The Guru’s WNBA Rundown: Indiana Blasts Seattle as Clark Nears Return; Thomas 7th Triple Double Helps 4th Place Phoenix Stop L.A.

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

Tuesday’s WNBA doubleheader completed the best all-around day in a while for battered Indiana (20-18) romping over visiting Seattle 95-75 before a Gainbridge Fieldhouse crowd of 16,727 in Indianapolis followed by an equally huge win for Phoenix (23-14) winning 92-84 at ninth-place Los Angeles (17-19) before a Crypt.com Arena crowd of 10,726 that to their dismay saw the Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas affect the playoff chase with her single-season league record seventh triple double.

“My greatest job is to get my teammates easy open shots,” Thomas said. “I take a lot of pride in doing that. I never want them to have to work hard for a shot.”

Thomas, a former Maryland star out of Harrisburg who is in her first season with Phoenix, previously at Connecticut, had a WNBA game-first 12 points, 16 rebounds and 15 assists breaking her own season career mark set with the Sun in 2023.

After earlier in the season setting a league milestone three consecutive triple doubles, Thomas, who has 18 career ones in the regular season, posted her second straight after contributing 13 points, 12 rebounds, and 16 assists in Friday’s win.

“We just played a team that’s been through this time many times together,” said Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts. “We have a new team, and we need these reps. I know it’s not a lot of fun.

“Proud of our group. I know we got ten down, I think in the third. They had the momentum. We made some subs and people came in and competed.

“This is what it's going to look like moving forward, and this is what it's going to look like in the playoffs – playoff atmosphere.

“But you need to go through this and feel this.”

With 17 days left until the 44-game regular season concludes on September 11, eight teams are alive for the remaining six tickets to the playoffs, which begin on September 14th with all four openers (ABC/ESPN) in the best-of-three first round.

First place Minnesota (30-7) has a six-game lead over the virtual duo of Atlanta (24-13) and Las Vegas (25-14), who meet Wednesday (7:30 p.m., NBA TV), and on Sunday clinched one of the four first-round home-court advantages.

The Lynx magic number for top seed is two in combination with Atlanta, which can come as early Thursday if the host Dream lose to the Aces on Wednesday in one of two games on the WNBA card and Minnesota Thursday at home beats Seattle (8 p.m.) on the WNBA’s streaming League Pass.

Phoenix, with the win, moved a half-game ahead of idle defending champion New York (23-15) in fourth place just a game behind Atlanta and Las Vegas and holding the last position that holds home advantages in the opening series that in a change will be in a 1-1-1 format.

The Mercury next play in one of two Thursday Amazon Prime Video streaming casts at 10 p.m. hosting Chicago (9-28), which is in 11th with Connecticut (9-28), already eliminated and draft lottery bound as is Dallas (9-29).

New York is in Thursday’s other game at 7 p.m. hosting 10th place Washington (16-22), which is 3.5 out of the 8th place cutoff with six remaining and the underdog in each of them.

Phoenix, currently leading the New York series 2-1, hosts the Liberty Saturday at 10 p.m.

“Our defense, when we get stops and look to push, we’re pretty good,” Tibbetts said.

Las Vegas, on an 11-game win streak, on Monday was the second to gain a playoff pass, and the Atlanta game is key for finishing second and, if advancing, home court advantage in the best-of-five semifinals likely avoiding Minnesota.

The finals have been expanded by two games to a record best-of-seven series.

Los Angeles with the loss is 1.5 games behind the cutoff and next hosting Indiana Friday at 10 p.m., the second game in the ION doubleheader behind Atlanta hosting Dallas at 7:30 p.m.

The Fever off the win moved up to sixth, three games behind New York and a half-game ahead of expansion Golden State (19-18) and Seattle (20-19), who are in a virtual seventh-place tie.

Seattle’s five remaining opponents in order are at Minnesota, hosting Chicago, hosting Los Angeles, hosting New York, and hosting Golden State.

The expansion Valkyries, with a first-year WNBA record 19 wins and trying to be the first team to be playoff bound in its debut season, host Washington, Indiana, New York, Dallas, Minnesota, and then visit Seattle and Minnesota the rest of the way.

Los Angeles has eight games left, but only one against a team already eliminated, while Indiana with six games left equally has only one against a lottery-bound team.

In Phoenix’s Tuesday win over Los Angeles, behind Thomas’ big night, Satou Sabally led the Mercury with 19 points, Rutgers alum Kahleah Copper out of North Philadelphia had 18, while reserve Sami Whitcomb scored 17 fueled by five straight makes from deep before missing two other attempts. DeWanna Bonner off the bench also reached double figures scoring 14.

Copper said of Thomas, “She's just too tough to guard. She can score. You really want to take away her vision because she can pass, and then it's just a matchup problem every night.

“This is why she's doing this every night. It just makes it so much easier for us. We don't have to force it. She can just make plays. I can just be off the ball. It makes things so much easier.”

All of it offset Dearica Hamby’s 25 points and eight boards, Rickea Jackson’s 21, and Kelsey Plum’s 20 for Los Angeles.

“We didn't shoot great from three,” said Sparks coach Lynne Roberts. “I think that's where the difference in the game is. They went 11 for 25, we went seven for 24, everything else is about the same.

“Shooting percentage, I've always said, it is a direct correlation of shot quality, so maybe we weren't getting the best looks, but I do feel like we typically shoot it better. And there's going to be games like that,” she continued.

 “It was physical, and I think those are probably hard games to officiate. Playoffs are coming coming and people are like ‘we're scrapping for our lives’ and they're playing hard,” Roberts explained.

“We're all playing for something and the intensity’s up. These guys are pros - they have pride in how they play, and I think that's what you see.”

Roberts did not accept rust might have come with a five-day layoff.

“That's a positive... We got to rest, we got to recover, we got to practice. It’s on us to start the game better. Same thing with the officiating. If it's called like that, then we've got to adjust.

“I'm not ever going to sit up here and blame something. That's all of out our control. We can control what we can control, how we start the game, how we handle it.

“No one feels sorry for us. So, we gotta just muscle up and be mentally tough to handle it calmly and I lost my cool there a little bit, but we're all competitive. We all want to win, and I won't apologize for that.”

Indiana Get’s a ‘Must-Win’ With More Ahead

The Fever started Game-Day where they have most of the season discussing the status of reigning Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark, the sport’s game-changer at Iowa and carryover a year ago to the WNBA in terms of booming attendance figures and TV viewership.

After an injury-free career with the Hawkeyes and her pro debut season last summer, it’s been much different this time around playing in only 13 games for Indiana, which was in the championship conversion last spring following a roster and coaching staff re-build to enhance the superstar and overall No. 1 pick in 2024.

Following a second groin injury on July 14 in a win over Connecticut in Boston, Clark has missed 16 straight games, and the Fever have gone from champion goals reduced to surprisingly still in the playoff hunt after things got worse this month with season-ending injuries to guards Sydney Colson (ACL), Aari McDonald (foot) and Sophie Cunningham (knee).

But on Sunday Clark took part in the shoot around, according to reports, before the loss at Minnesota, and Tuesday coach Stephanie White said Clark participated Monday in a walk-thru.

“I want to see her in practice,” White told reporters, saying multiple practices are needed before Clark is back in uniform. “Live in practice. I want to see her continue to work to not just build endurance, but to be able to handle contact 94 feet as it's going to be in game, and to be able to do that and sustain from an endurance standpoint.”

The games Clark has played she is averaging 16.5 points, 8.8 assists and 5.0 rebounds.

Adding to the massive corporate investment since Clark became a household word across the nation, on Tuesday she became Nike’s newest signature athlete.

“There's very few people who get the opportunity to say they have a logo and to make the impact she makes — not just in the sport but globally — just by being who she is,” said White. “She’s a connector. She brings people together.”

Meanwhile Seattle had come to town similarly barely clinging to the potential playoff field, caused by a six-game slide of narrow setbacks falling from the middle of the 13-team league to the cutoff neighborhood but now on a momentum-build four-of-five-game win streak.

Then the ball went up and 40 minutes later Indiana had performed the way originally envisioned in routing the Storm.

“It was huge,” White said of the win. “I mean every game at this point of the season is huge and this was a big one for us. We knew we had to come out and have a sense of urgency. I felt this was as close as we put 40 minutes together consistently in a long time.”

The saving grace the rest of the way is that with Washington expected to soon be eliminated, only one more team needs to be cut from the contender group involving the Fever, which are all playing similar schedules the rest of the way.

“I thought the ball was moving offensively,” White said. “It starts with our defense.  Our attention to detail was better. It was better in the second half than it was in the first half.

“Our activity level was good. Our ability to finish plays, not give them multiple opportunities was really good, and that allowed us to get out in transition and get some easy buckets and that gives us confidence, and I thought we were able to do that early.”

A recent highlight moment came when Indiana rallied on Connecticut the game by overcoming a 21-point deficit in the game Cunningham got hurt.

In this one, Indiana’s Aliyah Boston, the 2023 overall No. 1 pick out of South Carolina, had 27 points with nine boards, Odyssey Sims, acquired to fill the roster gap, scored 22, and Kelsey Mitchell collected 21 points.

Lexi Hull had nine of the Fever dominating 42-21 rebound comparison.

“It’s just who she is,” White said of Hull. “She’s just a tough young woman who battles every possession and you can never tell if she gets hurt, she gets back up, she always has the same expression, plays her butt off. She really epitomizes the toughness and grit of this team.”

The Storm, who won three straight, got 17 points from Nneka Ogwumike but 12 came in the first half, while Brittney Sykes, recently acquired in a trade with Washington, scored 12 and Skylar Diggins dealt eight assists.

“There’s no excuse for what happened today other than not matching the energy of the other team,” Ogwumike said. “As far as I know everybody was ready to go, but we have to get to a space where we can match or exceed our opponent's energy.

“Kelsey Mitchell was the head of the snake that we were trying to defend so she didn't have multiple ways to go, but we didn't do a good job of that, because she had some back doors.

 “We didn't ramp up the aggression as we could have or should have and as players on the court to make it difficult on ball.”

Boston had seven of a 14-4 run to start the third quarter and the lead got to 30 at 89-59 early in the fourth.

“It started on the defensive end,” Boston said. “Us getting stops, just to be able to play fast opened up the floor a lot.”

Wednesday’s other game has Connecticut at Dallas at 8 p.m. on League Pass.