May 25th, 2018: Minnesota at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: The Liberty came back, but fell just short in a home loss to the Minnesota Lynx, 78-72. Seimone Augustus had 21 points to lead the Lynx, with Maya Moore adding 20, including the game-winner. Tina Charles had 18 points and 12 rebounds for New York.

For turnarounds, long roads, a lack of air conditioning, unsustainability, claustrophobia, and loud noises, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.

While I will admit to some satisfaction in finding a way around Connecticut's rules about laptops to get you those live game notes y'all cherish so much, I'm still more comfortable with a nice heavy laptop on my, er, lap and a thick keyboard under my hands. So that's one of the small reasons I'm looking forward to tonight.

The biggest reason of all, of course, is that it's the Liberty's home opener, and even if it's up in White Plains, I refuse to miss it. The first Liberty home opener is where I fell in love with this team, and this league, and this sport, and sports in general. These are the things that bring me joy, and I will not let James Dolan take this away from me. So it's going to be three hours up, more or less, with some detours along the way, and two hours back via railroad and train and bus. It's not a trip I can do every time out, and I'm not looking forward to that feeling like acid in the back of my mouth when I see the first home game that I'm not at, because it is wrong, if my team is home then I should be there.

Ahem. I may still have some unresolved issues regarding this exile to Westchester County. I beg my readers' forgiveness while I work through them.

Facing the Lynx with a shortage of at least one Kia(h) does not fill me with hope and joy. Mercedes Russell didn't exactly look mobile and swift against training camp posts in the preseason; Sylvia Fowles is going to eat her for lunch and demand seconds.

I'm soliciting suggestions for ways to differentiate the Kia(h)s other than last name, by the way. I loathe calling players by their surnames. They're real. They're not just figures on a screen.

I don't swear in the GNoD. I take pride in this. But this Westchester nonsense is really testing me. I got on the bus to White Plains at 3:40. We pulled out of the stop at 3:47. We made it to White Plains station a bit past 5:30. And that was followed up with a long, sweaty walk to the WCC. I am not a fan of this whole thing, and neither was the other Liberty fan on the bus. (She was sort of obvious, what with the seafoam green Liberty shirt, the Liberty backpack, the two Liberty bracelets, and the green and white sneakers.) There was a lot of swearing behind me when she was updating her friend on her status. I am hot, I am sweaty, I am annoyed, and I am somewhat hungry. (To my amusement and frustration, I ended up playing guide to a couple of other lost fans, because guess what? The way the STH were told to go from the train station to the WCC is closed and they didn't provide alternate directions!)

Did find a local deli a few long blocks back down Tarrytown Road. The stale cookie is not a promising start, but the people next to me swear that everything here is good. Then again, they're the kind of people who order dessert pizza, so we may not be on the same bandwidth here. So far I'm not necessarily impressed with the service speed, but I think I see my sandwiches in progress, about fifteen minutes later. Whatever. I'm not in that big a hurry. It's only quarter past six anyway, and I don't know that it matters to be rushing the gate if I'm not doing the autograph thing. I'd rather stay here, where it's air conditioned and I have outlets for my poor beleaguered electronics.

Kym Michelle Hampton. Stop attempting to sing the national anthem, for the love of all that is sweet and holy. I admire and respect Kym for her role as a building block of this franchise, but her voice is gone. She can't hold a note and she can't stay on key or on pitch. It's terrible.

I am not happy with our seats. We're flush along the sideline, which means that with the ribbon boards up, we start losing view of the court somewhere around two feet from the sideline, which means if there are corner threes, I can't see them. We're also behind the benches, which I normally prefer, except that I can't see them, which means that I can't tell when the subs are up until they're actually in. It's hard to have a nuanced view of the game when you can't see part of it. And if people are in front of you, forget it. You can barely even see over the kids. Kids!

I think we might also be adjacent to the friends-and-family section, and I hope it's the home team one. For a chunk of the first half, we were sitting behind Saniya Chong's mom. (Or at least someone who said her daughter played for UConn and plays for Dallas, and has Chong as a contact in her phone. Makes sense. There's a bus that's a straight shot from Ossining.) There's another group with "family" wristbands at the end of that row. Both groups seem to have moved, though.

(And for all of that, someone we know had tickets on the lower level moved up to our area. The sightlines are just that bad.)

Lisa Borders and Bethany Donaphin are here, though Borders seems to have bailed at halftime. I hope they're seeing what a goat rodeo this is. Security is not prepared for this many people, and neither are the concession stands. I've already heard two people say they're not coming back.

We had a buzzer-beater in the halftime game, and a postgame interview to boot. Adorable.

It's 41-36 Lynx at the half, and honestly, this could be a whole lot worse. Katie Smith's "wide open offense" seems to consist of everyone taking threes and Tina Charles scoring off putbacks. I mean, I'm not a trained professional, but it seems like trying to run an offense predicated on three-point shooting might be a bad idea with two of our best three-point shooters sidelines. I'm just saying.

Shoutout to the lady in the Katie Smith Columbus Quest jersey. (I wonder if it feels weird for Katie to see someone else wearing her number for one of her old teams. Tanisha Wright has 30 for the Lynx.)

I can't say I'm the world's biggest fan of Epiphanny Prince's fashion sense, but at least her look is consistent, even if torn jeans seem like they would break any professionalism rules. Sugar Rodgers, on the other hand, looks like she needs a pair of roller skates before she goes to work her shift at Sonic. Brittany Boyd is in warm-ups but hasn't played. I haven't seen Kia Vaughn. Maybe she's stuck in traffic on Jerome Avenue like I was.

Well. That was frustrating. I mean, I should be happy that we kept it that close for that long against that good of a team with as short of a bench as we had. And I'm proud of them, don't get me wrong. But I think we had a good shot to win, and something went pear-shaped, whether it was a rookie coach making a bad call and not using her timeouts effectively or a rookie player making a bad decision on the floor. I'd have to see a replay to know for sure.

Tanisha Wright looks distinctly wrong in blue. Green is very much more her color. She was intense on defense, but I don't know if Minnesota completely knows where they want to use her. Danielle Robinson, on the other hand, looks like she's all the way back from the Achilles, which is a good sign for the Lynx and a bad sign for the rest of the league. Her speed is back, and her ballhawking is on point. I don't know as she's ever had a jump shot, but she didn't have one tonight. She was very successful at driving the lane, though. I'm also a big fan of the hair in team colors thing, and I hope she continues it. Alexis Jones wasn't great, but she looked good on the floor. She'll be good for them if she gets a chance to learn. I hope she does, but Minnesota's reliance on veterans doesn't bode well for her.

When are people going to remember that Lynetta Kizer has a midrange game? Because she does. I've seen entirely too much of it. And we kept not defending it, which I am not okay with. She was getting into it with the ref during a jump ball, and I was surprised Minnesota wasn't called for an infraction with all the positional shenanigans there. I do like her ferocity on the boards. Another satisfied customer of the Lin Dunn School for Refurbished Post Players. Temi Fagbenle played briefly. She wasn't notable, but she was there.

Maya Moore is cold-blooded, but I mean, if you didn't already know that, you must be new here. (If you are new here, welcome aboard, there's always room on board the bandwagon.) She rolled up and drained that straightaway three with the defense in her face without batting an eyelash, and that was the ball game. She's so ridiculously good, and she's so dangerous, and she's so balanced. She throws her body around, and she doesn't like getting called for it, but sometimes you're not innocent, Miss Maya. Rebekkah Brunson proved she'd been paying attention to Plenette Pierson's lessons on how to hook your opponent's arm and make it look like she hooked you first. (Though Bekky's a veteran herself; it's hard to think of her as only a year behind Pierson.) Sylvia Fowles had a surprising amount of trouble getting to the basket in the early going, but as the game went on and we started to run out of gas, she became more and more dominant on the glass. It wasn't like we were doing the world's greatest job of keeping her off the boards most of the night, either, but she wasn't scoring as effectively in the first half as she was in the second.

I realize that the Lynx have to start thinking ahead to a future without Lindsay Whalen, but I didn't think they were going to start it in, like, their third game. She really didn't seem to be in full charge of the squad like she usually is. I don't know if she has any lingering issues, or if Reeve just chose to ride the hot hand, or what, but it was a little disconcerting. Seimone Augustus, however, is just as smooth as ever. It was beautiful and frustrating at the same time.

There's definitely a drop-off from the starters to the bench, but with those starters, are you really surprised? If I thought Reeve could get away with moving Whalen to the bench, I think she would start the transition to Robinson, but I don't think that's something she can get away with in Minnesota.

Mercedes Russell was playing pretty effective defense early on in the game, but as the minutes started to pile up in the second half, she slowed down and got caught out of position more and more often. (Shavonte's reactions to that would have been priceless if I were a neutral observer and not a frustrated fan.) She doesn't have the stamina to play the kind of minutes we seem to be expecting from her in the absence of Kia Vaughn and with Kiah Stokes coming off injury. When she's on, I love the defense she brings down low- she had one nifty steal with a deflection to Tina. Amanda Zahui B, well, bless her heart. I'm not a big fan of Katie's offense right now in general, but I'm especially not a fan of Amanda jacking as many threes as she did. She can hit them, but not consistently enough for this to be a good plan. She's got to be more careful and more secure with the ball.

There was a stretch of the game where I was fairly certain the rim had something against Canadians, because Kia Nurse was getting all the worst possible bounces. It evened out in the second half, and she became much more of a two-way threat. I'm already in love with her defense, and I can see her becoming an All-Defensive team stalwart in a few years. All of those good things being said, I have no idea what she was thinking with the shot out of the last timeout. It came off to me as a rookie seeing a shot she thought was good, and might even have been good against college defenders. Rebecca Allen was a good offensive catalyst, but her defense still leaves much to be desired. That's a problem when it seems like we're not getting much defense off the bench (except for Kia and I'm still getting used to her).

We're going to need a longer bench. I'm ready for everyone to be back from injury now.

You know how I said I wasn't a fan of Amanda chucking threes? I'm really not a fan of Tina Charles taking three-pointers like someone told her she was subbing for Piph. Like, I get that Tina has a perimeter game and likes to show it off, but she was playing way, way too much outside. And yes, I get that Sylvia Fowles is a fairly good deterrent to playing near the paint, but at the same time, she was getting her best offense on putbacks. Go towards the hole! Kiah Stokes looks a bit hampered by whatever injury she was recovering from. But her instincts are back and her rebounding was good. She'll be fine once she's fine, if that sentence makes any sense. Marissa Coleman took us all by surprise by lapsing into a bad habit from last year's Liberty team that she wasn't even on- immediately assuming Tina should be the primary offensive option even when she herself had the better shot. She's streaky, and I'm going to have to get used to that.

Shavonte Zellous's shot wasn't falling, but I still love watching her on the floor. If nothing else, she's always entertaining in her reactions to fouls or the lack thereof. She did a really good job of getting to the line, though not so great a job of finishing when she was there. Gotta make 'em if you take 'em, Z. Bria Hartley's shot has not arrived yet in Westchester. Maybe it got caught in traffic. There's stuff on the floor that she does that I like, but I would not be opposed to moving her to the bench once we get one of the shooters back.

I like the ball movement. I do not like that so much of this ball movement seems to be ending behind the three-point line. I do not think an offense predicated on three-point shooting is a good plan without three-point shooters. I'm pretty sure I said this already, but it bears repeating, especially given that we have one of the best fours in the league on the roster. I know Katie said she wants to get away from everything running through Tina, but this is still not a good plan. It's like the worst of both worlds!

Officiating was the usual early season disaster area. Counting to two is hard, apparently.

Props to the outsourced security. Most guys don't look under the jersey. And my appreciation to them letting us scarf down the sandwiches at the railing. They were professional and polite.

The ushers, on the other hand, need a lot of work. Throwing tickets at people is uncouth. Telling a ticketed customer to change her seat because someone else claims they need it more is unacceptable.

And with all of that, the crowd still got loud. If this place were actually designed for basketball- if the pitch was good and the sightlines were clear- you could turn it into a phenomenal noise box. It'd basically be New York's answer to Walsh Gymnasium. But you can't see anything from anywhere, and two-and-a-half hours door to door each way is unsustainable. And we're not the only ones.

Until next time, fellow travelers.