A Truly Shocking Loss for the Sparks --Their Worst Ever
The Sparks, a team accustomed to playing poor first halves, then beating teams with blitzkrieg second halves, failed to do that Monday night against the Detroit Shock.
The Sparks were facing an 11-14 team, one that had lost seven of eight games, and a team the Sparks had beaten twice in the exhibition season and once in the regular season, but that team rose up and clobbered Los Angeles, 84-59, its worst defeat in franchise history.
In short, a shocker by the Shock.
Los Angeles (17-8), in second place in the WNBA’s West, must win at Sacramento tonight to prevent its lead over the third-place Monarchs to shrink to percentage points.
Often this season, the Sparks have had to overcome slow starts to build two six-game win streaks and win 14 of its previous 17.
Monday night, before 6,858 at the Great Western Forum, it was slow start, and an even slower finish.
The Shock had four players in double figures, out-rebounded the much-bigger Sparks (35-31 overall, 30-18 on the defensive end), and kept the oddly tentative, almost timid Sparks off-balance throughout.
The Sparks shot 27.9%, Detroit 55.1%.
And Detroit did it after losing one key player, Olympia Scott-Richardson, who suffered a dislocated thumb in the first half. Also, starter Val Whiting had to play the second half on an ankle she sprained in the first half.
Afterward, Shock Coach Nancy Lieberman-Cline nominated Spark Coach Orlando Woolridge for the coach-of-the-year award. No, seriously.
“In my opinion, Orlando is coach of the year,” she said.
“They’ve had a great run, two six-game win streaks, and he had a great draft. But we’re fighting for our playoff lives, and I’m really proud of our players.”
Scanning the box score, she nearly giggled.
“Look at this--we wanted to slow the tempo down on them and we got 84 points,” she said.
“We all agreed we wanted to be a much better defensive team as we get close to the playoffs. And we have good depth, like L.A. and Cleveland, and we wanted to use that tonight. We’ve had a roller-coaster year, but we feel it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”
Woolridge seemed genuinely alarmed afterward, referring to another recent loss, the 81-75 defeat at Utah on Thursday.
“This is the second time in a week we’ve played like this, and we better get it out of our system real quick,” he said.
“This was all about effort. The first time I looked up at the scoreboard, it was 17-2.”
And it got worse than that.
It was 39-21 at one point in the first half, and the Shock twice had 20-point leads in the second half before really opening it up.
A DeLisha Milton hook shot with 13:02 closed it to 51-42, but the Sparks never got any closer.
The first half got out of hand for the Sparks almost immediately. La’Keshia Frett made a baseline jump shot in the game’s second minute, and the Sparks didn’t score another field goal for 7 1/2 minutes, when Lisa Leslie, who was two for 11 and had five points in the game, made it 19-4.
Around the WNBA
The Associated Press reported that Linda Hargrove, former coach of the Colorado Xplosion of the ABL, today will be named of Portland’s new WNBA expansion team. . . . In games Monday night: The New York Liberty (15-11) won for the fourth time in five games, beating the Orlando Miracle (10-16) before 9,059 at Orlando, Fla. . . . The Charlotte Sting (15-13) fell one game behind the Liberty in the Eastern Conference by losing to the Utah Starzz, 67-65, before 7,385 at Salt Lake City. Margo Dydek had 14 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five blocks to lead Utah (11-15). The Sting closed to within 66-65 with 1:51 left but did not score again. . . . Maria Stepanova had 12 points and 13 rebounds for her third consecutive double-double as the Phoenix Mercury (12-14) beat Minnesota Lynx (12-14) before 11,694 at Phoenix.