Rec’ing on…Quick Thoughts on the 2006 WNBA and WCOB Results

Since I got really backlogged with life, I’m combining my comments about the end of the WNBA season as well as the Women’s World Championship of Basketball in one post. First the WNBA:

Since I got really backlogged with life, I’m combining my comments about the end of the WNBA season as well as the Women’s World Championship of Basketball in one post.  First the WNBA:

Going back to my preseason predictions, I have to say that I did better than I thought I would (prediction things is so difficult…especially the future). I thought Phoenix would just miss the playoffs again, that Seattle probably wouldn’t get past the first round of the playoffs, and that Sacramento would be in the WNBA finals. On the other hand, I did say that San Antionio might make the playoffs and L.A. would be lucky to get that far. Oh well.

I did a little better predicting the East. Yes, I thought that Charlotte could be a dark horse, but that didn’t pan out. The big news was that I did predict that Detroit was most likely to win it all. In that regard, I think that whatever else I screwed up on was more than made up for by this.

What about Detroit winning the title? Personally, I was a little disappointed. Detroit isn’t one of my favorite teams and that is due, in large part, to the attitude of the team that was brought in with Lambert. I think that they whine too much. Just play ball, ladies and coaches, and let the officials do their job in peace.

I wish that Phoenix would have managed to squeeze into the playoffs. They won all of their games in August, and were the hottest team in the league, without question. They could have made it awfully interesting.

Still, after the season was over, there was much basketball left to be played; not on the courts of the WNBA, but south of the equator in Brasil. Yes, the Women’s World Championship of Basketball.

As for the Americans not winning the gold? As fun as it would have been (I sure was rooting for them), I think it’s one of the best things that could have happened for international women’s sports. Consider: softball is being phased out of the Olympics. Ostensibly the reason is because the stadia for softball and baseball are too expensive and that attendance is poor. Fact is, the men are having trouble drawing flies while the women are doing better than most in putting butts in the seats. No, the major factor (in my opinion, of course) is that the U.S. is so dominant in softball. Never mind that other teams in the past and present totally dominate certain sports, but for a couple of decades now the women’s team sports have been largely the playground of one country and some in the paternal sports federations are tired of it.

With the U.S.A. getting bronze at the WCOB, the international community sees that the top three teams in the world can be very competitive against each other…as has actually been the case all along. While the U.S., in the past, has won gold, it has usually been in tight gold-medal games. The women have always taken these games seriously because they know how good their competition actually is.

True, I’d have rather the U.S. got to play Australia in the finals. I think that would have been a game to see. More importantly, the Aussies and the Yanks both gave it their all for the entire tournament. While I like Russia’s team, and it carries many players I enjoy watching, I hate the gamesmanship of playing possum until the medal rounds. It’s not that they hold some things back, but that they sometimes all but throw a game in order to lull others into a false sense of security.

Did that false sense of security happen during the second game between the U.S. and Russia? Maybe a little, but everyone is aware of what the Russians do. Fact is, they shot terrific and the U.S. had an off night. It happens. It happens in all sports at all levels. Federer doesn’t win every tennis match he plays, after all.

For the Americans, there’s still much tinkering to be done. I had been shouting at the TV through most of the U.S. games that Donovan should let Diana simply shoot; that’s how she racked up such incredible numbers this season (the bronze medal game sort of confirmed this expectation). Instead, there was a lot of democracy and extra passing on this team. While laudable in the early rounds, when crunch-time came it became a bit of a liability. I think Donovan and her crew screwed up a little with the strategy with that.

It was clear that there were a few levels on this U.S. team. Bird, Taurasi, Smith, Catchings, and Parker are heads and shoulders above the rest. Augustus, Ford, and Snow were disappointing and clearly at a lower level in terms of how to play international ball as well as with their decision-making. The rest of the team served as decent role players, but just weren’t in the same class at the top five (Swoopes, being injured wasn’t able to be quite the factor as she normally could have been).

I think that Lisa Leslie’s absence did make a difference. The U.S. didn’t have an experienced and talented big to help even-out the height advantage other countries had. They also lacked some of the on-court leadership of a Leslie that was so responsible for the U.S. beating Russia in so many tight games in the past. It mattered that she wasn’t there, and it matters that the U.S. doesn’t have a good replacement for her. That could be a problem in Beijing if she gets injured in any way.

I am happy for Australia, though. LJ and Tully and the rest deserve the accolade of gold no less than Sue or Dee or Katie. I think the taste of it would have been sweeter had the win come at the expense of a fired-up U.S. team rather than a lackluster Russian one, but a win is a win. Good on ya. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi! Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi! Aussie, Oi! Aussie, Oi! Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!