From a Seattle fan's perspective
I'm not sure that any of you want to hear this, but in addition to the "bites" thread on the stormfans.org forum, there was also a "why I like the Monarchs" thread where Seattle fans expounded upon what they liked best about the Monarchs players. As you know, Edna Campbell came to the Monarchs from the Storm. Many of us have great respect for Ruthie Bolton and have followed Guiliana for her whole career at UW. I think I speak for most of the regulars on the forum when I say that we respect the Monarchs as a team. We believe that they play hard but fair basketball and our only consistent complaint is the amount of flopping that one player is trying to perfect. We have always cheered on Sacramento in all their playoff appearance against any competitor.
The "bites" thread was just us blowing off a little trash talking before the series starts. If you read closely, you will see that people were really stretching to find things to complain about. Just as a quick note, the comment about the braids and ribbons was based directly upon what another player once said about Tangela Smith and her concern that the general public generalizes that every woman playing in the WNBA is a lesbian. Those of us who are fans all know better. Some are, some aren't and it certainly has no effect on their ability to play ball. I'm sorry that this comment was misunderstood.
And just for the information if any of you thinking of traveling to Seattle for Game 2 and/or Game 3, we Seattle fans are used to visits from Monarchs fans and I believe that we treat them with courtesy. We appreciate fans coming to cheer on their team as long as their idea of supporting their team doesn't mean being rude to our team. I know that sounds hypocritical after the "bites" thread, but I don't think a single poster would say any of those things to a player's face or yell them during a game.
And speaking of which, a group of Seattle fans has come down to Sacramento three times over the last two seasons. Now, I will admit that we fly in, watched the game and fly right back out again, so we didn't see much of your town. Since our arena is in downtown Seattle, I think many of us were a bit put off by your arena being so far out of town. In addition, during our visits to your arena, while some fans treated us very politely, we have been told to shut up, sit down, cursed at and had things thrown at us by Monarchs fans. And just to put that in perspective, we sat by the visitors' bench and were all very careful to only say things to support the Storm and nothing against the Monarchs because that wouldn't be polite behavior for visitors in your arena. So, while we were on our best behavior, we were not treated with similar respect from all Monarch fans. And lastly as to the classiness or classlessness of fans, while sitting near the visitors' bench in your arena, I heard things being yelled at Storm players that made me blush. Some of the comments were rude, foul-mouth and plain disgusting. Again, I know this isn't all Monarchs fans exhibiting this behavior, but don't think that it doesn't happen in your arena.
I hope that this helps put this whole incident in perspective. I don't think there isn't a Storm fan in all of Seattle that isn't lookiing forward to the series with the Monarchs. We are elated that the Monarchs bumped out the Sparks! We expect to see a hard fought, competitive series and can't wait. No one is assuming the outcome of the Western Conference Finals because the Monarchs have showed the league just how much grit they have.
Good luck to you and your team and we'll see you at Arco or the Key.
