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Indeed, after going into the All-Star break with a pair of solid defensive efforts (the Sacramento Monarchs shot 41.4% and committed 17 turnovers on July 3, while the Phoenix Mercury, even in a win, shot only 35.3% on July 6), the Storm started the second half with one of its worst defensive performances of the season, surrendering 58.8% shooting to the Washington Mystics in a 78-71 loss.
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Anne Donovan after the game. "We’ve got to get a little bit more aggressive defensively and figure out how we can, one through five, play better defensively."
After practicing Thursday in anticipation of hosting the San Antonio Silver Stars Friday evening (7:00 p.m., KJR 950 AM, 
), the Storm was even more resolute about the need for defensive improvement.
"Who cares about offense right now?" asked guard 
Betty Lennox. "We're going to score regardless. Forget about offense right now; we've got to get the defensive end taken care of, because if you get the defensive end taking care of, we'll have more opportunities to play offense. And we've got so many offensive players on this team that we need to turn around and we need to focus on defense and offense is going to automatically come."
A look through the statistics offers some answers at the defensive end of the court. A season ago, the Storm ranked third in the WNBA in Defensive Rating, allowing 91.5 points per 100 possessions. This year, that number has jumped to 95.0 and the Storm has dropped to 10th in the WNBA in defense, leading only Phoenix, San Antonio and Charlotte.
Digging deeper is possible through the use of the Four Factors of Basketball Success invented by Sonics statistics consultant Dean Oliver, which break offense defense down into shooting, rebounding, turnovers and free throws.
Bizarrely, the Storm is actually holding teams to a significantly lower shooting percentage than last season - 41.2% as compared to 42.8%. In terms of forcing misses, the Storm is much better than league average (42.3%).
In every other aspect of defense, however, the Storm has dropped off from 2004. The team's defensive rebounding percentage (approximately the percentage of missed shots rebounded by the Storm) has fallen from 70.1% to 68.3% (from above to below the league average of 69.2%), while the number of free throws attempted per game by Storm opponents has gone up from 17.4 to 18.6, right at league average.
The most dramatic change, however, has come in terms of forcing turnovers. The Storm ranked third in the WNBA in percentage of opponent possessions that ended in turnovers in 2004 (19.0%), but is second worst in the WNBA in this category this season (15.6%).
The difference is larceny. While stealing may be wrong, it's critical in basketball. Last season, the Storm was second in the WNBA in steals per game (8.9), but this year, Seattle ranks ahead of only San Antonio in thefts.
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Tully Bevilaqua (who led the WNBA in steals per 40 minutes) and Sheri Sam (who ranked ninth in the WNBA in steals per game and led the Storm). Also, point guard 
Sue Bird, who ranked just outside the WNBA's top ten in 2004 with 1.5 steals per game, has averaged only 0.6 steals since returning from her broken nose and orbital bone.
"My conditioning was definitely not where it was, and that was something that I think really helped me play good defense [at the start of the season]," said Bird. "I wasn't getting tired out there. I was able to stay at a high level for a long time. But now, slowly but surely, I think I'm getting back my conditioning."
As Lennox points out, not getting steals has also hurt the Storm's ability to run the floor in transition.
"As soon as we focus on defense, you'll see us get easy transition layups," she said. "We are a transition team, and you haven't seen us run transition the whole season hardly, because that's not our focus. We did that the first month of the season, and everything was real good. We have got to get our defense back, and that's our main focus."
Donovan, however, has seen things differently from the sidelines.
"We didn't force a lot of turnovers last year either," said Donovan. "Our defense typically is trying to be aggressive, but we don't generally gamble a lot, so it's not going to really be reflected by turnovers or steals. The free throws are a concern. Defending without fouling is one of our mantras, trying not to put them on the free-throw line.
"The field-goal percentage is down, but teams are scoring a lot of points against us. Possession-by-possession, we're not making them take difficult shots. They're more comfortable than they should be playing against us."
All involved agree that while the reasons for the Storm's drop-off defensively may not be easy to pinpoint, solving the problem requires better effort and focus on the defensive end of the floor.
"On offense, you can say, 'You've got to set screens,' 'You've got to do this,' 'You've got to do that,'" said Bird. "I think defense is just a matter of doing it. You've just got to go out and play it and put pressure on the ball and be on the same page. We have all the tools, we've just got to use them."
"I think the reason our record is 8-10 is because we've been lacking on defense," said Lennox. "Our defense has not been where we need it to be or it's not as aggressive. To accomplish what we want to accomplish, that's got to be the focus and it's got to be the key."
