“Wow,” Kahleah Copper tweeted yesterday evening. She was the rare WNBA player with the time to post and spectate on Wednesday. The final day of the group play stage of the league’s in-season Commissioner’s Cup tournament involved six games in one night, the first five overlapping. On account of the odd number of WNBA teams right now, Copper’s Phoenix Mercury were the lucky 13th team out. They could simply kick up their feet and take in one of the more colorful nights the league has seen. What was her "Wow" about? We can only guess. These were my own Wows from each game:
VALKYRIES 71, WINGS 80
The Wings won their second game! This was not something guaranteed to happen this season, and certainly not this week, when Dallas lost two frontcourt rotation players to the EuroBasket tournament. But the Wings defense was surprisingly passable, and Paige Bueckers and Arike Ogunbowale both scored enough to get by. The Valkyries have their own EuroBasket absences to blame, but head coach Natalie Nakase said she felt like her team was uncharacteristically poor on the offensive boards. She was Not Mad but said she was, for the first time, “disappointed in how we fought.”
DREAM 81, LIBERTY 86
Vintage Liberty: Play like garbage for a stretch, dig a big hole, rudely scurry out of it. Halfway through the third quarter, New York was down 17 to an Atlanta team whose offense has transformed from last season's league-worst unit into one that’s downright watchable. Rookie Te-Hina Paopao didn’t get much run in the second half, when the Liberty bigs woke up a bit, but the 5-foot-9 guard was the star of the first half: She put up 16 points off the bench on 4-of-5 shooting from three. An eager sharpshooter blessed with an onomatopoeically appropriate name, Paopao slid into the second round of this year’s draft. It seemed weird at the time—Paopao had been one of the best three-point shooters in college basketball—and seems weirder now. She’s someone, say, the Chicago Sky could have used. But Skyhood should not be wished upon anyone, and she fits well on this Dream roster. “Little bro just trying to be like big bro,” joked Rhyne Howard in the postgame press conference. She hit nine threes against the Sky on Saturday.
MYSTICS 79, SKY 72
The Sky turned over the ball 22 times. They attempted just 10 threes, nine of them in the first half, three of which they made. At one point in this game, they led by 16.
SUN 71, FEVER 88
Sure that any game against the Connecticut Sun would be the night’s least competitive and least interesting game, I put this one on the backburner. This would put me in a sort of Donald Glover pizza-box scenario later when I went to check in and learned that it had in fact exploded into a bunch of shoves, flagrant fouls, people taking exception to these flagrant fouls and getting technical fouls, and then a full-on fourth-quarter fight when the referees had lost the plot. (This is also definitely why Copper said "Wow.") In retrospect, a game with the competitive spirits of Jacy Sheldon, Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham and Marina Mabrey could never be uninteresting. My mistake.
SPARKS 67, STORM 98
Per the handy WNBA stats site Across the Timeline, there has been only one WNBA double-double with steals. The honor belongs to Ticha Penicheiro, the Sacramento Monarchs’ mischievous pass-first point guard, who scored just one point in that 2003 game, but got the other part of the double-double with 11 assists. Seattle’s Gabby Williams fits the mold of an elite stealer: A former track star, she is among the WNBA’s fastest players and very best athletes. Her shooting leap will make her an All-Star this year, but old-school Williams is fun either way. She can leap to intercept passes and poke away balls for speedy transition buckets. In other words, she's a disastrous matchup for a team like last night’s Sparks, who were down their three best point-guard options and had emergency hardship signing (and cult hero) Shey Peddy running the offense. Williams was well on pace to tie or beat Penicheiro’s single-game steals record (10) with six steals halfway through the second quarter. But she cooled off a bit, and settled for eight. Let’s watch some steals:
ACES 62, LYNX 76
Even the best version of the Aces has not looked great this season. The defense is porous; the four-on-five offensive lineups they play with Kiah Stokes continue to not work. So I didn’t expect much from the Aces without A’ja Wilson, who has missed several games with a concussion. But when Napheesa Collier left the game with a back injury, the Lynx actually trailing 39-32 in the third quarter, it was at least a fairer fight. It says both flattering things about the Lynx and unflattering things about the Aces that Las Vegas’s lead at no point felt real. Indeed, Minnesota’s consistent competence won out, as it tends to do. Courtney Williams scored 18 points in the second half. The Lynx held the Aces to just 10 points in the fourth quarter. They’ll represent the Western Conference and host the Fever for the Commissioner’s Cup Final.
