A few days ago, with the Sparks still mired in a win-one, lose-one pattern in the early stages of the WNBA season, Derek Fisher was asked what it would take for his team to get on a run. His premise: Win the game in front of you.
Since then, the Sparks have made it seem easy. They beat Minnesota handily Sunday, thrashed New York on Tuesday night and beat up on the defending champion Washington Mystics on Thursday night in Bradenton, Fla., an 81-64 decision that included five players in double figures and another strong performance off the bench by Riquna Williams, who had a team-high 13 points in 18 minutes.
And part of being a good team is putting the hammer down on teams you should beat. Minnesota was on a losing streak when the Sparks played them. New York was reeling from injuries, including one to fabled rookie Sabrina Ionescu. And the Mystics, playing the season without MVP Elena Delle Donne and already on a five-game losing streak, had such a short bench because of other injuries that they signed rookie Stella Johnson, who had been waived after four games with Chicago but was still in the WNBA’s bubble in case of an emergency.
Maybe the indication should have been a 1:53 stretch in the first quarter. L.A. (6-3) had gone more than five minutes without a field goal and trailed 9-5, and then the floodgates opened: A 14-0 run, including three-pointers by Williams and Seimone Augustus, two jumpers by Chelsea Gray, a two-point jumper by Augustus and a steal-and-score by Williams. It was 19-9, and the point was made.
“The drought is representative of us being able to stay focused, even when things aren’t going our way, and for us to be able to convert those into a (14-0) run shows the same rigor that we have,” Nneka Ogwumike said. “I think what’s most important is that throughout those runs, we keep getting stops, and so as we develop that cohesion we want to make sure we turn those stops into points.”
Ogwumike had 12 points, Gray 11 and Brittney Sykes and Kristine Anigwe 10 apiece for the Sparks, who made 48.4 percent of their field goal attempts. Candace Parker had only six points but nine rebounds.
How deep is this team?
“If we look at our team from a league standpoint, we have two starting fives,” Ogwumike said. “And we have bench players on our team that have started on teams.”
The result, she added, was to “not only have depth but also that productivity coming out, that energy, that understanding that we’re all in this together. And quite frankly, the first five, we gotta get our stuff together, and everyone that comes in, they basically bring that energy.”
Consider: It could have been even deeper and more talented, but Chiney Ogwumike and Kristi Tolliver opted out of the season.
And it doesn’t matter how many people are on the other team’s bench.
“We just wanna start out strong, energy and effort, heavy on the boards, pushing the ball,” rookie guard Te’a Cooper said. “We try to do that every game. So it really don’t matter if you got 12, 11, 10.”
jalexander@scng.com
@Jim_Alexander on Twitter
