Leslie Gives the Sparks a Nice Present
The Sparks cast away their demons Tuesday night--their turnover rate, poor shooting and Lisa Leslie foul trouble--and with them cast away their five-game losing streak, too.
They beat one of the WNBA’s better teams, the Charlotte Sting, 86-79, and their engine was Leslie, who celebrated her 26th birthday with a 24-point game during which, for once, she was never in foul trouble.
The Sparks (3-7) lost sizable leads several times but led almost all the way and pulled away from Charlotte (8-3) in the stretch on the strength of two three-point shots in the final two minutes by Mwadi Mabika.
Charlotte had tied the score at 74 with 3:02 to go on Andrea Stinson’s 16-foot jump shot and the announced crowd of 5,927 at the Great Western Form grew suddenly silent.
Then Leslie scored after a rebound and Mabika made her first three-point shot for a 79-74 lead. And when, with 36 seconds left, she made another three-point shot for an 82-75 lead, the Spark crowd was back in the game.
The Sparks entered the game with the WNBA’s second-worst turnover rate, 19.57 a game, but committed 14 Tuesday--only four in the first half. They shot 51.5%
Coach Julie Rousseau credited an impassioned plea by guard Jamilla Wideman during a timeout with four minutes left and the Sparks ahead, 72-70.
“Jamilla spoke up during the huddle and said: ‘This is what we’ve been practicing for, this kind of situation! We’re ready and we can do this!’
“I thought it set the tone for all of us,” Rousseau said.
Leslie called the team’s last two practices winners, too.
“We beat a good team because we had two great practices Sunday and Monday,” she said. “We worked on all our offensive sets and our defenses in all kinds of game-situations.”
A toughened Los Angeles defense was also a factor. The Sparks had 12 steals and forced Charlotte into 18 turnovers.
Notes:
Charlotte coach Marynell Meadors, talking about rookie Tracy Reid’s play this season (she had 19 points Tuesday night): “The best thing that’s happened to us this year is that six teams passed on Tracy in the draft.”