Storm Gets Defensive
 Donovan is looking for defensive improvement. Jeff Reinking/WNBAE/Getty |
During the portion of today's morning practice open to the media, Donovan had one player serve as a defensive trailer, forcing the rest of her teammates to defend four-on-five, using a zone.
Despite missing the playoffs, the Storm was the best offensive team in the WNBA last season on a per-possession basis, scoring 102.6 points per 100 possessions. The Storm wasn't bad on defense, allowing 98.1 points per 100 possessions to rank seventh in the league, but it was a relative weakness.
Besides for the extra emphasis on defense during practice, the Storm will be helped by a healthy Sue Bird. The chondromalacia that bothered her throughout last season limited Bird's mobility and particularly affected her on defense.
"Sue's a different player than she was last summer," Donovan said. "She's confident and she feels good about that."
Although the start of training camp is always a bit ragged, Donovan was pleased with the improvement she already saw in her team from last night to this morning.
"Last night was not great, but there was no expectation that it was going to be anything more than working the kinks out," Donovan said. "Today was a good practice. Today was much improved over last night. We talked about some things last night and showed some concepts and today it seemed like they grasped it. Every day, if we can get better like we did this morning, we're in good shape."
Whether Donovan did so or not, training-camp invitee Lindsey Wilson was going to be focusing on defense. The Seattle native and Roosevelt High grad who spent part of last year as a member of the primarily male team that scrimmaged against the Storm practiced for the first time on the other side this morning after returning from Greece last night.
"It's nice," Wilson said. "Being a practice player is a great workout and everything, but you're still on the outside. Everybody was nice last year and all that and it was a great experience that helped me a lot, I think, coming into training camp this year. Everything's familiar, I know the coaches and a lot of the players. But it does feel good, to be more a part of it."
A fine scorer who averaged better than 19 points per game from the point-guard position during her last two seasons at Iowa State, Wilson knew she needed to improve her defense after being cut last year by the Connecticut Sun, who drafted her in the third round of the 2003 Draft. In addition to working on her defense in Greece, Wilson has had the luxury of working regularly in practice against two of the WNBA's finest offensive point guards, Bird and Shannon "Pee Wee" Johnson, formerly of the Sun.
"Playing against players that are extremely good offensively, the more you play against them, the more you learn their tendencies," Wilson explained. "Everything's so split-second that if you have in the back of your head what they tend to do, that helps a lot."
Wilson was joined in camp today by Michelle Greco, who also played in Greece this off-season. Greco, the Pac-10's leading scorer during the 2000-01 and 2002-03 seasons, spent last year's training camp with the Cleveland Rockers.
Notes:
"Right now, physically, she's fine," Donovan said. "She gauges it. She has to sit out something like five minutes to ice it, until she gets her confidence back, until her knee is 100%. She's doing exactly what she needs to do, which is go as hard as she can. If she gets nervous or it flares up or acts up, then she sits out."
