[WBB] Comments that don't warrant their own thread 2011-2021

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Belated congratulations to the Canadian National Team, who defeated the United States at the Pan American Games last night, to earn their first-ever Pan Am Gold. Canada was led by UConn's Kia Nurse, who had 33 points on the night. Former Monarch Kim Gaucher only had five points, but played well overall, and I might be reppin' a little too hard for the Monarchs still, but I felt like Canada played best when Gaucher was on the floor, stats notwithstanding.

Now, it should be noted that the US did not send any WNBA players to compete in the Pan Am games, but Canada has played against USA's college players before, and not won, so I think it's still a pretty big win for our neighbors to the north.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Nothing like driving into the city, and having to deal with ridiculous traffic (**** the NFL and Major League Baseball, by the way), just to watch the home team blow an eighteen-point lead.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Canada completes the home "sweep," winning the 2015 FIBA Americas Championship for Women in Edmonton, 82-66 over Cuba, after winning Gold at the Pan American games in Toronto last month (the United States, as the defending FIBA Women's World Champions, were exempt from participating). Canada was again led in scoring for both the tournament and the gold medal game by Kia Nurse, who had 20 tonight. Team Captain and former Sacramento Monarch Kim Smith contributed 8pts and a team-best 7reb.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Since, I am ashamed to say, I forgot last year, let me take this time to wish a very happy forty-first birthday to the greatest point guard in WNBA history! The league's all-time assist leader, the very lovely and very talented Ticha Penichiero!

Feliz aniversário!

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lyndsey-darcangelo/the-wnbas-biggest-problem_b_9437480.html

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

So, Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White is quitting at the end of the season, to take the head coaching job at Vanderbilt. This troubles me for reasons that I'm not entirely sure that I can articulate properly.

Granted, it's not a "This is a death blow for the WNBA!" level of worry, but it's still a worry, as I grok it. Vanderbilt is a third-rate school, as far as women's basketball is concerned. And the only reason they even rate that high is because of the transitive property of being in the SEC. She's not going to take over a power program (Connecticut, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Stanford, Baylor, South Carolina, USC); she's not going to take over a once-great program, and try to return it to prominence (Old Dominion, Southern California, LSU, Georgia). She's not even going to take over her alma mater (Purdue), she's going to coach Vanderbilt.

Stephanie White was the hand-picked successor of a hall-of-fame coach, in the state where she's actually from, where she went to college. Where she lives with her wife and family. She coached a team to the WNBA Finals last year: she was twenty minutes away from a championship. And now, she's leaving that gig, after only 2 years, to coach college ball at a third-rate school. That should be seen as a step backwards, and the fact that it isn't is a problem for the WNBA. I don't know how to classify how big a problem it is, but I can't see how it isn't considered a problem.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm not even going to lie: the only reason I'm even watching this game is because I was hoping for a potential flagrant foul. And I say that as the board's only remaining hardcore WNBA fan.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Interesting double-header last night: emotional Game 1, including a social statement by the players, and the final game of a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And a masterful performance by an elite scorer in Game 2.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Congratulations to the 2016 WNBA Champions Los Angeles Sparks! 2-time League MVP Candace Parker finally wins her first WNBA championship.

Former Monarch Rebekkah Brunson loses her bid to become the player with the most championships in WNBA history. I hate to say it, but I'm glad. I made peace a long time ago with the fact that I hate Maya Moore more than I love Rebekkah Brunson, so I had to root for Minnesota to lose, even if that meant Becky losing... Even if it meant (ugh!) LA winning.

I pretty much had to lie back and think of England.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Northwestern women's basketball player Jordan Hankins found dead: http://www.wthr.com/article/northwestern-basketball-player-jordan-hankins-found-dead-1

 

[hrdboild]

Congratulations to the 2016 WNBA Champions Los Angeles Sparks! 2-time League MVP Candace Parker finally wins her first WNBA championship.

Former Monarch Rebekkah Brunson loses her bid to become the player with the most championships in WNBA history. I hate to say it, but I'm glad. I made peace a long time ago with the fact that I hate Maya Moore more than I love Rebekkah Brunson, so I had to root for Minnesota to lose, even if that meant Becky losing... Even if it meant (ugh!) LA winning.

I pretty much had to lie back and think of England.

Why do you hate Maya Moore?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I am psychologically predisposed to hating "media darlings." My particular grievance with Maya Moore is that I feel like her entire career, college through the pros, can be characterized as someone who was born on third base, and treated like she hit a triple.

Let me know when she gets to the playoffs with a team that doesn't have four other All-Stars on it.

 

[hrdboild]

I am psychologically predisposed to hating "media darlings." My particular grievance with Maya Moore is that I feel like her entire career, college through the pros, can be characterized as someone who was born on third base, and treated like she hit a triple.

Let me know when she gets to the playoffs with a team that doesn't have four other All-Stars on it.

I suppose you're entitled to your opinion, but she didn't choose Minnesota she was drafted there. It seems like you're holding it against her that she ended up on a good team. She wasn't handed an MVP award -- she got that in her fourth season in the WNBA when she led the entire league in scoring. Didn't she earn that? Wouldn't it have been easier for her to put up numbers on a team with no other options?

My perspective is a little bit different maybe because I remember when she was a Freshman at UCONN and I had no idea where she came from or what she did in HS. She still had a lot to prove then and she was just effortlessly brilliant from the beginning. You could criticize her for choosing to play at UCONN in the first place, but it's far and away the best college program so wouldn't you go there if they offered you a spot? All-Stars, MVP awards, championships -- yeah a lot of those are team recognitions in disguise but take all that away, isn't she just fun to watch? I haven't watched her as much in the WNBA ironically because UCONN games seem to be easier to find on TV than WNBA games, but she's always been fun to watch for me.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

As there is no counterfactual, I can't say with any certainty what I would have done if, say, Dean Smith had offered me a scholarship to play at Carolina, when I was a senior in high school. The only thing that I can say is that, based on what I believe now, and what I believed then, I choose to believe that I would have turned it down, and tried to play somewhere else. Because I've never been somebody who wanted to add on to an already built legacy: I believe that I would have wanted to go somewhere where I could have created my own legacy.

As to the rest of your post, I don't have to defend or justify myself. It might not be rational, but hate is not a rational thing to feel. AFAIC, Maya Moore is on my FYF along with FSM; she can't ever do right by me, and that's all there is to it.

Actually, that's not true. There is one thing that Maya Moore can do, that would do right by me: she can leave Minnesota as a free agent, go to a team (any team) that does not already have multiple All-Stars on it, where she's the only lottery pick on the team... and lead them to the Finals. If she does that, then I'll squash my Maya Moore hate.

 

[hrdboild]

As there is no counterfactual, I can't say with any certainty what I would have done if, say, Dean Smith had offered me a scholarship to play at Carolina, when I was a senior in high school. The only thing that I can say is that, based on what I believe now, and what I believed then, I choose to believe that I would have turned it down, and tried to play somewhere else. Because I've never been somebody who wanted to add on to an already built legacy: I believe that I would have wanted to go somewhere where I could have created my own legacy.

As to the rest of your post, I don't have to defend or justify myself. It might not be rational, but hate is not a rational thing to feel. AFAIC, Maya Moore is on my FYF along with FSM; she can't ever do right by me, and that's all there is to it.

Actually, that's not true. There is one thing that Maya Moore can do, that would do right by me: she can leave Minnesota as a free agent, go to a team (any team) that does not already have multiple All-Stars on it, where she's the only lottery pick on the team... and lead them to the Finals. If she does that, then I'll squash my Maya Moore hate.

My roommate is a big UCONN fan so that's the only Women's college team I watch regularly but I have been watching them long enough that I'm familiar with a good percentage of the WNBA's current players from their college days either playing for the Huskies or against them. I don't listen to the commentators, I don't know which players are hyped and which ones are under the radar so I have no reaction to that. Just as a fan of the game of basketball I'll cheer for anyone who exemplifies the beauty of the sport regardless of team, position, gender, hairstyle, whatever and for as long as I've been watching Maya Moore is by far my favorite player in the women's game. That would be the case regardless of which team she played for and how many trophies she did or didn't win.

I have no rooting interest in the WNBA now that Sacramento doesn't have a team and rooting for UCONN at this point is like rooting for the casino, there's not much fun in that (for me), but you have to hand it to Geno Auriemma. He built that program from nothing and he hasn't had a losing season in 30 years. That's a remarkable accomplishment in any sport. This isn't a Yankees situation where he leveraged a massive media market and a bottomless pocket book to lord over the rest of his league. He gets the best players because he's the most accomplished coach and his players like to play for him. It's the same thing that happens at the top schools on the Men's side only no one is paying money for Women's basketball players under the table or promising them high draft picks and the resultant guaranteed NBA contracts worth millions. I have no problem hating an Evil Empire, but hating somebody just for being really good at their job? Nah, those are the people I want to emulate.

Like I said, you're entitled to your own opinion. It's just basketball, it's not like it's life or death or anything. From my point of view, your reasons for hating Maya Moore sound remarkably petty. (Not to mention factually inaccurate -- Minesota was 13-21 the season before she got there and 27-7 in her rookie season and you implied that she joined a loaded team and was already assured a championship. Not to mention, there's only 12 teams in the WNBA so most teams have multiple All-Stars). But that's fine. They're your reasons. I have my own preferences and some of them are petty too. I just asked cause I was curious.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

No, I'm not wrong. She did join a loaded team: She was drafted by a team that already had three All-Stars, and signed a fourth in the off-season. They finished poorly because their best player, Seimone Augustus, was playing through injuries the entire season, and only averaged a then-career low 16.9 points, on what remains a career-low .429 FG%. That was a team that already had four premier players on it, by the time Maya Moore got there. All of which had already been All-Stars, three of which had already been to the Finals multiple times (without Maya Moore), two of which had already won championships (also without Maya Moore). Don't tell me that team wasn't loaded.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

... Not to mention, there's only 12 teams in the WNBA so most teams have multiple All-Stars...

Alright then. You know what most teams don't have? Multiple All-WNBA players, and the Lynx had that, too: Augustus, Whelan and McWilliams were all All-WNBA players, and Brunson was three-times All-Defense, and all of that was before any of them had ever played with Maya Moore.

 

[hrdboild]

Minnesota got remarkably lucky. They had a terrible team with 1 star player at the right time to swoop up the second pick in the Dispersal draft (thanks Maloofs...) and the #1 overall pick in 2010 which they traded for Lindsey Whalen. A year later they got the #1 pick in the draft again which happened to be Maya Moore. So in just a couple years they went from having 1 star to having 4 stars. Could have happened to any team. Right place at the right time. But a big part of what makes that team so loaded is that they have Maya Moore. She's been the best player on the team since her third season. So it's similar to the situation she was in at UCONN -- it's a good team without her, it's a great team with her. And Taj McWilliams-Franklin was 41 years old in 2011. She was still a good player but she wasn't a star anymore at that point.

But I still think none of this is Maya Moore's fault. She's playing for the team that drafted her. She probably didn't deserve to be an All-Star in her rookie season. Other than that, I don't see how she's gotten preferential treatment. In the previous 5 seasons Minnesota was terrible: 13-21 (2010), 14-20 (2009), 16-18 (2008), 10-24 (2007), 10-24 (2006). Maybe some people give her more credit than she deserves for turning it around but I think most intelligent people recognize that the Lynx wouldn't be nearly that good with just Maya. She's not the greatest player in Women's basketball history. She's not even the greatest player in UCONN history (150-4 record notwithstanding...). She found herself on some very good teams throughout her career which magnified her individual success to another level. This isn't a Robert Horry situation though where she's riding on other people's coattails. By any measure she's one of the best players in the league right now. This all just seems like an awfully silly reason to hate somebody.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

To which my response is, so what? I don't have an obligation to not be petty. You act like I'm trying to run from that.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Down goes Connecticut! Down goes Connecticut!

The 2017 Women's National Champion is guaranteed to be from the SEC.

 

[PurpleHaze]

Watch how Bulldogs shocked Huskies in OT thriller.

http://www.ncaa.com/video/basketbal...-501-connecticut-mississippi-state-final-four

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

They put the "won" in one hundred eleven and one!

Mississippi State has a chance to become only the fourth team in women's basketball history (fifth overall) to beat three #1 seeds in the same tournament.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

https://twitter.com/karalawson20/status/848318800030203904

Wow, I had no idea that Doris Burke was that deep in the tank for Connecticut. And it's funny: she went to Providence, and I think her daughter did, too. What's her attachment to UConn?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Congratulations to the University of South Carolina, for winning the 2017 NCAA Women's National Championship!

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

South Carolina is the first team since 2002 to win a National Championship without a made three-pointer in the final game.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Congratulations to Diana Taurasi, who just scored her 7,489th point, to become the all-time leading scorer in WNBA history.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Tipoff in the Connecticut Sun/Washington Mystics game tonight has been delayed, due to a leaking roof.

EDIT - Game officially postponed.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Tipoff in the Connecticut Sun/Washington Mystics game tonight has been delayed, due to a leaking roof.

EDIT - Game officially postponed.

I guess nobody had Gregg Lukenbill's phone number?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Well played.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Belated condolences to former Monarch Kara Lawson, on the loss of her father.

Apparently, he passed a couple weeks ago; I only found out because I was sitting here wondering, "Hey, what the hell happened to Kara Lawson?", and a Bing search later, discovered the bad news.