Down This Road Again
There will be stare-downs, chest bumping, shoves, flying elbows, and in the end both glorious celebration and utter devastation.
Playoff games do that to people, especially the people who do the playing.
Tonight’s winner-take-all WNBA showdown between the Sparks and Sacramento Monarchs at Staples Center will be the third game of this best-of-three first-round series.
But it feels like a Game 7. For one thing, it will be seventh meeting between the teams this season, and they’ve split the previous six. For another, there’s more that figures into this than simply moving on to the Western Conference finals this weekend.
Sacramento long has had two big rivals in the West -- the Sparks and the Houston Comets. The Monarchs figured out last year how to beat the Comets in the playoffs, winning a first-round matchup. They haven’t figured out yet how to topple the Sparks, who defeated them in a one-game playoff in 1999, and in the Western Conference finals in 2001 and 2003.
That doesn’t mean Sacramento is fatalistic about tonight’s game.
“We’re not worried about the other series. We’re not worried about yesterday,” said Sacramento guard Edna Campbell, referring to Sunday’s 71-57 loss.
“We’re just going to take care of ourselves, get focused and play. We know if we can play the type of defense we can play, it’s a different story.”
The Sparks are of the same mind -- be focused and play for 40 minutes against the team that has been as tough against them as any other in the league.
“A lot of the wins and losses [against Sacramento] this season have come from things that don’t have to do with basketball,” Spark center Lisa Leslie said.
“It’s been about hard work, heart and getting after it. When we’ve come out and executed, we’ve been the better team. But when we’ve just come out and not prepared to play them, we lose. It’s really that simple.”
This far into the season, neither team can radically alter its personality. Which suggests that the Sparks will be better off turning the game into a shootout, while Sacramento’s success lies in making the game a defensive struggle.
“Since I’ve been coaching, it’s whose will prevails,” said Monarch Coach John Whisenant, who took over the team in the middle of last season. “Most observers recognize the Sparks have the superior offensive players. But we’re just as athletic as them and probably deeper.
“In Sacramento, we were able to prevail with our will; we defended them and made them uncomfortable. [Sunday,] we weren’t able to do that, and they were able to penetrate our pressure defense.”
Spark Co-Coach Karleen Thompson isn’t too worried about her team’s offense or defense. What needs improvement, in her mind, is the rebounding.
“It’s something we’ve been preaching the whole season -- you have to put a body on people,” Thompson said. “[Sunday], they had 19 offensive rebounds and 13 were in the second half. That was due to hard work. They were outworking us.
“We can’t try to just out-jump this team. We can’t just box out with arms. You have to put a body on them. We’ll keep preaching it and hope they dig down and do it. Because that’s hard work against a team that lives and dies on offensive rebounding the way they do.”