If the Phoenix Mercury were finally going to get over the hump against the Seattle Storm, it’s almost fitting that it happened the way it did in the Mercury’s 77-75 victory on Monday night at KeyArena, eliminating the Storm from the WNBA playoffs.
Everything was stacked in the Storm’s favor,
a decisive Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals in front of 8,589 screaming Storm fans at a place where the Mercury hadn’t won since September of 2009. A Seattle lead that stretched to as many as 18 points. And Phoenix’s star, Diana Taurasi fouled out with 6:38 remaining in the fourth quarter.
It all seemed to add up to another Storm victory and a spot in the Western Conference finals.
But the Mercury had other ideas.
Penny Taylor scored all 11 of her fourth-quarter points after Taurasi fouled out and the Mercury shocked and silenced the KeyArena crowd that almost always gets its way.
“I called Penny right over and I said, ‘Penny you are going to take as many shots as you can possibly get right now,’” Mercury head coach Corey Gaines said. “I told her, ‘I don’t care if they are 3s or 2s, I need you to take as many shots as possible,’ and she did.’”
Taylor also grabbed 17 rebounds to help the Mercury to a 39-35 rebounding advantage over the Storm.
Taurasi scored 19 points and was keeping the Mercury afloat before fouling out with the Mercury clinging to a one-point lead. Taurasi’s reaction to the foul call earned her a technical foul.
Storm point guard Sue Bird stepped up to shoot the technical — a rare miss.
It was kind of indicative of the whole night for the Storm.
“There were a lot of things tonight that were just very uncharacteristic about our team,” Storm head coach Brian Agler said. “Missing free throws — we would make plays and then we wouldn’t convert, whether it would be to get back into the offense or whatever it might be. It was very tough.”
It was Bird, however, that knocked down a baseline jumper with 14 seconds remaining in the game to tie the score at 75. The Storm looked poised to force overtime, but on the subsequent Mercury possession — another bad break.
The play was an isolation for Taylor who attacked the rim, missing a contested layup with just over three seconds left, but Candice Dupree was there for the putback with 1.7 second remaining.
“Corey drew up a play for Penny to either shoot a jumper or attack the basket like she did,” Dupree said. “I thought for sure her layup was going to go in, but it bounced out and everybody was tipping the ball around and it just so happened to land in my hands. I put it back up as soon as I could.”
Dupree led the Mercury with 20 points, but none more important than the final two.
Bird scored 22 points to lead the Storm. Lauren Jackson chipped in 18 and Tanisha Wright scored 17.
It was a bitter end for a Storm team that fought so hard to have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Bird talked about the mood in the Storm locker room after the loss.
“Quiet,” Bird said. “It’s actually very difficult because the season is over, and kind of just the way it happened. Very quickly, all of the sudden the buzzer is going off and there is this, ‘wait a minute,’ moment. I think this one of those things that doesn’t set in until, a day, two days, a week, I don’t know. Because right now it just feels like we have a game in two days, we must. Obviously we don’t.”
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