Quick Three: Lynx 70 Sky 62
The Commissioner's Cup champions and a number of familiar faces scrap past Chicago to end the Sky home stand at .500.
The Sky produced another solid fight against one of the league’s best teams on Sunday—once again showing that they’re up for a contest with anyone and everyone in the W. Unfortunately, their offensive efficiency in the fourth quarter suffered once again, and the result was a putrid final quarter on the scoreboard and an 8th loss in the last 11 games. Let’s dive into where things went wrong in that fourth plus highlight two players who stood out in spite of today’s defeat.
1. No defense can defend 5 fourth quarter points.
The Lynx offense is, thanks to its veteran core, very well coordinated even after a major set of personnel changes in the offseason, but the Sky did a good job of disrupting it for all forty minutes—regularly forcing Cheryl Reeve’s team to look for alternative solutions. The disruptiveness in the passing lanes—especially by the Sky’s perimeter players—was top notch, and nearly a quarter of the output by Chicago on the offensive end (14/62 points) came as a result of points off of the 18 Lynx turnovers they played a hand in forcing. On more than a few occasions, Minnesota had a designed play in motion which, in theory, should have gotten the ball to one of their two most reliable sources of offense (Napheesa Collier and Kayla McBride) before the Sky’s strong work off the ball denied Minnesota’s dynamic duo the chance to catch the ball. Knocked off their rhythm, the Lynx had to resort to a second option and misplaced a number of passes in the process of trying to reroute back towards a favorable look. In the end, their 38.5% FG percentage shows that, more often than not, the Lynx struggled to find those looks (with a fair few misses on open shots also factoring into the equation).
All that praise given (and the Sky played some flat out fantastic defense today), it’s impossible to defend a five-point final quarter unless the game is already over at the start of the frame. The Sky shot just 8.6% in the fourth quarter (and only 23.8% in the final three quarters) as the Lynx’s defense upped the ante and completely closed up shop down low. With every shot in the paint seeing heavy contests from at least two players, the Sky’s only way to start scoring was to hit shots from outside. Unsurprisingly, that remains an area of weakness and the Chicago offense really looked out of ideas to punish the Lynx as a result. Not every team can replicate this type of interior effort in the fourth quarter (it’s just as much down to team cohesion as individual brilliance) but teams will keep trying, and this probably won’t be the last time we see the Sky’s offense run ice cold late in a game as a result. As I’ve mentioned several times before this year, this is just as much a roster construction issue as it is an execution issue. So long as the Sky put the right players around Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso in the years ahead, this should become a less common occurrence.
2. Aggressive Lindsay Allen is the best Lindsay Allen.
Lindsay Allen has been talking about her desire to be more aggressive since the winter, and today was a perfect example of the value she can provide when she’s letting shots fly. After Minnesota flirted with helping off of her early in the game to send extra numbers towards Carter off the bounce, Allen swiftly knocked in a three—ensuring that the Lynx were forced to respect her outside shot. One make inspired a couple of others and, by the end of the first half, Allen had already set a new season-high with 13 points on 5/5 FG. The difference in spacing was also critical. With the former Minnesota guard hitting shots, the paint was slightly more open (though Alanna Smith and company still protected it well) and Carter was more able to have her usual offensive impact as a result. As Mark Schindler aptly pointed out, Allen’s three-point shooting eventually started to open the floor up for her own drives as well.
Unfortunately, Allen—like the rest of the Sky—went cold (0/5 FG) in the second half, but the takeaway from the opening twenty minutes is still clear. Allen, in spite of her 9.1% three-point percentage at the start of play today, is a capable shooter and needs to keep putting up shots as Dana Evans’ role continues to be in flux. Once Allen makes one shot, others tend to follow, and she obviously only becomes a more dangerous threat as a playmaker when teams are worried about her knocking down a three or slicing past for an easy lay-in at the basket. The more she continues to shoot (from all three levels), the more this confidence should carry from half to half and game to game and the more consistency Allen and the offense as a whole can hope to develop.
3. Diamond DeShields makes most of minutes.
After Thursday’s bench fiasco, Weatherspoon was careful to tweak her strategy with rotations this afternoon. There was never a full bench unit on the floor, and an early entrance for Isabelle Harrison in the first quarter made it easier for the Sky’s rotations to flow through without any one player being stuck on the court for too long. Unfortunately for Evans (7 min, 1/4 FG), Harrison (14, 1/5) and Michaela Onyenwere (DNP), the tweaks didn’t lead to a load of extra productivity, but DeShields made the most of her 12 minutes—even if the boxscore shows she was a team worst -14. Her energy at the defensive end was key in disrupting the Lynx offense (which responded to the entrance of the bench units in the early second and mid-fourth with two extended runs) and stopping the momentum swings from getting to out of hand in favor of the visitors. At the offensive end, she was just 2/4 and didn’t look super comfortable, but it’s to be expected that a player will start to lose touch with any sense of rhythm as their role is limited so quickly. In any case, DeShields, despite not being able to help the Sky win the game, did what the bench unit failed to do on Thursday night by keeping the second-unit energy high even when the offense wasn’t flowing. If she continues to bring that disruption and the Sky’s starters are struggling at the offensive end anyways, I see no reason why a bigger role (where she could recapture offensive rhythm) wouldn’t be on the way for DeShields.