Aces Basketball…
On A Friday Night…
Great pizza ahead of time, then the game. 40th sold-out arena in a row.
Stunningly frustrating game. The Aces have maybe, by a distance, the best team in the WNBA on sheer talent of every player. They have four of the Olympic team. But since they won the second straight championship in 2023, they flat seem to have forgotten how to win. (Or flat don’t care which worries me more than anything.)
Tonight they were playing the Storm from Seattle, a good team, sure, but no where near the level of talent of the Aces.
And it showed. At one point at the start of the third the Aces were 19 points ahead and instead of the old killer instinct of putting the other team away, they screwed around and let the Storm back into the game, at one point with three minutes left it was dead even. Seriously?
The Storm players clearly cared. Our players were napping on the sidelines I think, from the best I could tell.
Most disgusting run of basketball by top players I have seen in some time. Just awful. Seemingly no pride, no killer instinct, no real desire to win.
The Aces managed to scrape out a win in the last minute by mostly luck, but wow was that stupid.
Like last year, if they don’t figure out what is wrong and fix it, they are not going very far in the playoffs. The Liberty, the Lynx, and a couple other teams will just make laughing stocks of the best group of players in the league, because the Liberty and the Lynx know how to win. The Aces have fogotten.
Sure is a good lesson that talent means little if you don’t have the drive and the attitude.
5 Comments
Kristi N.
I’ve always liked that line from “Miracle”: “Gentlemen (ladies), you don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.” Herb Brooks and Bill Musselman were very tough coaches to play for, but they excelled at finding the key to get their teams to play not only to the level of their talent, but exceed it. By the time someone reaches the professional level, it’s assumed they want to be there, doing what they are doing. I’ve quit watching most professional sports in this decade because I see too many players (baseball, football, basketball) who act like they don’t want to. I’d rather see a team hustle and lose than watch a team play half-heartedly and win.
dwsmith
In school, high school, I was by far the least talented writer in the entire school. I refused to do essay questions and in college took classes that I knew would have no essasy tests (Until I got to law school, but already a selling writer by that point.) I hated the idea of writing. I was a sports geek. So if you took a measure of my talent back then, it would be in negative numbers.
Talent is only a measure of a person’s skill set at a set moment in time. And talent will seldom carry the day. Drive does that, and massive hard work and never quitting.
Richard Clement
Yeah, I saw that game. Strange run for Seattle. No one on Seattle except their 19-year old center Dom Malonga seemed to be doing anything spectacular. They just kept coming down and grinding away in the paint. Hit or miss, then come back again. I thought at the time the Aces seemed to be thinking why worry, we’ll just dribble back down the court and toss in a few threes. Which did finally win the game for them, but they lacked that hungry, hustling look I’ve seen in the other top teams. Given what they were a couple of years ago, they did not look like contenders.
It brings to mind something you’ve said often. Once a writer thinks they’re good enough that they don’t have to work at learning their craft anymore, their career ends.
Enjoy your season tickets,
Richard Clement
Mary
If you want to see the personification of the hunger and drive to win, take a look at Tom Brady’s face at the point at which his team is down and he’s about to stage a comeback. He was never the most talented. He was always the most driven. And he never stopped trying to get better.
Kris Rusch
That’s A’ja Wilson as well. She’s like Brady. (Although her skill level…wow. But she works harder than everyone else too.)
But everyone else has to play well in order for the team to win. Her 20-30 points isn’t enough. They’ve been playing better since, because she told them they either had to give 100% or not play at all. It made a difference. We’ll see what happens tomorrow against the Liberty, though. 😳