Monday, July 22, 2019

July 20th, 2019: Los Angeles at New York

Just the Facts, Ma'am: Solid bench play fueled the New York Liberty's 83-78 win over the Los Angeles Sparks. Marine Johannès had 17 points to lead New York, while Kia Nurse added 14. Nneka Ogwumike had game-highs of 20 points and 12 rebounds for the short-handed Sparks in the loss.

For a truly international game, distressing superstars, Chiney Ogwumike's earnest belief that she did not commit that foul, and role reversals, join your intrepid blogger after the jump.
Happy belated birthday, Maddie! Happy anniversary, moon landing! (Happy birthday, dad!)

It's game day at That Dump in White Plains, known to less cynical fans as the Westchester County Center, as the Los Angeles Sparks (or at least whatever's left of them) come visit the New York Liberty.

After the smooth sailing of last game, it's back to the usual tangle of confusing and crossing lines, waits at security, and not having the ticket ready to properly. (Yes, I'm not sitting in my ticketed seat. No, I do not believe situating my mouth directly above the visiting bench is a good idea.

I don't know what happened, but I saw a trio of Sparks in hot pursuit of a teammate. No idea what was going on. Mostly guards, I think.

New DJ today. I like their taste better than the usual woman's.

On the other hand, substitute announcer is not as good as Mike.

Anthem singer thinks he's Whitney Houston or something. Narrator: He was not Whitney Houston.

It's 44-37 Liberty at halftime, and it's been reserve play doing the job for the Liberty. Marine Johannès is putting in work, with 13 points and some spectacular passes (unfortunately, Kalani Brown blocked the finish on the best one). Nneka Ogwumike has 12 points and seven rebounds for the Sparks, while Chelsea Gray has come on strong in the second quarter with 11 points, but most of the rest of the Sparks have been... not good.

There's a French family in the rows behind us cheering enthusiastically for Marine, and I love it.

I don't know if someone sprung for a spa visit for Katie or something, but she looks amazing. Refreshed, relaxed, well-coiffed, sharply dressed.

Asia Durr's street clothes brought to you by the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network.

Beating the Sparks is always fun. After all, this is the league's oldest rivalry. How we did it honestly amazes me as well. I'm not used to our bench play being so solid.

There is a whole lot of Kalani Brown, but she seems somehow less balanced about it than her draft classmate Teaira McCowan. Her thighs/upper legs seem out of proportion to the rest of her. She brought a lot of physicality to the floor. Her foul trouble did not help with the Sparks' lack of available depth. I see her potential- she did a couple of numbers on Reshanda Gray with a quick turnaround for her buckets- but if she can't stay on the floor, she's not going to be any help to Los Angeles. Marina Mabrey drove hard and missed just as hard. I'm not surprised Fisher didn't go back to her in the second half. She was out of control. Karlie Samuelson took threes and hit a pretty big one late in the fourth to help keep the Sparks close.

Such a loss of depth for LA in the backcourt. Losing Parker is a big blow, but losing three guards forced Fisher to do a lot of juggling, and I think he was less prepared to juggle than he was to play without Parker. At least up front you have the Ogwumikes.

Yes, I know she has the assist numbers today, but Sydney Wiese is not a point guard. I don't know what she is other than a shooter, and a very quick one at that. She's certainly not a starter, and she's not the person I want initiating my offense if I have Chelsea Gray available to do that. (Which, to be fair, LA did not have for stretches in the second half when Gray got into foul trouble.) To borrow and abuse a turn of phrase from Shea Serrano, Chelsea Gray was out there ruining my life with big threes and ridiculous steals. She's so good. I was relieved and shocked when that last three was so off line. (And the petty part of me wants to say, "C'mon, you committed a push-off to get that open and that's the best shot you could get off?") Her hands are so quick, and she's so relentless. Physicality isn't necessarily the right word for her game, but she's not afraid to use that big build of hers to create space on offense or make her assignment uncomfortable on defense.

Speaking of making people uncomfortable as a defender, shoutout to Tierra Ruffin-Pratt for doing ridiculously hard work on players much taller than she is and often knocking those shots off line. There were a lot of switches by LA, and she's part of the reason they could get away with it. While I don't necessarily like how quickly Nneka Ogwumike moved into Tina Charles's head today, or how physical she was with Tina at both ends of the floor, I can respect it, more or less. I didn't realize how much of a perimeter game she'd developed until she was hitting threes early on in this one. For most of the first half, it was her, Chelsea Gray, and a bunch of not particularly helpful people. She's so good. I have to respect that. I do not have to respect Chiney Ogwumike's inability to shut up, stop whining, and sit down at appropriate moments. Yes, shockingly, Chiney, if you hit someone it's a foul. You went to Stanford, I know you're smart. Now that she's not on one of my teams, she annoys me too much to write about her.

Someday, Katie Smith will run a five-nation line-up out there, and I will rejoice. You don't even need to trust Han Xu to do it! You need Amanda, Marine, and Bec, plus either Nayo or Kia, plus one of the Americans! Presto, instant United Nations!

(In case you weren't sure I was a giant nerd. Spoilers: I am.)

For the honor and dignity of all Rebeccas out there, Imma need Rebecca Allen to please stop committing stupid unnecessary fouls on defense. She committed two of them pretty much back to back, and it was extremely frustrating. Nayo Raincock-Ekunwe played the first half like her hair was on fire (her hair was not actually on fire)- going up strong inside and stepping outside for the trey. She cooled down in the second half. Reshanda Gray pretty much won the game for us. She had a couple of huge rebounds right at the end, and got the steal when LA had it within two. She was relentless. I do still need her to get the foul trouble under control, although in this game much of it had to do with these terrible officials and I place no blame on her getting called for a foul when she was the player getting hit.

So, this was my first look at Marine Johannès in a Liberty uniform, and I like what I saw. She needs to either tone down the fancy passing or she'll get more used to her teammates and more of those too-much-mustard-on-the-hot-dog passes will find their way to their intended recipients and things will get fun again. She gave us a long-range option with style, which is very nice to have, since most of our long-range threats are people I would like to not be volume three-point shooters (hi, Amanda). Maybe this was her best game, and we know no one is ever as good as their best game, but I think I'd be happy with even half of what she produced today, at least early in her tenure here in New York. Brittany Boyd needed a good thwack with the clue-by-four in this game. On one hand, I do sympathize with her getting clocked in the chin by a Chelsea Gray elbow and not having it either called or reviewed. On the other hand, that is no excuse to pull back from the shooter and basically stop playing. That was bush league, and she got pulled out of the game shortly thereafter. She got her head back in the game eventually, after a good long sit on the bench. She had her moments, but there was something missing.

I'm going to need Tina Charles to stop doing her Cappie Pondexter impression now. She's not very good at it and I don't want to see her descend into Cappie's fashion "sense". She took terrible shots early in the shot clock. She shot directly into unnecessary double-teams. She generally forgot about the existence of her teammates in order to take terrible shots. She was not good on defense. She let the Ogwumikes, especially Nneka, have their way with her. I know she's better than this, or at least she has a history of being better than this, but lately I'm starting to wonder if she's approaching the McCray cliff. Amanda Zahui B got off to a hot start offensively, but cooled off quickly and never seemed to recover. She got passed over in the second half by both Nayo and Reshanda, and I think Katie made the right call on both accounts. She's capable of banging, but she doesn't do enough of it to match up well with LA.

On the petty, shallow tip, I don’t like Bria Hartley's new hairdo at all. The gilding doesn't suit her. According to the box score, she lined up at three, but that's a little disingenuous; inasmuch as any of the guards in our three-guard set could be considered a small forward, Kia Nurse is probably the best candidate for the role, and none of them are particularly suited to it. Bria did not look ready to be back in the W after Eurobasket. I think she'll shake it off, but for now she looks bad. Kia looked out of sorts and under a lot of pressure. LA's switches defensively did her no favors. Ladies and gentlemen, your All-Star starter. (For the record, I didn't vote for her. Then again, I didn't vote for anyone.) I'll say this about having Tanisha Wright on the floor: there seemed to be a lot more vocal communication on the floor when she was out there. Even if it highlighted the team's issues with knowing the playbook and people knowing where they needed to be, it showed that at least people were willing to step up and address those issues. She's not a long-term solution at point, but if she can mentor Boyd and Marine, passing the torch without too much of a hiccup, I'll be okay with her sticking around for this year and maybe even next. (But next is a stretch, and honestly at this point I'm hoping that one of the people she'll be mentoring if she is here in 2020 is Sabrina Ionescu.)

Hoo boy, these refs. Love to see two terrible out-of-bounds calls in the first five minutes of the game. There was a lot of physical play, and a lot of the worst of it wasn't called. Credit them for some consistency, though: the sequence where the defensive player gets sandwiched between two offensive players and is called for a foul because... I don't even know... was called on both teams (Bec for us, TRP for them). I think the Sparks have a lot of nerve being upset about the foul differential, with the elbows they were throwing, but some things don't change.

Shockingly, if you give Liberty fans a beat to get the "Let's Go Liberty!" chant going to, we'll get it going. It was announced as a sellout, but there were a lot of empty seats. Something tells me there will always be a lot of empty seats, even if they claim to have sold every ticket. When we had reason to make noise, we made noise.

Look, kid, you already have one t-shirt, stop screaming for another one.

The guy who lost "Don't Get Torched" got screwed. The last shot was clearly after the buzzer.

I'm not expecting our reserves to play like this every game (but on the other hand, I'm not expecting our starters to play like this every game, either). It's great to see them do so, and I love how Marine is settling in with this team.

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