A few teams are probably wishing that they didn’t pass on Danielle Adams now, one of which might be the Seattle Storm.
Adams led the San Antonio Silver Stars to a 69-66 victory over the Storm on Thursday night, scoring 23 points, 15 of which came in the fourth quarter.
“She’s tough. Sh
e is an inside-outside player. It seemed like they were putting her in spots where we would have to help off after they drove. She’s a rookie, so hopefully, we’ll get use to her game now that we’ve seen it once,” Storm point guard Sue Bird said.
They certainly didn’t get used to it on Thursday. Adams only seemed to grow stronger as they game continued. The Silver Stars held a double digit lead for much of the first half, but the Storm closed the gap in the second. In the end though, it was Adams who made the play of the game.
With 28.7 seconds left, Adams put back a Becky Hammon miss and drew a foul to give the Silver Stars a 65-62 lead that proved to be the difference.
“I don’t put it on that play. That was a good play, they made the play they had to make. We put ourselves in a hole in the first half,” Storm head coach Brian Agler said. “We started playing better in the second half and moving the ball and got the lead, then just didn’t do the things we needed to do.”
Tanisha Wright continues to be a bright spot for the Storm. The guard has lifted her offensive play in recent games and that carried over into Thursday, when she scored a team-high 18 points. Swin Cash scored 13 and Sue Bird added 10 for the Storm.
But the game belonged to the two rookie Danielle’s from San Antonio. Adams led all scorers and rookie Danielle Robinson added 12, including four clutch free throws in the game’s final seconds.
Robinson was selected by the Silver Stars in the first-round of the 2011 draft. Adams was the steal of the draft, falling to the second-round, where the Silver Stars selected her with the 20th overall pick.
“I’ve seen it even in college; I played against her for two years,” Robinson said of Adams. “I knew she could do it. She loves big games and she loves big shots.”
The road continues to be a struggle for the Storm, they are just 2-4 away from KeyArena this season, and after Thursday, they are 0-5 when trailing after three quarters. Much different than a year ago when many of the Storm’s 28 regular season victories came when they were trailing after three quarters.
The Storm missed a golden opportunity to move into second place in the Western Conference, instead it is the Silver Stars (8-4) that trail the Phoenix Mercury by just a half game. The Storm fell to fourth place with a 7-5 record.
It wasn’t the way the Storm wanted to start their difficult three-game road trip. Seattle travels to Minnesota to face the Lynx on Saturday and Chicago to face the Silver Stars next Tuesday.
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