2024 WNBA PLAYOFFS Discussion Thread (WNBA Finals: New York Liberty vs Minnesota Lynx; NYL WIN 3-2)

[hermes]

alanna smith throwing a block party on the other end

[Movics]

So they started bringing pets to the games. When are they starting to play outside on “assfault?”

[MrDollarBills]

Good game

[hermes]

whew

lynx win!

[Doctor MJ]

MVPhee with the Iron Woman performance...and the Lynx sure needed it.

[DOT]

Was at the Sun-Fever game

Man, Mabrey really is exactly what this team needed. Team absolutely locked in on defense in the 2nd half, but there were a lot of really easy looks Clark go that just didn't go in

Arena was packed with Clark fans though, everyone around us was at least. Kinda sucks for them they all showed up for her and she played like **** lol.

[prophet_of_rage]

Bonner on Clark seemed to be really effective

Bonner stops Clark from driving and scoring 2s, that is for sure. But I don't think she had much to do with Clark going 2-13 on 3s. I mean, that's basketball. Some days shooters miss and some days they make. Today, everybody on the Sun made and Clark/Mitchell missed.

I think she had something do with it. You can say that about every shooter, every time.

Another thing, at the end of the day she is only a 34% 3 point shooter. I think we need to start treating her shooting performances like that of a 34% 3 point shooter on high volume.


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Clark doesn't hsve rhe speed.to blow by, the strength to bully and the length to shoot over Bonner. She is rushing everything to get space.

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[cdubbz]

Bonner on Clark seemed to be really effective

Bonner stops Clark from driving and scoring 2s, that is for sure. But I don't think she had much to do with Clark going 2-13 on 3s. I mean, that's basketball. Some days shooters miss and some days they make. Today, everybody on the Sun made and Clark/Mitchell missed.

I think she had something do with it. You can say that about every shooter, every time.

I too don't think Clark was affected by Bonner guarding her imo. I will give credit to Bonner though because MAYBE she did bother her, but the main reason I don't think she bothered her much was the quality of looks and shots that CC was getting. Clark didn't seem to have to work harder to get shots. I did notice a lot of her shots were flat though and she forced a lot of threes which she normally does. Bonner 100% affects CC on the drive.

I wanted to see more pick n roll with Boston though - they had luck with that in the first half and Boston was able to make the decision to score or pass. The 3 man game between KM, Clark, & Boston is a weapon they need to use more imo.

[jc23]

Read on Twitter

eye didnt see anything on the original foul but on second sight it looks like the optics have changed my view.

[Doctor MJ]

Aces seemed like they had a wake-up-and-buckle-down transition today. Might have been just what they needed to full flip the switch defensively.

[cdubbz]

Read on Twitter

eye didnt see anything on the original foul but on second sight it looks like the optics have changed my view.

Yeah that slow motion is floating around and riling people up. It wasn't intentional and didn't look intentional.

[jc23]

Read on Twitter

eye didnt see anything on the original foul but on second sight it looks like the optics have changed my view.

Yeah that slow motion is floating around and riling people up. It wasn't intentional and didn't look intentional.

could of swore that other angle was in the tweet when i posted it. id say im not convinced either way; the other angle looked very unusual. Shane battier used to play close to the face all the time but more so in an upwards motion. so it ends up being gamesmanship as she got away with a foul and its uncertain on the intention.

[zike_42]

I didn't watch the game but saw the box score of the Aces/Storm and what the hell happened in the last quarter? 14-2 in 10 minutes? It seemed Seattle didn't come back out after 3QT.

[Green Chile]

It won't make a difference for this series but it's awesome that Atlanta signed Kalu.

If not for France, Nigeria would have been the story of the Olympics. I remember watching Kalu hoping we'd see her in the W.

[Ice Man]

I too don't think Clark was affected by Bonner guarding her imo. I will give credit to Bonner though because MAYBE she did bother her, but the main reason I don't think she bothered her much was the quality of looks and shots that CC was getting. Clark didn't seem to have to work harder to get shots. I did notice a lot of her shots were flat though and she forced a lot of threes which she normally does. Bonner 100% affects CC on the drive.

My take entirely. I will go further. Mabrey was on Clark quite often and guarded her 3s better than Bonner did. And whoever was on Mitchell absolutely stuffed her. The best 3 point looks that Indy got in the game was when Bonner was on Clark. I expect Clark/Indy to be firing away again next game, with better results.

Bonner did take away the drive, as expected. A long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard and a rim protector is going to be tough to drive against, particularly since Clark seeks contact on drives and looks to outmuscle her mark. But a long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard is going to have trouble running all over the perimeter to chase her on 3s. And Bonner did have trouble. Only Clark did not make her pay for being a step behind.

Hey, if Clark goes 3-11 next game (or whatever) on 3s, people can tell me I am wrong. We shall see.

[cupcakesnake]

I too don't think Clark was affected by Bonner guarding her imo. I will give credit to Bonner though because MAYBE she did bother her, but the main reason I don't think she bothered her much was the quality of looks and shots that CC was getting. Clark didn't seem to have to work harder to get shots. I did notice a lot of her shots were flat though and she forced a lot of threes which she normally does. Bonner 100% affects CC on the drive.

My take entirely. I will go further. Mabrey was on Clark quite often and guarded her 3s better than Bonner did. And whoever was on Mitchell absolutely stuffed her. The best 3 point looks that Indy got in the game was when Bonner was on Clark. I expect Clark/Indy to be firing away again next game, with better results.

Bonner did take away the drive, as expected. A long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard and a rim protector is going to be tough to drive against, particularly since Clark seeks contact on drives and looks to outmuscle her mark. But a long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard is going to have trouble running all over the perimeter to chase her on 3s. And Bonner did have trouble. Only Clark did not make her pay for being a step behind.

Hey, if Clark goes 3-11 next game (or whatever) on 3s, people can tell me I am wrong. We shall see.

I don't think Bonner is an incredible defensive player overall, but she's long been very good in this specific role. Even at age 37, she has unusually quick feet for someone with center height. She's not going to be able to pick up Clark for a full game, but putting Bonner on Clark's preferred perimeter screener can completely smush Indiana's initial actions. I think Bonner is more than capable of guarding Clark's drive and her pull up, just probably not as a full time job.

Mabrey is too slow to guard Clark much. She gives big effort to contest shots, but whenever Clark would drive, Mabrey would often end up turned around and chasing her.

I think the bigger problem for the Fever isn't individual matchups though. The Sun completely took away everything the Indiana offense is made of. No fast breaks (Sun outscored the Fever 18-9 in transition), and they disrupted the Boston/Clark pick & roll game. Brionna Jones stayed at home on Boston, so the play didn't create 3-point looks. The Fever still managed to chuck up a ton of threes, but they weren't the kind they like: open 3s off of ball movement. So many of the threes they took came after possessions that failed to puncture the Sun defense.

On the other end, the Sun got inside whenever they wanted and were able to unlock nice shots. On top of that... Mabrey absolutely annihilated Caitlin Clark whenever the got that assignment. Clark can't guard Mabrey any better than Mabrey can guard Clark. It's not just a Clark thing though because Indiana doesn't have significantly better perimeter defenders than Clark. Clark/Mitchell/Hull is a joke perimeter defense.

The Sun had a very basic game plan for the Fever and it looked extremely easy to execute.

[Ice Man]

On the other end, the Sun got inside whenever they wanted and were able to unlock nice shots. On top of that... Mabrey absolutely annihilated Caitlin Clark whenever the got that assignment. Clark can't guard Mabrey any better than Mabrey can guard Clark. It's not just a Clark thing though because Indiana doesn't have significantly better perimeter defenders than Clark. Clark/Mitchell/Hull is a joke perimeter defense.

The Sun had a very basic game plan for the Fever and it looked extremely easy to execute.

Correct. The truth is, we all spend a lot of time taking about Bonner/Clark, but that matchup was immaterial for the result. If Clark had smoked Bonner by shooting 6-13 on 3s, thus getting 23 points/8 assists with only 2 TOs, it would have been a strong Clark offensive showing ... and the Fever would have lost by 12 instead of 24. They could not get stops. As you point out the perimeter defense is lacking, and once opposing players beat the perimeter defenders the Fever's bigs are poor at help defense. Too slow, lacking length, they just get blown by for layups.

The Fever can steal a playoff game or two if they go 14 -29 on 3s in a game, something like that, and outscore their opponent in a shootout. Otherwise, nah. They need both more experience and some new defensive personnel.

[DOT]

Bonner did take away the drive, as expected. A long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard and a rim protector is going to be tough to drive against, particularly since Clark seeks contact on drives and looks to outmuscle her mark. But a long player who is 4 inches taller than a guard is going to have trouble running all over the perimeter to chase her on 3s. And Bonner did have trouble. Only Clark did not make her pay for being a step behind.

Yeah, also Bonner is like 37 years old

I think what happened with the Sun is, DiJonai is our best perimeter defender, so normally we'd have her matched up on Clark, but once Ty Harris went down, DJ was the only one who could keep up with Kelsey Mitchell so we had to have her guard her, and then just throw everything else at Clark and hope she had an off night

What was super effective was trapping her off the PnR. Probably can't do it all game, but iirc the Sun started heavily trapping her in the 4th which is where the lead really exploded and Indy's offense couldn't do anything. I also think they did a good job of getting back in transition which is where she usually thrives

Really I think it just showed the experience gap. Going into last night, the Fever had 4 players who'd played in the playoffs for a combined 19 games, and 307 total minutes. Meanwhile DeWanna Bonner alone had played in 80 games and 2,494 total minutes in the playoffs in her career to that point. I'm not writing them off yet, cause they've all played exceptionally well lately, but I think the Sun are just a bad matchup for them at this point.

[Wingy]

Read on Twitter

eye didnt see anything on the original foul but on second sight it looks like the optics have changed my view.

Yeah that slow motion is floating around and riling people up. It wasn't intentional and didn't look intentional.

could of swore that other angle was in the tweet when i posted it. id say im not convinced either way; the other angle looked very unusual. Shane battier used to play close to the face all the time but more so in an upwards motion. so it ends up being gamesmanship as she got away with a foul and its uncertain on the intention.

DC just looks to be trying to swat away a pass. A normal basketball play and **** happens all the time.

This stuff is crazy out of control. Too many are treating Clark like some little princess that needs to be put in bubble wrap instead of the tough, fierce competitor she is.
You can see Carrington looking up at the ball tracking it with her eyes the whole time, swatting to break it up…and she was supposedly using her peripheral vision to intentionally poke Clark in the eye? Absurd.

The fact that “Clark e” already becomes suggested YouTube search “Clark eye poke” just goes to show how much trolls and culture war sickos are milking this crap.

[Wingy]

I didn't watch the game but saw the box score of the Aces/Storm and what the hell happened in the last quarter? 14-2 in 10 minutes? It seemed Seattle didn't come back out after 3QT.

I don’t have ESPN, so I’m going to miss more than I would’ve otherwise this season (vs NBA TV, free Ion..but hey, bigger more popular network is def good for the league). Anyway, not sure, but I didn’t realize Ezi was going to miss time. That’s huge. Still think the Aces would come out on top, but it’d be much tougher.

Speaking of box scores…I’ve noticed of late that Chelsea Gray’s numbers are starting to look better. How does the eye test look to the board? Is she finally getting her legs back?

I’m personally rooting for a Liberty/Lynx final, but have a feeling the Aces are about to peak at the right time. [edit: FTR, I'm the only one who has voted Aces in the poll thus far]