Sparks Unable to Find Shelter From the Storm

There were scores to settle against Seattle, old and new, but the Sparks ended up on the wrong side of the only one that counts.

After an 81-76 loss to the Storm Thursday night at Staples Center, they have lost two games in a row for the first time all season--and their lead over Houston in the Western Conference race has withered to a half-game.

Coupled with the unlikely loss to Miami Tuesday in the game that will be remembered more for Lisa Leslie’s dunk, the Sparks (20-6) have lost consecutive games at home for the first time since the 1998 season.

“To lose two in a row, we haven’t done that for some time,” said Leslie, who scored a season-high 30 points in a loss marred by turnovers as well as two technicals and a flagrant foul against the Sparks.

It was enough to turn the WNBA-mandated 10-minute cooling-off period into a 25-minute locker-room session after the game.

The team was addressed not only by Coach Michael Cooper and General Manager Penny Toler, but Spark President Johnny Buss as well.

And no, that doesn’t happen often.

“Every blue moon,” forward DeLisha Milton said. “The only time we ever want to see Johnny Buss is when we’re popping champagne and he comes in to congratulate us.”

The Sparks talk about being like the Lakers, poised to turn their game on when it matters for another championship drive. But with six games left in the regular season, they are battling turnovers and what seems to be a confidence crisis.

They committed 18 turnovers against Seattle, contributing to 25 points by a surging young team led by Australia’s Lauren Jackson and rookie Sue Bird from Connecticut.

Despite all that, the Sparks had the ball and a chance to tie with 18 seconds left, trailing by three after a rare miss from the free-throw line by Bird.

With less than 10 seconds left, Tamecka Dixon put up an off-balance three-point attempt--Cooper wanted a foul called on Bird--and hit nothing but air.

“The refs made the call the way they saw it,” Dixon said. “Obviously, I felt I was hampered.”

The play the Sparks looked back to came a little more than a minute earlier, when 6-foot-4 Kamila Vodichkova took an outside shot and rebounded her own miss, allowing Seattle to run more time off the clock.

The Sparks got as close as two with 27 seconds left on Nikki Teasley’s three.

But Bird made five of six free throws in the final minute, Dixon missed, and Jackson made two with 5.8 seconds left to seal it.

For Seattle (15-13) it was a big victory--its second in a row over the Sparks and one that moved it within a half-game of the final Western Conference playoff spot.

It was a physical game, and perhaps there were a few memories of the last time the teams met, when the Sparks’ Latasha Byears and Seattle’s Michelle Marciniak were ejected after an altercation.

But the calls against the Sparks might have been more the result of the officials trying to keep an early handle on the game than anything else.

Leslie, who also had 16 rebounds, got a technical for a minor tangle after a basket, Milton received one for leaning and pushing on Jackson in the free-throw lane, and Byears--most deservingly--was given a flagrant offensive foul for a shove that sent Kate Starbird to the floor.

“We didn’t let them intimidate us with the early flagrant fouls and the cheap shots,” Seattle Coach Lin Dunn said. “We didn’t retaliate. I think we got six points off their flagrant fouls and technicals.”