Lynx 76, Sun 70: Ending brutal, but improvement gives hope

Look, when you lead by 15 with five minutes and lose, it’s tough to come out of it all sunshine and rainbows.

It was a collapse and deserves to be treated as such, were it a team that was going to fight for the playoffs and/or a championship, Friday’s 76-70 loss to Minnesota at the Target Center would be one to look back at and shake our heads in disgust as season's end.

However, I am here to bring perspective to the downtrodden and angry, and it’s important to remember how we started our Friday, coming off a 30-point home loss and heading to the home of a team that could be the defending and future champions of the WNBA as a 16.5-point underdogs. Had the game finished in a six-point loss without context, you would probably be pleasantly surprised and looking forward to the next two games against Atlanta and Dallas.

Alas, that’s not where we are. The last five minutes were a brutal watch, particularly on the offensive end (more on that below), and it’s hard to see where the answers are going to come from, at least in the short term. Alyssa Thomas or Jonquel Jones is not walking through that door, we are what we are at the moment.

But as horrible as the last five minutes were, there was significant improvement over Tuesday’s lopsided home loss to Las Vegas that the Sun were never in. Saniya Rivers is a piece added, hopefully Aneesah Morrow can get up to speed. What’s done is done, there’s another game in 42 hours or so from the writing of this. On to Atlanta.

What else did we learn from the heartbreaker in Minnesota?:

 

1. The Sun need a point guard - We can only guess what Lindsay Allen would have done down the stretch after she left two minutes in with a leg injury, but against Washington in the opener, Rachid Meziane favored Hartley down the stretch anyway. Maybe with the turnovers piling up in this one (the Sun finished with an unacceptable 21, nine in the fourth quarter), maybe he would have went back to Allen, but who knows? And who knows how long Allen is going to be out now? You can point to Diamond DeShields being cut, but that had to do with injury anyway, and her career assist-to-turnover ratio is almost exactly 1:1, so don’t think that would have a magic fix. The best answer might be No. 2.

2. Meziane is going to have to ride or die with Saniya Rivers - Yes, the game was spiraling out of control, but putting Rivers on the bench late didn’t seem to help. Rivers made several rookie mistakes including a couple of bad shots, turnovers, and not knowing that the shot clock was expiring, but it’s pretty clear through two games that Rivers is the most athletic and explosive player the Sun have. Rivers’ length allows her to get her shot off at will and athletically, she clearly belongs in the WNBA, not to mention her defense, which might already be elite. She has to start and play.

3. Stay positive -  Let’s be honest, if I were coaching, I probably wouldn’t have Haley Peters on the floor because her defense is so poor, and then there she is trying to guard Napheesa Collier, but damn if it wasn’t working. To a point, at least, Collier was getting hers, but Peters was throwing her off enough and giving the Sun some much-needed offense, frustrating Collier so much that she threw the ball away in disgust. Marina Mabrey hit some shots and it seemed to spark the whole team, which was so fun to watch after getting absolutely blown out by Las Vegas. As I said in the open, it gives us hope going forward and kudos to Peters, who last scored in double digits and a WNBA regular season game in 2016.

Player of the game:  Marina Mabrey - Mabrey finished with 22 points, but the other numbers are more impressive: eight rebounds and six assists. She was able to get others involved, and when she did, she started to get more looks for herself. Her body language was much better and she looked more like a leader. Alas, we wish a couple of those shots down the stretch fell, but such is life.

Inside the numbers : 12-of-13 -  Number of three-pointers missed by the Sun to finish the game after starting 9-of-17. A lot of that had to do with Minnesota just ratcheting up the defensive intensity, but offense is so much easier when you make shots. In the first half, Peters, Sheldon, Rivers, and Hartley all hit long range shots and it opened up everything.

Under the radar: The result might have ended up the same, but with the Lynx trailing 68-61 and 3:08 left, Karlie Samuelson took a three-pointer that should have been way off, but got one of the kindest bounces you’ll ever see and somehow went in. It was Samuelson’s only field goal of the game and a key moment in the 18-0 run that decided the game.

Quotable:  “Sometimes when it gets down the stretch, we need to slow it down and execute, maybe go back to a set that’s been working for us, or go back and have some things in our pocket that we know will work.” - Marina Mabrey

Random:  Collier finished with 33 points, 11 rebounds, and three blocks, becoming only the fifth player in WNBA history to post a 30, 10, and 3 (blocks) game.

Next up: Sunday at Atlanta, 3 p.m.