Halfway Through, Storm Has Room For Improvement
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Storm All-Star Photo GalleryThe extremes of the first half of the Seattle Storm’s 2005 season were reflected in the Storm’s final two games before the All-Star break. Having lost four in a row on the road, the Storm returned home the Sunday before last to play the first-place Sacramento Monarchs. The Storm raced out to a 20-point lead in the first half, then outplayed the Monarchs down the stretch after Sacramento got back in the game. Three nights later, the Storm was in Phoenix to play the last-place Mercury. Phoenix missed 13 shots in a row at one point, but caught fire in the second half to hand the Storm a 73-61 defeat.
As is the case with the Storm’s first half, those two games weren’t really as extreme as they seemed. Given home-court advantage and the Monarchs brutal travel schedule, a Storm victory wasn’t unpredictable. In Phoenix, the Storm ran into a Mercury team waiting to break out offensively and one that, with Kamila Vodichkova and Maria Stepanova in the starting lineup, is much more talented than the Phoenix squad that started the season.
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A slow start shouldn’t have been a surprise, given the fact that the Storm lost three key players (and two starters) from last year’s WNBA Champions and played 10 of 17 games before the All-Star break on the road. During the preseason, Coach 
Anne Donovan attempted to defuse expectations for her squad, but, coming off the magical 2004 playoff run, that process was difficult.
By some measures, the gap between the 2004 Storm and the 2005 incarnation is not particularly large. If you project the Storm’s 2004 home and road winning percentages over the 2005 schedule, the 2004 Storm would have been expected to go 9-8 in the first half, but a mere game better than what the 2005 team has done.
Looked at a different way, the Storm still has work to do. While the Storm’s 20-14 record was second in the WNBA last season, Seattle lapped the field in point differential (+5.1), potentially a better indicator of the team’s ability. The Storm has been outscored by one point over the course of this season, putting the team seventh out of 13 teams. Related to that, the Storm only suffered one defeat by double-digits a year ago, but has already lost by that many points five times this season.
Clearly, the Storm has room to improve on defense, as Donovan has recently emphasized. On a per-possession basis, the Storm’s Defensive Rating of 94.1 ranks just 10th in the WNBA, down from third last season. From a personnel standpoint, it’s difficult to determine why the Storm has struggled at this end of the court. Seattle is near the bottom of the league in forcing turnovers.
The biggest question facing the Storm entering 2005 was one of leadership, and Donovan has been pleased with how her young stars 
Sue Bird and 
Lauren Jackson have stepped into these roles despite a broken nose that separated Bird from the team for three games and forced her to sit out a fourth.
"I thought our leadership was great between Sue and Lauren really setting the way and doing some great things for us," says Donovan. "Sue stepping away for four games, it put more pressure on Lauren to step up, which she did. It put more pressure on 
Betty (Lennox) to step up and change her game, which she tried to do. So we've fluctuated with that leadership. But I look in the locker room, when we had our meeting this morning, these players are hungry and they know what it takes."
Small forward was another major question entering the season, but, as expected, 
Iziane Castro Marques has made the job her own after arriving late to training camp. Castro Marques has been consistently solid at the defensive end of the court, giving the Storm the perimeter defense needed from the position, but her offense has been up and down. Castro Marques was brilliant against Houston and Minnesota at home and clutch in the win over Connecticut, but overall is shooting 35.2% from the field and 28.6% from 3-point range, numbers that could stand to improve.
Perimeter marksmanship has emerged as a surprising shortcoming for the Storm thus far. Seattle is last in the WNBA in 3-point percentage (30.2%) after shooting 38.0% from beyond the arc last season. The difference is largely because Jackson, third in the WNBA in 3-point percentage a year ago (45.2%) has slumped to 26.3% this year. If Jackson were shooting as well as last season, the Storm’s percentage as a team would jump to a respectable 35.7%. Jackson has shown signs of shaking out of her slump, hitting a season-high three triples against Sacramento.
Despite searching for her shot, Jackson has been as valuable as any player in the WNBA during the first half of the season by focusing more attention on the glass. Jackson is the only player in the league averaging a double-double and tops the WNBA in the league's Efficiency Rating.
"Lauren, even though offensively she hasn't been as efficient, she's rebounded like I've never seen her rebound," says Donovan. "Consistently. Every night. Defensively, she's been a different player this year."
Bench scoring was an issue for the Storm early in the season, but has become something of a strength of late. That’s largely because of the arrival of 
Suzy Batkovic. The Australian center ranks fifth in the league in reserve scoring at 8.2 points per game, and her addition has given the Storm one of the league’s most formidable post rotations. In addition, rookies 
Tanisha Wright and 
Francesca Zara improved quickly when forced to share the point guard position in Bird’s absence and have become more productive off the bench.
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"(I've been impressed by) Sue's strength and determination to come back through, not just a broken nose but a broken face, a much more difficult situation than it was last year, knowing she's playing not just a couple of games but the duration of the season with a mask," says Donovan. "Her grittiness and her preparation for Fran and T, she's really been impressive in their growth.
"Batkovic has certaintly impressed me, 
Janell (Burse). I can go right down the team. There's not anybody that really has not impressed me. People will say Betty has not had a great first half of the year statistically, but her growth as a team player on this team has been tremendous."
Even if the first half of the season hasn’t gone quite as planned, opportunity still sits in front of the Storm over the final 17 games. Only 3.5 games separate the Storm and first-place Sacramento, and while the Monarchs also have a favorable home schedule the remainder of the way, second-place Houston and third-place Los Angeles (10 road games apiece) will both be traveling while the Storm is in the friendly confines of KeyArena. Halfway through chronologically, the vast majority of the 2005 Storm story remains to be written.
"We've been down this road," says Donovan. "We had a bad stretch last year after the Olympic Break, and we overcame it. This year, the beauty of it is we still have a whole half of our season in front of us, with no more breaks, so it's time to get down and dirty here at home for the bulk of that schedule in July and really focus on getting it done.
"We've played some great basketball in the first half of the season. We may be 8-9, which is below .500, but there's been some good basketball played in those eight wins. That's what we're focused on, getting back to that as a consistent thing over the second half of the season."
