Storm Lose to Sparks Again 94-91, Part 2

Additional thoughts, interviews, and discussion on Seattle's loss to LA.

Somehow, someway, the Seattle Storm found another way to lose a game. They blew a seven-point lead with under three minutes to play in one of their most costly losses of the season. Seattle held a 16-point lead in the first quarter and a seven-point lead late, but even though the Los Angeles Sparks had just played on the road the night before, they couldn’t put them away. They fell in LA by a final score of 94-91. In case you missed it, you can read the full recap at the link here.

In Part 2, I discussed who deserves the blame pie for the Storm’s horrible second half to their season, the draft implications over the past month, and questioned if it’s time to blow everything up. I’ve also included the post-game press conference in audio and video formats.

The Blame Pie

The Seattle Storm have played like one of the worst teams over the past month, at least when it comes down to the most important thing in professional sports, wins and losses. Seattle has lost five games in a row, six of their last seven, and seven out of their last 10. One of the worst things about this is that it’s not like they had a brutal stretch of their schedule. Several of their losses have come against non-playoff teams over the past month.

They’ve lost to the Connecticut Sun (5-25), the Washington Mystics (14-17) twice, the Dallas Wings (8-24), and twice to the Los Angeles Sparks (15-16). While it’s true for the most part that the WNBA as a whole is incredibly talented, and any team can beat the other. But the Storm shouldn’t be losing to these teams. At worst, maybe splitting games with the Sparks and the Mystics. The Storm’s roster is far too talented to be losing this much, and to these teams.

When a group of talented players continues to lose games that they shouldn’t, the most common person to blame is the Head Coach. Sometimes that’s fair and sometimes it’s not. I don’t know if all of the Storm’s problems and mistakes are because of the coaching staff, but there is evidence that points in that direction.

I wrote about some of the negative trends we’ve seen with the Storm under Coach Noelle Quinn over the years. Seattle has tended to fall apart in the 2nd half of seasons multiple times in recent years. Is this because Coach Quinn plays her starters too many minutes and they wear down as the team gets deeper into the season? Is it because the Storm are too easy to scout and don’t make good in-game adjustments, allowing other coaches to pinpoint their weakness and exploit them? Are the Storm losing so often because they’re consistently out-rebounded and often out-hustled? Is effort an issue of the coaches or the players? Why can’t the Storm seem to get any whistles when they rely heavily on scoring inside the paint and take a ton of contact?

Should fans blame the General Manager for not bringing enough shooters to space the floor? Is it the GM’s fault that multiple Storm players tore their ACLs before the season tipped off? Whether it’s General Manager Talisa Rhea or Assistant General Manager Pokey Chatman, are we blaming them for building a roster that tied for a league-most three WNBA All-Stars on their roster? Do we blame the person who made a trade to add a 4th All-Star in Brittney Sykes?

Should they blame the people who are in charge of requesting Coach’s challenges in a game that saw the referees make several obvious incorrect calls, which ended up costing the Storm at least seven points? The one where two Los Angeles players touched the ball before it went out of bounds, and the ref awarded the ball to LA, only for the Sparks to hit a three-pointer on that possession. That one certainly comes to mind in a game where Seattle lost by three points. But there were at least two other phantom foul calls against the Storm that directly led to free throws and cost Seattle another four points.

I watched the Minnesota Lynx’s coaching support staff correctly challenge multiple calls that initially went against the Lynx that I felt were probably 50/50, only to see them win all of their challenges. If they can do that and get it right, why isn’t Seattle challenging obvious calls that everyone except a blind referee could see?

How much of this is on Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins? The two veteran leaders that Seattle brought in who were supposed to help Seattle quickly retool into a title contender. Instead, they were swept in the first round of the playoffs, created a rift with the Storm’s other star Jewell Loyd, and are on the verge of missing the playoffs in their second season together.

Is Nneka overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being the President of the Players Association in the most crucial Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations in WNBA history? Is that putting too much stress and pressure on her? Does that affect her ability to focus or rally her team?

Is Skylar so competitive that she’s unable to rein in her emotions when things aren’t going right? Does that affect her ability to be a strong leader for the team during these moments? Are off-court issues impacting her play?

What about Ezi’s passiveness and lack of physicality? How much of that is playing a factor in Seattle being out-rebounded nearly every game? Magbegor’s inability to box out Cameron Brink directly cost the Storm three points in a game in which they lost by three points.

Despite subpar games from them, why weren’t Ezi Magbegor or Gabby Williams in at the end of the game for defensive purposes? Dearica Hamby beat Dominique Malonga to the rim on the same pick-and-roll play in back-to-back possessions in the final 20 seconds of the game. Is that the fault of the 19-year-old rookie? Or the Head Coach that left her in the game? After Brittney Sykes tied the game at 91-91 with 12.7 seconds left in the game, the Sparks called a timeout. At that point, why didn’t Coach Quinn substitute in Magbegor and Williams for defense? Why was Erica Wheeler in the game instead of Gabby on the final possession? Gabby Williams might be the Defensive Player of the Year, and almost certainly should be an All-WNBA Defensive Team this season. She should have been on the court playing defense. Even if Ezi made a mistake earlier with that box out against Brink, she is still one of the WNBA’s best post defenders. Even if they wanted to roll with Malonga, despite the fact that she was just beaten on a play the possession before, why wouldn’t Quinn put both Malonga and Magbegor in the game at the end for defense? Analytics say they’re both better defenders than Nneka Ogwumike.

I asked Quinn in the post-game why she didn’t have Gabby or Ezi in the game in the final minutes as Seattle was trying to protect a lead.

Quinn responded, “That group that was on the floor gave us good energy, sustained, and got us that lead. I wanted to keep rolling with that. Got us up seven, to where we needed to. But then, again, unfortunate plays on our end. I thought that we could have got some of those whistles, got to the free throw line. We did not. Then they got a lot of open looks because of those misses.”

With a seven-point lead with under three minutes to play, I would think they’d want to have their best defensive players out there. Maybe if they had, we wouldn’t be talking about another Storm loss.

How many people are to blame for the Storm’s losses lately? How would you divvy up the blame pie?

Draft Implications

The past month of Seattle Storm basketball has been like watching a car crash in slow motion. Pretty much everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. It was probably only around 3 weeks ago that the Storm were sitting pretty with three first-round draft picks, and with almost a 90% guarantee that at least one of those picks would be a Top 5 lottery pick in next year’s WNBA Draft. And probably around a 30% chance that Seattle could have two lottery picks, as both the Los Angeles Sparks and Las Vegas Aces were struggling mightily.

It felt like even if one made the playoffs, which they almost certainly would, that would then decrease the chances that the other team could reach the postseason. Seattle looked primed for a lottery pick in 2026. Now, I wrote about the blame pie above. Well, maybe I’m to blame for all of this. The excitement of the team landing a lottery pick in next year’s deep 2026 draft had me writing about it early and often throughout this season.

We’ve seen the impact of what adding Caitlin Clark has done for Indiana and Paige Bueckers for Dallas. If Seattle were to add a star college player like Azzi Fudd out of UConn or Flau’jae Johnson from LSU, it would be another huge boost to the franchise, the media attention, and the growth of popularity for the Storm around the league. The talented players also increase Seattle’s chances of being good for a long time, but their popularity from college would also attract even more fans. That’s great for the franchise. The more people who are into the WNBA and the Storm, the better for my business as well.

A few weeks ago, everything was coming up aces (no pun intended) for the Storm. But now it’s turning into a worst-case scenario. They traded away their own first-round pick, but hung on to the Sparks’ and Aces’ first-round picks. A month ago, it looked like the Storm would finish in the Top 5 and that Las Vegas and Los Angeles would finish in the bottom 5-7. But now, the Storm are at risk of missing the playoffs, as they’ve fallen into a tie with the Golden State Valkyries for the 8th spot and are now only 1/2 game ahead of the Sparks. They’re also currently losing the season series (2-1) to both Golden State and LA.

Now Storm fans can’t even take solace in the team losing game after game after game, because if Seattle does end up in the lottery, that selection is headed to D.C. as part of the Brittney Sykes trade with the Washington Mystics.

Unless the Storm get their act in gear AND the Golden State Valkyries finish ahead of the Los Angeles Sparks this season, the Storm will not have a pick in the top seven picks of next year’s WNBA Draft.

The Las Vegas Aces are rolling right now, too. They’re 7-3 over their last 10 games and have won four games in a row. They were several games behind Seattle not that long ago, but when one team starts losing all of their games and the other team starts winning all of theirs, that can change the standings in a hurry.

I probably won’t be able to get an answer to this, but I would love to know if Seattle traded away their own first-round pick instead of parting with the Aces’ pick because they believed they would finish with a better record than Las Vegas. Or was it because the Mystics’ General Manager demanded Seattle’s pick over Las Vegas’s, and Talisa Rhea felt they had to get the trade for Sykes done no matter what?

Seattle was already trending down before the trade took place. I would like to believe that everyone on the team, the coaching staff, and the General Manager were on the same page. That they were realistic with what the Storm had, how they were doing, and where they were likely to finish the season. If players like Skylar and Gabby were struggling, they would be aware if they were dealing with any lingering injuries or issues that could cause the Storm to continue to lose games down the stretch.

It just feels like a comedy of errors at this point in how everything has gone horribly wrong.

Is it Time to Blow it Up?

As bad as things have gotten, as negative as everything is right now, etc. I would not advocate for the franchise to fire Coach Quinn or make any rash decisions like that with 12 games remaining in the regular season. The only way I would even consider doing it right now would be if they felt that Pokey Chatman could do something as the Head Coach that she simply can’t do with Noelle Quinn around. As relatively inexperienced as Quinn is as a head coach, Chatman has had years and years of coaching experience. But as one of Quinn’s primary assistants, she also hasn’t been able to provide the answers to Seattle’s problems. If Seattle’s issues were only about Quinn’s lack of experience, that should be negated by Chatman’s bevy of experience. No one on the coaching staff has been able to come up with a solution. And they aren’t going to fire an entire staff and hire a brand new group over the final 10-12 games. An in-season move seems unlikely.

However, this late-season collapse is making it more difficult to justify going down this path much longer. It just feels like things have become toxic and might be beyond repair. Once a relationship is fractured and splintered, it’s hard to make it work any longer. A person gets blamed for everything, even when it’s not their fault. I think we’re reaching that point with the Storm. And that is a terrible place to be in.

Seattle had two years with this group of Nneka Ogwumike, Skylar Diggins, Gabby Williams, and Ezi Magbegor. Last year, they also had Jewell Loyd and Jordan Horston. This year, they have Dominique Malonga and now Brittney Sykes. They couldn’t win a single playoff game a year ago, and they might not even make the playoffs this season. Unless they strongly believe (or want to trick themselves into believing) that a brand new coaching staff, and a returning Jordan Horston and possibly Katie Lou Samuelson would turn this group into legitimate title contenders, and the only thing holding them back was the coaches, then I don’t see any point in bringing everyone back next year.

In retrospect, does it look like bringing in Nneka Ogwumike and Skylar Diggins was a mistake? Yes, it’s leaning that way. But I don’t fault the process. I thought they could contend for a title last year, or at least be able to challenge New York and Las Vegas, like Seattle did in 2022 against the eventual champions, the Aces.

But you know what’s worse than making a mistake? Doubling or tripling down on it. If Seattle misses the playoffs this year, then they will have traded away two lottery picks in order to try and prop up this group with Ogwumike and Diggins.

If that does happen, Seattle needs to cut their losses and look to rebuild with a focus on the long-term. I would move on from Skylar and Nneka, and start building around Dominique Malonga (19), Ezi Magbegor (25), and Jordan Horston (24). I would then have serious conversations with both Gabby Williams (28) and Brittney Sykes (31). If either expressed their desire to leave to join a more win-now franchise, as Sykes had just done when she requested a trade from the Mystics and onto a contender, then Seattle should explore trade options. To my knowledge, both Sykes and Williams would still be eligible to receive the core franchise tag. I would tag one of them and see if Seattle could get a first-round pick in return. Or at worst, use it to move up in the draft, by trading Sykes (in this example) and the Aces’ first-round pick (let’s say it’s 11th overall) to move up to somewhere in the 4-6 range of the WNBA Draft.

Nneka and Skylar will both be 36 years old during the 2026 season. Father Time is undefeated. Outside of the rarest of professional athletes, most of their careers end in their mid-to-late 30s. If Ogwumike and Diggins wore down again during a 44-game season, what do we think is going to happen if the new CBA extends the WNBA season to 50+ games next year?

If the Storm’s front office embraces the youth movement, the “worst” thing that could happen is that Seattle misses the playoffs in 2026 in a season where they didn’t have high expectations to begin with, and maybe they end up with the #1 pick to select JuJu Watkins. Can you imagine if they paired JuJu and Malonga together? Or Madison Booker or Hannah Hidalgo? Plus, this would give Jordan Horston a legitimate chance to develop her game and take on a larger role. There is a lot of untapped potential in Horston still.

Unless there is a 2021 Chicago Sky-type turnaround, I think it’s time for the Seattle Storm to completely overhaul everything heading into 2026. But let me know what you think!

Post-Game Press Conference

If you prefer to listen to the audio version, they are below.

Player Interviews

Coach’s Quotes

Notes:
Thanks for all the great support! Please share my coverage with other WNBA fans. Please share, retweet, repost, etc., if you enjoy my articles.
Thanks to Her Hoop Stats and Across the Timeline for being great resources.
Photo Credits: Seattle Storm/WNBA Photography

Social Media:
Follow me on Bluesky (@wnbastormchasers.bsky.social)
Follow me on Threads (@WNBAStormChasers)
Follow me on X/Twitter (@WNBAStormChaser)