Indiana constructed a roster during the off-season to contend for a championship, but I’ve watched the Fever without Clark for three halves. They lost to Washington (a second-division team, I think) in Baltimore. And Connecticut, stripping itself for sale and 0-5, took a 43-39 lead into half at Indiana. Caitlin Clark plays in a different, larger space than the rest of basketball, and takes her teammates with her. There’s more maneuvering room for cutting, shooting, passing. With many great players, about whom it’s said that “they make their teammates better”, the manner in which they do it isn’t exactly clear …
Month: May 2025
After watching Mystics guard Cintron and Sparks guard King, I regret never seeing Notre Dame
I’ve seen Washington twice: A loss at Golden State last week, and last night’s win over Indiana in an unfamiliar building. In those two games, Mystics guard Sonia Cintron gathered 15 rebounds. I’ve been dazzled, thinking she’s the best rebounding guard I’ve ever seen, and darn it, why didn’t I ever watch her at Notre Dame. In the three Mystics game I have not seen, Cintron has 7 rebounds. This bears keeping an eye peeled. Cintron averaged 5.8 rebounds per game in four years at Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish were the best rebounding team in the ACC last year, …
The good thing about Golden State playing Los Angeles twice a week is that one wins
Both California teams were in play Tuesday, and they weren’t playing each other for once. Golden State did well to lose by just 28 in New York, and Los Angeles did well to lose by 6 to visiting Atlanta (after trailing by 15 with 11:15 left, and getting as close as 1). I said yesterday that the first things I’d look for in a Sparks boxscore were the differentials in turnovers (-3!) and points resulting therefrom (0). Los Angeles scored 15 points following 16 Dream turnovers, which is insufficient. Two steals caught Atlanta leaning the other way — textbook opportunities …
Sparks 91 Sky 78
The Los Angeles Sparks beat the visiting Chicago Sky 91-78 on Sunday, winning all four quarters. Los Angeles made a +7 differential in points off turnovers. The Sparks are 2-0 when they score more points off turnovers, 0-3 when they do not. *** The feeling I got from Los Angeles during the first half was a disconnectedness that’s dogged the Sparks all season. I hazard a guess: Sparks ballhandlers are still cultivating instinct for teammates’ whereabouts, and prefer to troll for free throws instead of the open man. Coach Roberts said after the loss Friday to Golden State that the …
New York 90 Indiana 88
The Liberty led by 15, the Fever led by 12, and it was tied with a minute left. That was a game I needed, a reminder that I don’t have to wait for September to watch championship contenders play like championship contenders. New York is stuck with a most-unenviable task of having to repeat (everything else is a failure), after it took so long to complete the first most-unenviable task of winning one. (Maybe we should think about Liberty team history only as far as Since James Dolan.) Indiana built a new computer. That’s my only personal experience that matches. …
Golden State 82 Los Angeles 73, postscript
I said one intelligent thing yesterday, and forgot to write it in game notes. I said in this space that Los Angeles coach Roberts and I crossed paths in a Staples Center tunnel, and when she asked me what I thought about the game coming, I said “duh”. That’s what I said at the postgame press conference. (I identified my publication as “Utah Women’s Basketball Independent”. Later, a broadcaster said: “When you said ‘Utah’, I was, like, ‘whoa’.” “Coach and I go back to Pacific”, I said.) I told Coach: “What I should have said was: ‘The Valkyries look like …
Valkyries 82 Sparks 73
Trailing by 2 to start the 2nd quarter in Los Angeles, Golden State scored 18 unanswered points, and held on to win 82-73. Four Valkyries scored in double figures, and the Golden State bench outscored the Los Angeles bench 30-6. *** Among the first six or seven Valkyries, the player who most stands out to me is Carla Leite. The 21-year-old guard had team highs with 19 points and 3 assists in 17 minutes Friday. Golden State’s 12th man Kyara Linskens played 13 effective (+15) minutes, while the home team was nearly buried. I have two questions for Coach Nakase …
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em
One of my biggest peeves regarding modern sports media is how they formulate questions for interview subjects. In ancient times, we asked questions for two reasons: 1) To get an explanation or ascertainment; or 2) To get color. In “Bull Durham”, Crash Davis taught Nuke LaLoosh to expect nothing but the second type of question. (They think they’re throwing hardball when they ask “what was the gameplan?” or “what was the mindset?”, but those are from the LaLooshSpeak playbook, total bullshit because the answers never change.) While the conversations got as soft as ice cream in the sun, media also …
Welcome to downtown Los Angeles
Hal David was right to write that Los Angeles is a great big freeway. From the airport to downtown, nothing but steel, glass, and concrete. San Francisco and Los Angeles pose as competitors in so many ways. When the Big One finally comes, I think Los Angeles will handily win when comparing values of property loss. I didn’t believe Google when it said some hotels were spitting distance from crypto dot com arena, but from my window less than half a mile from Crypto, I can see two hotels in between. Years from now — or tomorrow — I’ll ask …
At the airport
Sitting in airports gives me more pause for thought, literally and figuratively, than anything else during my basketball travels. I’m always traveling alone. Occasionally, one of the teams I’m covering is also at the airport, but never the same gate. Once I took a cab to the airport, and arrived at the same time as the bus carrying the UC Davis Aggies. I ran into a referee in Burbank (or was it Denver?). She said: “Are you following me?”. “Yes”, I said. Coincidentally, I was at the last two games she’d worked in northern California. I used to think airports …