Overtime Not Good for Sparks
The Sacramento Monarchs’ coach, Sonny Allen, called this one last weekend, just before his team handed the Sparks their first 2000 defeat.
“There aren’t any gimmies in this league, not even the expansion teams,” he said.
“If your players show up unprepared for a life-and-death game every night, they’ll lose, even to the expansion teams.”
And that’s exactly what happened to the Sparks in a 69-59 overtime loss to the Seattle Storm on Tuesday night before 7,700 at KeyArena.
Coach Michael Cooper was furious with the Sparks’ effort, promising lineup changes before Saturday’s game at Portland.
“That was a pathetic . . . effort--we had no execution at all,” he said, after the Sparks’ locker room door was finally opened after 20 minutes.
“We let an expansion team take it to us in every aspect of basketball. Measures will be taken to rectify this over the next 24 hours. There will be changes.”
Changes in the starting lineup, he meant, but wouldn’t yield names.
If it boils down to poor shooting, he might as well replace the entire starting lineup. Tamecka Dixon was two for nine, Lisa Leslie three for 12 and Mwadi Mabika two for six. The Sparks (4-2) shot 38.3% on a night when they were playing a 1-5 team, a team that came in as the WNBA’s lowest scoring, the worst shooting (they came in shooting 35.5% but shot 45% Tuesday) and the worst three-point shooting mark (19.7%).
They were only two for seven Tuesday from the arc, but why bother? They won this one inside, with 6-foot-4 Quacy Barnes and 6-4 Simone Edwards scoring a combined 22 points over the likes of Leslie and DeLisha Milton.
For all of the Sparks’ poor play, they nearly pulled it out in regulation. They trailed throughout the second half and didn’t catch Seattle until point Ukari Figgs sank two free throws with 8.9 seconds left to tie it at 55 with 8.9 seconds left in regulation.
Seattle’s Charmin Smith got the ball to go-to star, Edna Campbell, with one second to go, and she launched a 16-footer that bounded out as the horn sounded.
But Campbell, a 31-year-old pro veteran of the European and Brazilian leagues and the defunct American Basketball League, started the overtime period with a three-pointer.
Figgs then missed a three-pointer, but regained the ball within seconds on a steal and scored on a layup to make it 58-57. Then came Campbell again. She scored on a runner, and Milton then got a free throw at the other end to make it 60-58.
Edwards’ putback with 1:56 left put Seattle out of reach at 62-58.
Campbell had a game-high 22 points.
A good bet for a lineup change might be the demotion of Tamecka Dixon, who guarded Campbell with little success and who shot poorly at the other end. She could be replaced by Allison Feaster, who finished with nine points and made some key defensive stops in the home stretch.
The Sparks started fast, racing to a 13-6 lead, but abruptly wilted as the Storm went on a 10-2 run and took the lead on a Stacey Lovelace basket inside over Leslie. The Sparks never led again.