That the Detroit Shock ripped through the San Antonio Stars, the team with the best regular season record in the WNBA, in three consecutive games—the first two of them on the road in San Antonio—like a hot knife through fresh paté is now yesterday’s news. But it seems like just yesterday that teams who had struggled just to secure their playoff berths had surprised the pundits by taking the presumptive champs in each conference to the limit. When, for the first time in league history, all four conference semifinals and both conference finals went to three games apiece, there was a lot of talk about parity in the WNBA. So where’s that talk now?
Clearly, the Shock’s easy defeat of the Silver Stars to capture their third league championship marked the end of a WNBA season that can only be described as successful by multiple criteria. However, the highlight of that season was not the championship series.
The fact that the first six series (four conference semifinals and two conference finals) went the limit may not reflect total parity of teams within the league, but it is indicative of the long-term improvement of the quality of the league. Early in its history, the league was always dominated by one or two teams. That is clearly no longer the case. The league now can legitimately claim to have a number of strong teams. More importantly, the teams are not bunched together because the top has dropped in quality, but rather because the middle-of-the-pack teams, at the very least, have gotten better. (Despite its overall 4-30 record in its inaugural season, the Atlanta Dream’s ability to go toe-to-toe in games with many of the top teams in the league suggests that there has also been improvement even at the bottom of the barrel, but that a different approach to the expansion draft may be in order if such teams are to prosper.)
The reasons for the improvement in the middle are both obvious and complicated. The league is better because both the coaching and the caliber of players entering the “W” are better. The first part of that equation is easy to overlook but vitally important. When the league was born, it looked mainly to college for coaches. Reasonable minds may differ as to whether college coaches or retired NBA players make the best coaching pool for the WNBA. But in the early days of the league, WNBA franchises had neither the money nor the stability to attract the best college coaches. With one notable exception, the coaches they did bring in lacked a history of great success at the collegiate level. That exception, of course, was Van Chancellor, who had achieved collegiate success in the powerful SEC. It’s not a coincidence that his teams dominated early WNBA play. As the league progressed it has looked more and more to the NBA for its coaches. There is much discussion about the difference between coaching men and women. But the real difference is in coaching adult professionals, as opposed to college students. When Pat Summit was discussed as a possible WNBA coach, it was amusing to imagine the ultimate control freak that is Summit trying to manage the lives of 30-year old women. It is noteworthy that three of the final four teams standing, and both of the finalists, were coached by men with NBA experience.
The second reason for overall improvement in the WNBA is the number of quality players entering the league. At its inception, the league was populated with established professional players, some of them near the end of their careers, who had spent years playing overseas. These were quality players but there weren’t enough of them with sufficient mileage left in their careers to fully populate a league. (Much less two—and for the first two years, that limited talent pool was divided between the WNBA and the now-defunct ABL.) More than teams in any other sport, the dynamics of a basketball team can be changed by the addition (or loss) of a single player.
As the WNBA matured and a steady stream of excellent young players from college and around the world entered the league most teams have at least one star player; many, if not most, now have two or more. That may be the single biggest difference between the WNBA in 2008 and in 1998. Now teams need at least two stars to compete. Seattle added Lauren Jackson and then Sue Bird. Connecticut added Lindsay Whalen to Nykesha Sales. Phoenix became a championship team with the additions of Diana Taurasi, Cappie Pondexter, and Penny Taylor. The final pieces to the San Antonio puzzle were not just Becky Hammon, but also Sophia Young and Ann Wauters. And so it carries on. As top young players continue to enter the league, the play on the court will reflect that. As impressive as Candace Parker has been, there will be younger players entering the league in the next few years who will have as many skills as she does.
All eight playoff teams had at least one young player who had an immediate impact. All eight playoff teams had at least two stars.
But none of the teams was without weakness and that made match-ups so important. In the first two rounds, there were no pairings that matched strength to weakness in a way that produced the overwhelmingly lopsided results we saw in the WNBA finals. In the early going, the Sparks’ weakness in the backcourt was matched by Seattle’s weakness on a Jackson-less front line. San Antonio’s relatively weak front line was matched by a Sacramento team whose strength, without the injured Rebecca Brunson, lies in the perimeter and backcourt. Even the most one-sided matchup, Detroit and Indiana, paired two teams that, when they were playing their best, relied on strong defense and balanced offense.
In the second round, the match-ups were more interesting but still even enough to produce excellent series. San Antonio was able to contain Los Angeles’ strong frontcourt with its balance and strong defense. Without a real backcourt threat to contend with, the Stars could concentrate on defending the Sparks’ front line. Still, the Sparks were talented enough to take the series to three games, one of them decided on a Hail Mary shot in the final seconds, the other at the foul line. While Detroit had more overall talent and experience than New York, the Shock’s reliance on jump shooters who could be inconsistent played into the strong Liberty defense and made for an exciting series.
The finals, however, lacked compelling match-ups. Detroit is unquestionably the most complete team in the league, strong both inside and on the perimeter. San Antonio simply could not compete with Detroit’s front line. As for the backcourt, Becky Hammon is as good a guard as either Katie Smith or Deanna Nolan; Vickie Johnson is good, but not quite that good. Equally as important, the Shock brought a history of playoff success that translated into a mental strength that San Antonio could not come close to matching. For much of the series, San Antonio looked, well Star-struck. Erin Buescher was totally intimidated and she looked almost afraid to play her game. If a series can be capsulated in a few seconds, this one can be in summed up by a sequence that occurred with 5:15 remaining in the final game. Becky Hammon took a pass in the open just inside the three-point line on the right of the basket. She hesitated, thought about a shot, hesitated some more and finally, with no rhythm at all, took a shot. Not surprisingly, the shot didn’t come close to going in. Eight seconds later, Katie Smith, who was deservedly named the Finals MVP, took a pass in the open just inside the three-point line on the right of the basket. Without hesitating, on perfect rhythm, she took the shot. It hit nothing but the bottom of the net. The Stars were simply physically, athletically, and psychologically overmatched.
Dan Hughes is correctly recognized as an excellent coach, but Bill Laimbeer is the league’s best. As general manager he has been able to field a team that he, as coach, can use to best effect. He has an uncanny ability to get other teams to give him their best talent for next to nothing. If his personality didn’t get in the way, he would be more widely recognized as the exceptional game coach that he is.
The combination of frontcourt domination and experience allowed the Shock to win their third championship with relative ease. Other teams may have been able to give the Shock more competition, but the combination of their front line, their wing players and Laimbeer made them the league’s overall best team. As long as they maintain those three things, and Laimbeer does not yet have an NBA coaching contract for next season, they will continue to be one of the league’s best.
The rest of the league can only look to today’s college stars to try and catch the Shock. (Perhaps the rest of the league needs to invoke a moratorium on trading with Laimbeer until they do!)