Storm Gets Back to Work
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Even before her team was handed a surprising 68-50 Opening Day defeat by the Los Angeles Sparks at KeyArena on Saturday, Seattle Storm Coach
Anne Donovan knew her team would need to use the time off between the opener and game number two (Friday vs. Houston) as an extension of training camp.
So Monday, after a day off, the Storm went back to work looking to improve in several areas.
"We're continuing to work on our spacing, but we're not going to spend a ton of time on zone offense," said Donovan after practice. "We're going to spend as much in our man-to-man, working on our patterns. We'll focus on defense. We're looking to get better. It's not like the L.A. game changed what we do or how we prepare."
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"Our zone offense is not designed to jack up 3s," said Donovan. "We got impatient and stubborn, as I said after the game. It's our posts' job to post up into the areas of that offense, and it's our guards' jobs to get into the angles where they can see them, and we didn't do that. Neither one of those two things happened. I think we just lost our focus in that game of getting the ball inside. It's easy to have that focus against a man-to-man. L.A. packed it in, and we bit; they gave us the bait, we bit."
After watching film, the Storm went hard Monday, scrimmaging full-court for over an hour, starting with the first unit against reserves and then a combination of both working against the Storm's male practice squad.
"We're a young team that has to be committed to getting better every day, and they were, from the video session all the way through practice," said Donovan.
Donovan said her team's conditioning is "not a huge concern," but the intensity of the scrimmages seemed designed to build stamina as much as fluidity and chemistry in an offense that often seemed out of sync in the opener.
"It's something we have to continue to build on," Donovan said of conditioning. "Obviously, 
Lauren (Jackson) has missed a lot of the preseason, so she's not in tip-top shape yet. We want to run more. L.A.'s transition didn't concern me so much; it was off of our long bombs. We can control the number of 3s we take. But I want to see us run more."
Jackson rolled her right ankle - the same one she had operated on over the off-season - during one of the scrimmages and sat out the remainder of the day, but the injury doesn't appear to be anything serious.
"They told me right after the surgery, you're never going to roll your ankle again, so I'm like, 'Woo-hoo!'" said Jackson. "You don't have to worry about it. And then I stepped on one of the guys' feet and I was down thinking, "It's my ankle, my ankle, my ankle. Compose myself.'
"I've had worse ones. No big deal."
A bigger question for Friday's game may be whether Jackson again plays small forward, as she did against Los Angeles in a big Storm starting lineup including 
Mandisa Stevenson, or moves back to her traditional power forward spot.
"We haven't really settled into that, but I thought Mandisa did a great job," said Donovan. I liked Lauren at the three. We had about 20 minutes of her 34 minutes at the three. I like some of the things she presents there and Mandisa defends fairly well. So you're looking at (Former Comets MVP Sheryl) Swoopes in the next game, and it could be Mandisa playing some minutes there as a longer defender on Swoopes. It could be 
Izzy (Castro Marques). We have a lot of options we can go to."
Castro Marques, who scored eight points in nine minutes of action on Saturday, was impressive again during Monday's practices, showing good touch from mid-range.
"She played cleanup minutes in the second half, so it wasn't L.A. focus," said Donovan. "She's going to help us. I'm convinced she's going to help us, but we need to see more."
Francesca Zara threw crosscourt to rookie 
Tanisha Wright, who redirected the ball with a touch pass to 
Simone Edwards down low for a layup.
