So I suppose there are (at least) two ways to look at the Storm’s victory over the Atlanta Dream last night.
One way to see it is that the Storm’s reserves stepped up.
The other is that the Storm’s starters were sleep-walking for most of the game.
Sleep-walking Storm silences Dream
Because they had clinched home-court advantage in the Western Conference and just needed a loss from the top seed in the Eastern Conference to secure the top seed in the WNBA playoffs, the Seattle Storm rested their starters for most of the first half. And when the starters did play they lacked emotion and tried to pick their spots to give maximum effort.But even the sleep-walking, semi-interested Storm were too much for the Dream on Tuesday.
Seattle outscored the Dream 17-3 in the final 4:50 for an 80-70 victory to clinch the top seed in the WNBA playoffs.
It’s something that’s difficult to tell from watching a game on a computer screen, but that’s probably not what Storm coach Brian Agler had in mind when he said he wanted his team to stay sharp through this final stretch of the season.
Crisis? Certainly not and the fact that the reserves played so well is far more important. Let’s be honest — the Storm have nothing to play for at this point so worrying about sleep walking in one performance is probably pointless.
Of course, the fact that they ended up stepping up and winning as a team with a crushing run to finish the game is impressive and shows just how potent this team is.
Even when they’ve just awaken from a slumber.