Small moments sink Storm in close loss on Sue Bird Day

Published 6:48 pm Sunday, August 17, 2025

SEATTLE — The Seattle Storm couldn’t follow up a Friday win over Atlanta in which it broke a six-game losing streak with a win on Sunday afternoon. Seattle fell 85-82 to the Phoenix Mercury and trailed for most of a playoff-like game just hours after team Hall-of-Famer Sue Bird received a statue outside of Climate Pledge Arena.

Seattle fell to 17-18 with the loss and remains just a game ahead of the 16-18 Los Angeles Sparks for the final WNBA playoff spot with nine games to play.

Bird was recognized with heartfelt video tributes during timeouts throughout the game, but things weren’t so sweet for the home team on the floor.

Seattle didn’t lead until the 2:21 mark of the fourth quarter when Erica Wheeler (eight points) hit a timely three-pointer. The Mercury kept the Storm off the board and scored in transition to undo that one-point lead — a lead that would prove to be Seattle’s only advantage of the game.

It lasted 64 seconds.

“When you’re clawing back, it affects your confidence,” Storm guard Gabby Williams said of trailing most of the game. “They made some tough ones, especially in that fourth quarter, a lot of contested ones. And those don’t hurt as bad when you’ve been winning at least part of the game. When you’re losing the entire game, and everything feels like it’s not working, that definitely hurts more in those crunch-time moments.”

Williams, an All-Star, finished with 13 points and seven assists while fellow All-Star Nneka Ogwumike scored a game-high 24 points with eight assists. Star guard Skylar Diggins had 14 points.

Leading those demoralizing moments for Phoenix was MVP candidate Alyssa Thomas (19 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds). Thomas recorded her fifth triple-double of the season and hit a dagger shot to put the Mercury up five with about 20 seconds to play.

On the stat sheet though, Seattle was more than competitive. It turned the ball over four times less than Phoenix and didn’t allow a point off its turnovers — a rarity against a versatile and physical Mercury squad. To that effect, Seattle was only outrebounded by four and scored 56 points in the paint.

Despite those big-picture achievements, head coach Noelle Quinn and Ogwumike have both been preaching concentration in small moments throughout this rough stretch of basketball.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that we can make the big ones, we’ve been making the big ones for a while now. It’s the small ones that add up in the end,” Ogwumike said. “I know that everyone, today and in the last few weeks, can think of one … thing that they could have done better.”

Seattle didn’t find much in the first half, as Thomas led the Mercury with 11 first-half points and snagged eight of her team’s 22 first-half boards to outpace Seattle. Former Storm Sami Whitcomb (15 points) knocked down two triples to score eight in the first half as Seattle managed to lead the turnover margin nine to five after two periods and trailed by six.

Ogwumike led Seattle with 13 first-half points while Diggins contributed 10 with some physical takes to the rim. While the Storm generated plenty of turnovers thanks to the efforts of defensive aces in Williams and Brittney Sykes (11 points), missed layups from Ezi Magbegor (six points, seven rebounds), Sykes and rookie Dominique Malonga (six points, seven rebounds) earlier in the first quarter contributed to Seattle’s deficit.

Small moments.

The Storm came out with dynamic scoring in the third to cut the lead to one as Ogwumike continued to get to the rim against Thomas. But as was the case in the first half, the Mercury found some easy looks on backdoor cuts for Copper to stretch the lead back to seven by the midway point.

Small moments.

Despite a Storm push, the Mercury would carry that advantage into the fourth as Seattle had yet to lead in the game.

In the fourth, Seattle slowly worked its way back into it. Williams and Sykes each came up with big buckets as a preamble to Wheeler’s sudden go-ahead bucket around the two-minute mark, but Thomas’ late score put the game out of reach. Sykes had a clutch steal to whittle the game back down to one, but Seattle failed to get up a 3-pointer after Mercury free throws in the waning moments.

The Storm will be back to work on Tuesday in Chicago as it prepares to face the ailing Sky to start a five-game road trip. With time running out on the Storm, Seattle will need to find some consistency if it hopes to hold onto the final playoff spot in the WNBA.

With the momentous occasion of Bird’s statue unveiling hanging over the game, at least fans didn’t go home completely unhappy.