Wednesday, May 9, 2018

May 7th, 2018: Dallas at New York (at Connecticut)

Just the Facts, Ma'am: The Liberty started out strong, but faded late in their preseason game against the Dallas Wings at Mohegan Sun Arena. Azurá Stevens stole the show for Dallas with 19 points and nine points off the bench. Marissa Coleman led New York with 14 points off the bench, while Kia Nurse was solid in her debut with 10 points and four boards.

For fashion commentary, red salt, translation services, exhaustion with retreads, and game day issues, join your intrepid and anachronic blogger after the jump.

I'm doing it. I'm joining the 21st century. I have a tablet. I have a word processor. All I needed was a headset. Guess what? I found one. So now I don't have to bring my laptop, which means I don't have to carry as much. That also means I don't have to bring my backpack and go through bag check.

This is a test of the emergency GNoD system. If this were an actual gameday... oh, wait, it is. In fact, it's a double header day, and the first of back-to-back double headers. My heart is light and singing. It's good to be back in the groove.

So far, I've been called upon to serve as translator between the Chinese tour guide and a Spanish-speaking passenger. That's kind of fun when you don't really understand either of the people involved, and you really, really have to hope you understood the accent correctly.

I apologize in advance for any unusual typos; text-to-speech is still working out the kinks. (or “at the cakes”, as that last sentence originally read) I imagine it's going to have a field day with some of player names. Good thing there aren't too many hard to pronounce ones, although it might have some trouble with a blue McKay (better known as Ogwumike. Oh, dear.) Capitalization also seems to be a problem, which offends my soul, as I am definitely a grammar cop if not the other kind of grammar enforcement.

Got off to a rough start with autographs, since the Liberty were on the other side from my usual perch, so I missed Kia Nurse. But I got over quickly enough to get the free agent class. Also, I got to see Spoon air guitar and turn into a big kid when Swin came out with the kid.

Wow, Blaze has slimmed down. he/she/it (do we know Blaze's pronouns?) basically looks like a fuzzy orange person. The effect is more unnerving than the old suit was.

There's a fire sale going on, so if I have no money tomorrow, that's why. Okay, and I also lost some money on the slots, but that's what you do in Connecticut.

Shout out to the nice folks from California, proudly wearing their signed Sparks jerseys. They were really nice, even if I had to relive that crushing loss to UCLA. (if you guys are reading this, I think I misremembered who hit the gamewinner. I think it was Jasmine Dixon.)

The seafoam green shooting shirts with the black jerseys are fire emoji. That's a deliberate use of the word emoji, not an attempt to insert an emoji into the text.

Good solid baritone anthem.

I think the game day staff hit up Margaritaville before the game. The PA guy couldn't get the starting lineups straight, the scoreboard was reversed for the first four minutes, and the clock operator was asleep at the wheel, leading to a very long stoppage of play. It took three restarts to get the clock properly oriented, and there were multiple issues throughout the game.

21-17 Dallas after the first quarter, and Azurá Stevens is on fire. That dryness you just felt in your mouth is my saltiness coming through the page with all the force my irrational frustration can bear.

38-32 Dallas at half. I'm more concerned about Tina Charles having gone to the locker room and not coming back. It looked like she got hit in the face near the end of the first quarter, but she's not even on the bench.

Not to say that the Westchester move discommoded more than the city residents, but I saw three people in Liberty gear with Sun season ticket cards.

55-54 Dallas at the end of the third. Have gotten the attention of Marissa Coleman and Lindsay Allen for informing Kaela Davis that the line does not lie. I... should probably mention I'm in the second row. Of the upper deck.

76-69 Dallas, final. Dallas is really, exceptionally, absurdly tall. I am jealous.

I think Ruth Hamblin tries to calculate angles off the glass with her bank shot. It's like she doesn't think that she can get it in without help. I know you're a rocket scientist, Ruth, but you don't have to show off like that. She looked good against players who were shorter than her or less mobile than her. We'll see how that goes against Connecticut. Evelyn Akhator had a block on Kia Nurse so vicious it could have been considered an international incident, especially when Kia's response was to foul her on the other end. Breanna Lewis wasn't terrible, but based on the other players I saw in this game, she would probably get the short end of the stick. Natalie Butler got a decent amount of applause from the crowd, and then proceeded to obliterate a defender with an offensive foul. She's got size, and you can see her instincts at the basket, but she's not ready for primetime, and I don't know that she'll ever be.

Azurá Stevens is really good at basketball. I don't know if she's a generational player, if only because I think she has to work on her interior game more to be that kind of star, but her size and touch on the outside were a deadly combination. She ripped us up in the second quarter, and kept up the pace in the second half; the runs we made were mostly curtailed when she returned to the game. Loryn Goodwin is smaller than I remembered- I thought she was stockier. She had one nice hustle play, but that was it. Saniya Chong brought excellent defense off the bench. (Really, Shoni? You think you're going to be able to lull a Husky alumna to sleep with some half-baked crossover moves?) I am already done with Kaela Davis's acting. So done. She hit the deck at the slightest provocation. I will stipulate that most of her hitting the floor was on the opposite end of the court from where I was sitting, so it was possible that there was legitimate contact I didn't see, but I doubt it. (This is part of what led to "LINE DON'T LIE, KAELA!" and Marissa and Lindsay looking for where that noise came from.)

I don't think I was ready for Liz Cambage to come back. That's a whole lot of woman there. She made her presence felt early on, whether it was from beyond the arc (which I get the feeling was not the play that Fred Williams drew up) or inside where her height was superior to every defender New York could throw at her. Kayla Thornton had a good defensive game, disrupting passes all over the place. She had a fantastic offensive rebound in the early going.

Skylar Diggins-Smith is not a player that we should ever be leaving open. I don't know why that's a thing that happened, but it was a thing that happened entirely too often for my liking. Allisha Gray had a monster block on Sugar Rodgers and got her scoring done in the first quarter. I get the sense that Williams wasn't really evaluating her as much as he was evaluating some of the more borderline players. Karima Christmas-Kelly did work getting to the line inside, admittedly helped by the players we had attempting to play defense in that quarter.

Leslie Robinson has not caught up to the speed of the professional game yet, and I don't know if she ever will, but I like her instincts. Her reaction time is just markedly slow. She might not make it in the W, but she should have a good career overseas eventually. Mercedes Russell is not very mobile, and her height advantage was negated by the fact that apparently everything is bigger in Texas. She had a couple of shining moments, especially off a feed from Shavonte Zellous. Marissa Coleman was streaky on offense- her points looked to becoming more from the jumper than from the inside. On the one hand, I'm happy about this because we need a three until and unless Rebecca Allen turns into who we thought she was going to turn into; on the other hand, if we need her to swing to the four for spot minutes, I don't think it's going to work. Apropos of absolutely nothing, she was wearing gorgeous fuchsia nail polish for this game. (Yes. I'm a girl. I notice these things.)

Kolby Morgan had her moments to impress. She failed to do so. I kind of got the sense that bringing her in was a favor, so I'm not terribly surprised. I assume she's getting cut the moment Bria Hartley is back and ready to play. Shoni Schimmel seemed to be looking for her own shot more than I would like out of a backup point guard. I know she can be a combo guard, and has been a combo guard, but we need distributors too much for her to be taking shots away from Sugar or Piph, and that's just among backcourt players. We definitely don't need her taking shots away from Tina. (Granted, by that point, Tina was out of the game, and we'll see if she plays against half of Los Angeles.) She does at least seem to be back in playing shape, which is a plus. I like Kelly Faris's defensive grit, but she's got to bring more to the floor if she wants to stick on this roster. She's always been offensively limited, but the problem seems to have gotten worse. I almost forgot Kia Nurse, which would have been embarrassing , since I was very impressed with her defense for a rookie. I know UConn haas a very intense defensive system, but she seems to have adapted quickly to the speed of the pro game.

Unsurprisingly , Sugar Rodgers ended up as one of our primary offensive otions after Tina left the game. Her shot is as quick as ever. Lindsay Allen looks like she's starting to develop into the kind of point guard we thought she could become- mostly a distributor, but someone who can score a little bit when she has to. I really look forward to seeing her development.

I like Cal as much as the next New Yorker, and I wish her all the best, but I'm done with trying to make Reshanda Gray happen in the WNBA. If she can't rebound against taller players, and she can't effectively shoot around taller players, and she can't stop fouling taller players, she's going to have problems, because pretty much every post in the WNBA is taller than she is. Either she needs to get taller, she needs to get faster, or she needs to get smarter on the court, because otherwise she has no future as a WNBA player. Shavonte Zellous brought the hustle, as she always does. We're going to need her leadership this year. (Cool. Once I got the right headset, and got the mic in the right position, there were a lot fewer typos.) It's really hard to gauge Tina Charles on half a quarter of play. I don't know if she's going to play against Los Angeles because, after all, this is the preseason, and we really don't need to know what she can do.

I'm looking at these notes, and I'm actually a little embarrassed, because I really don't have a lot to say about the Liberty starters. On the other hand, it's not like we don't already know what they can do. Preseason is more about trying to figure out the new players that you have, and where they might fit in on your roster.

Part of me wants to say that the refs got whistle happy in the second quarter, but on the other hand, so did our personnel.

I'm not impressed with our black jerseys. I mean, they're not terrible, but they're not exciting either. I certainly don't want to buy one. I like the pop of color on the trim, but the cookie cutter design somehow seems even less inspired than the last cookie cutter designs.

I'm very much not happy with how we folded in the second half. Granted, at that point we were mostly just testing players out; I think after Tina got hurt, Katie pulled the chutes on taking the game seriously. But it still annoys me.

On to the next one, which you may end up reading in rapid succession, given that I'm working on most of this pile at once after finally sleeping for the first time in what seems like forever.

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