that punishes both good teams and bad teams. It is a solution in search of a problem, creating such problems along its merry way. It is an invention of a power-mad network, controlling and demanding, pulling the strings where the money is. It is a travesty of a system, two-tiered and hypocritical.

And that's just the polite way to word how I feel.

The problem I have in writing this is how to properly channel my rage. After a frustrating loss like this, frustrating simply by what it means, there's usually an easy target. But I can't say we played badly, or that the officials jobbed us out of a game, or that the other team didn't deserve to win. I can point at turnovers and missed free throws, as I'm sure any coach will. By these small things are games won and lost. I could, should I want to, complain about missed screens, but I should be used to such things. So should I not be angry, when we did all that we could, and fell short against a talented team that underachieved for most of the year?

Damn right I'm angry. Damn right I wanted another round to cheer my team on. Damn right I don't think it's fair that we get one shot against a team that basically fell into the playoffs because someone had to, and is now getting hot because they got a player who actually knows how to play defense.

But I suppose you want to hear about the game, because it was a good game, and for the most part a game the league should be proud of. (Which I fear will be part of the problem- ESPN and the WNBA will say that putting all the pressure into a single game makes it a good game, much like MLB took the heart-pounding excitement of a single-game tiebreaker and turned it into the second wild card.)

Phoenix mostly played a six-man rotation. Lindsey Harding played briefly in the first half and reminded everyone why she wanders from team to team like a door-to-door salesman. The one shot she took was short, and bad, and a reminder why she doesn't shoot. Mistie Bass also played briefly, and she seemed to find position more than her teammates seemed to find her, but I guess that wasn't the play. DeWanna Bonner subbed for pretty much everyone at some point or another, and her height and length made a big difference for the Mercury. She defended guards for much of the night, and that meant that trying to get a pass to Sugar Rodgers meant trying to get it through a player seven inches taller, with a longer wingspan than that. She created mismatches on both sides of the floor, and that left a lot of matchup situations that heavily favored the Mercury.

Actually, now that I think about it, I understand how people forget Candice Dupree. She's quiet, which is a real rarity with the Mercury. She gets fired up when her teammates do things, but she doesn't seem to run her mouth, or strut up and down the floor, or complain to officials every single time a whistle is blown. So her teammates get doubled, and she gets open, and she either hits the midrange jumper or she cuts backdoor. She's the silkiest player I ever did see. Brittney Griner needs to build up her strength a little bit- she's got the height and the reach, and she knows how to use them, but if she gets bodied up, she doesn't know how to power through. Carolyn Swords knocked her out of position more than once, enough to disrupt her shot. But she was solid when the Liberty came to drive the lane. Penny Taylor pretty much broke Swin Cash's ankles, and possibly her spine in the same metaphorical sense, whenever she made that cut from the weak side to drive to the basket. Two or three times, Taylor made that move and Swin buckled. She was deadly beyond the arc, to the irritating glee of some of the people sitting in front of us. (One girl was just rooting for buckets, no matter who took them, but one dude decided to go all in for the Mercury around the third quarter.)

Diana Taurasi has the kind of grin that makes you want to punch it off her face, but she backs up her cockiness. She came up big in the fourth quarter, and the three at the shot clock buzzer was probably the psychological game-winner, even if it wasn't the actual-facts margin of victory shot. She's clutch, and she's tough, and even if she can't defend for beans, sometimes it's not necessary. Marta Xargay's defense was critical in this one. She erased Sugar Rodgers. It's strange to see a modern-day Mercury player playing defense on a regular basis, but she stuck close to Sugar and made sure she couldn't get open. I don't like her soccer-style flopping and dramatics at the barest hint of a whisper that someone might be thinking about considering coming close to her, but she's exactly what Phoenix needed.

They adjusted. That's unusual enough for them that I have to give Brondello credit. They played defense, which is also unusual for them. They stepped up.

I don't know if Brittany Boyd's head was entirely in the game. She committed some stupid fouls, and I think Taurasi might have gotten into her head a little (which Taurasi is good at doing). Her vision wasn't where it needed to be. Shavonte Zellous was energetic, and she provided a spark off the bench. We needed a lot from her, because she was subbing for Swin, and Swin was in some kind of bad way. Epiphanny Prince showed that she might just be ready to get back to her old self, coming up with a big shot to end the second half for the Liberty. She's why I'm not as pessimistic about next year as some people are.

Amanda Zahui B played briefly, for those end-of-quarter moments when Tina Charles needed some rest, and she showed that she wasn't ready for the big stage. There's one play she made, or rather didn't make, that seemed to highlight the problem- she was in perfect rebounding position, but the rebound fell just off her fingertips, and Griner seized it like it was the last bottle of water in the desert. You can't play sloppy and lackadaisical in the playoffs, and you can't play lackadaisical if you want to be part of the team's future plans. Kiah Stokes made defensive plays and brought physicality, but it was clear that she was still limited from whatever hip injury ended her regular season run. Her mobility was not where it normally was.

Tanisha Wright stepped up big in the fourth quarter. I think near the end the Mercury were more than happy to let her finish long possessions with two-point drives, since she was doing as much to wind down the game as they were. She was clutch, and she was pretty much willing the Liberty back into the game in the second half. She had no fear, and with Griner in the middle, she was one of the few players who wasn't afraid to penetrate and keep penetrating. (And dear Lord, that sentence came out so many different flavors of wrong.) Sugar Rodgers had no space to get a shot off in the first half. In the second, the team made adjustments and she was able to use screens to get open. The most positive thing I've seen in the last few games is her increased willingness to drive the lane and put up the floater, though she seemed to be taking it from further out thanks to the Griner effect. (Should that be capitalized?)

Swin Cash looked done. She couldn't keep up with Penny Taylor on the drive. Taylor would drive, and Swin would buckle like she had a hinge at the waist. She gave it all she had, but there wasn't very much left to give. Carolyn Swords gave me flashbacks to her Boston College days, but in a good way. She moved Griner and found space down below, and the Phoenix defense forgot about her for long stretches. I love to see a player have to step up and do so when she's called upon. Methinks the big girl wants to stay around a little longer. Tina Charles was solid, and she rebounded strongly, but I got the sense that she wasn't being as aggressive as she should have been in an elimination game. Mercury defense definitely helped, but we saw more of the long-range Tina and less of the paint destroyer Tina, and I really prefer the paint destroyer Tina.

I would also really prefer if officials would call moving screens where players leave their feet, but that was really the only major problem I had with the officiating. Sort of a refreshing change, that.

It was a good game. We left way too many points at the foul line, and we didn't adjust to the Mercury's abrupt decision that defense would be a lovely idea. We showed our resiliency, comin back over and over again. I hate this format very much, and I think in a three-game series we would have come out on top because the dynamic would have been different. But it is what is.

We'll be back. We still have one of the best players in the league to build around. It's taken me a while to compile these notes, because I'm not happy about things being over, and I don't know what to say or how to say it. The usual thank yous seem trite, especially ith Swin riding off into the sunset.

I think I feel like we've been cheated out of a meaningful postseason. This new format- but I've already ranted about that. The one-and-done format is not suitable for the professional level.