Black Eye Friday

A bad day for basketball on Friday, both from a local and national perspective. The FBI's investigation into alleged game fixing by an NBA referee is bad enough on it's own merits, but will stimulate the rise of conspiracy theorists everywhere when a team loses or mysteriously comes back to cover the spread. At the Lynx game, you could hear the insinuations of the crowd as the referees called foul after foul on our club. It's hard to imagine a game where the opposition shoots 55 foul shots to our 15 at home and NOT suspect something was going on. However, I don't think anyone is all that interested in the point spread of WNBA games. Yeah, the refereeing was bad, but this second black eye was all on the Lynx, especially coach Zierden.

Zierden was over matched on Friday, as he has been most games during this horrendous slump. Once the Mystics decided to pressure the club with occasional full court presses and frequent half-court traps, the Lynx melted down faster than Chernobyl. He couldn't call a time out, make an adjustment or find a substitution pattern that would prevent the Lynx from committing 32 TURNOVERS. As the referees were ringing up fouls, allowing the Mystics to get back into the game with no time running off the clock, Zierden could not find a way to work the refs, either by a technical or other means. It was the most incompetent display of coaching I have seen ever at the professional level, men or women. I was trying to see Glen Taylor's reaction as the game changed from Lynx blowout to Mystics steal, but I think even he was stunned into speechlessness.

To be fair, the first half and initial part of the third quarter showed promise. The Lynx displayed a better ability to work inside-out and not depend primarily on long jump shots. Clearly however, when the opposition decides to show up and play defense, this team can't run a half court offense to save it's life. Once the easy transition buckets stop, and the jump shots don't fall, the Lynx become painful to watch. To see Amber Jacobs throw entry passes at people's feet was especially disappointing. Since the FO didn't try to pickup an accomplished veteran backup for Lindsey Harding, Amber and Noelle Quinn are it. Quinn failed miserably to break a press or a trap, and unfortunately Jacobs was even worse. No court awareness or leadership skills whatsoever. Usually a PG ideally is the extension of the coach, but given the coach, I would advise Amber to raise the bar. Her career depends on it.

Of course, everyone's concerned about Seimone. She again was an offensive marvel, but had 8 turnovers on her own, and by the time of her injury late in the 4th looked spent. It's tough to play 1 on 5 in a half court offense. I'll amend that a bit because Abrosimova stepped up with 20 points, especially when SA went down. But SA makes tough shot after tough shot; this team doesn't make it easy for her to find a rhythm. By the fourth quarter, as in the Sun game, she was starting to disappear, then came the injury. The house of cards then started to cave.

This team has talent and a fair amount of feistiness. They hung in given the refereeing, poor coaching and their own lack of execution. Even with the meltdown, it wouldn't dissuade me from showing up to the TC and cheering the team on. It's clear however that the players and fans deserve better than what's been given them. We're now back at the same place when the Lynx were winless, and we were wondering if they were going to win any games at all. Tonight it's Phoenix, and while it looks like SA might play it will be interesting to see if the ladies can pick themselves up from such a poor showing and compete. This has to be wearing on them; black eyes are hard to hide.