Bad news for "Anti-Sparks" fans. The Los Angeles Sparks won the second game
of their epic WNBA Western Conference Series with the Sacramento Monarchs.
They beat the Monarchs something AWFUL! I really can't say it was because
L.A. played with all the cylinders firing. The Monarchs played a pretty
poor game. The Monarchs had their "plan A" game for the Sparks but when
that wasn't working they had no "plan B" game.
To put it plainly, the Monarchs just fell apart when the Sparks took a big
lead. They compare very unfavorably the Minnesota Lynx who DIDN'T fall apart
just cause the Sparks had a big lead. The Monarchs finally sort of tried a
full court press in the second half but it was NOTHING compared to the
pressure defense the Minnesota Lynx put on the Sparks in the last playoff
series that got Lisa Leslie all huffy and whiney. Don't forget Minnesota
was down by 21 points in the second half of one game and won at the end, and
they were also down by 22 points in another game and staged a pretty strong
comeback. The Monarchs just don't seem to be the sort of team to do
something like that. They aren't versatile enough to throw a completely
different offense or defense at an opponent if the normal offense or defense
isn't working.
The Monarchs are strickly a half-court team. They have the tallest
frontline players in the WNBA but they didn't have that much to show for it
against the Sparks who don't match up heightwise. How could a player as
short as Mwadi Mabika (listed at 5' 11" but actually, I suspect, shorter)
get inside and score so many points against much taller and physically
bigger players? The Monarchs lack versatility. They look just like the team
the Sparks played back in the 2001 Western Conference Finals. The game
looked like a rerun from 2001. No difference. Ruthie Bolton even used the
same tackle to stop a Dixon fast break that she put on Mabika two years ago.
Everybody else (most everybody else) has gotten better in the last two
years. The Monarchs look about the same as they did two years ago.
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