Wednesday 17 July 2019 17:23, UK
Diana Taurasi is long considered the greatest WNBA player of all time. Her competitive nature made Kobe Bryant dub her the White Mamba. The Phoenix Suns' Deandre Ayton called her the WNBA's Michael Jordan.
She is the league’s all-time leading scorer, having won three WNBA championships, a league MVP, five scoring titles (including four straight), and four Olympic gold medals.
But this year, she does not yet have a rhythm, and the Phoenix Mercury are playing off beat.
The franchise has been a contender more often than not since Taurasi entered the league. It sits with a record of 276-234 coming into the season since she joined the WNBA, but that has been dragged down by an injury-hit year, in which she only played eight games, and another season when she was paid by her EuroLeague team to not play in the USA.
Before her 16th year as a professional began, Phoenix announced Taurasi would have back surgery. She was out of action for the first 13 games of the season, and back just in time to face off against the Connecticut Sun.
The timing of the return was perfect. The Mercury failed to sync up without their leader, and they would face the team they had knocked out in the last two consecutive playoffs. What better way to return than with a win over a rival last Friday? It would have helped keep morale high, could have changed the dynamics of the sputtering start, and, most importantly, Phoenix will have remained above .500.
The Sun had cooled since its early rise to start this season, and the moment was prime for the Mercury to add another blow.
Taurasi was her usual emotionally-driven self but was clearly tentative to take too much punishment. She set screens and got to the line a few times, but it was mainly through craft and guile that she goaded defenders into fouling her on long twos and threes - she barely stepped foot inside the paint. Some years, this would not be an issue for Phoenix, but this season the team is desperate for paint production.
When Brittney Griner is under the rim, the center shoots a good 65 per cent, and is second in the league in points per game with 18.8, but this accounts for less than half her shots. In the rest of the painted area, her efficiency plummets to 40 per cent.
Forward DeWanna Bonner has been averaging a league leading 19.8 points, but just four of her 16 shots each game come from within five feet of the basket.
With Sancho Lyttle going down in the game against the Sun, the team is lacking in height, as it has just one other player listed at 6’4. This is causing issues in the rebounding department, where the team sits dead last.
It’s a similar situation in terms of scoring, as the Mercury are a league-worst in two-point field goal attempts. Yvonne Turner does her usual wizardry, dribbling in and out of the lane but she struggles elsewhere.
Leilani Mitchell and Briann January are performing well, but not at anything more than their usual perimeter-shooting selves. The team is putting virtually no pressure on the rim.
This would be fine if Taurasi was happy to probe through the lane and get banged while scoring layups, or if she would grab rebounds and fight for loose balls, and shove, and grab on defence. But in the game against Connecticut, she did not. Her play was restricted to outside the three-point line. While you might think, ‘come on, it’s Taurasi, she’ll be fine’, you are right, she was.
The way she managed the floor during her 16 minutes was like watching a conductor take an orchestra through a rendition Mozart’s Symphony 41 ‘Jupiter’, without sheet music.
She knows this game better than most and her instinctive passes were on point, but imagine if the percussionist in that orchestra collapsed and the cellist’s fingers fell off, it would be difficult for the conductor to also play those instruments and keep the song going. Right now, the Mercury need a 37-year-old Taurasi coming off an injury to do too much, and the sound coming out of Phoenix is just a bit flat.
A few days after the loss to Connecticut, Taurasi sat against the Minnesota Lynx, having tweaked her back in the Sun game. This is not a good sign. The team is 7-8, clinging to a playoff spot by their fingertips, and it has only been that successful thanks to the offensive brilliance that Bonner and Griner have managed.
Behind the Mercury, there are four teams that would love to make the playoffs. The only team with any great chance of doing so is the New York Liberty, and they have been equally inconsistent. But the Liberty are building something. Last season they finished with seven wins and have already matched that number.
They do not have an easy ride in the next few games - there is no long stretch of easy opponents in the WNBA - but New York has stayed in the hunt despite being without three key players for three weeks due to EuroBasket and another due to injury. If the Liberty can put together a solid run with a full, healthy roster in the coming weeks, they could unseat Phoenix from that final playoff spot.
The next few games will see the Mercury play the Dallas Wings twice and the Indiana Fever - arguably the easiest three-game stretch in the league this year. If Bonner and Griner can lead the team to victory in each one, and head coach Sandy Brondello can find easy minutes for Taurasi as she continues to work her way back from injury, the team from Arizona could start working in harmony.
If the greatest player of all time can be back at the top of her game for the playoffs, that is when she is at her most dangerous. In the biggest moments, Taurasi will crescendo, and she can make any opponent in the league play to whatever tune she wants. So, do not count the Mercury out just yet, because she will be the one to count them in.
The Phoenix Mercury take on the Dallas Wings at 8.30pm on Sky Sports Action
