Was scanning the game last night. Quick observations:
Seattle's super team-to-be showed too much individual play; it will take more time to gel.....the disadvantage of having such a short training camp and preseason. A bit disappointed because Lloyd and Diggins-Smith were teammates in college.
On the other hand, there are only four holdovers for the Lynx playing last night - the absent Dorka will make it five. But the team had better movement and passing - thanks largely to Napheesa. I miss watching Dorka delivering passes from anywhere on the court, especially from the high post. The Lynx may turn out better than it first appears, despite missing Shepard for the whole year. Alana Smith did creditable job but doesn't playmake with her passes as well as Dorka.
The Fever's coach has a lot of work to do to make that collection of players function the way a good team should. Guards dominating play, not involving the front court players as much.....missing (or ignoring) to make passes when teammates are open and forcing some to Boston when she can easily be surrounded by the defense (3 on her quickly developed in a few instances last night). With her high usage, CC needs to decide to forget habits formed from being the dominant scorer at Iowa to learn how and when to involve her teammates early on as players move and the ball along with it. As it looked last night, Boston and Katie Lou were so underutilized, even when the latter was so wide open - the guards tended to ignore the optimal time to give them the ball because they are set on scoring and then they give up the ball when running into trouble. Or, the frontcourters did not move enough to get open. That happened too often.
The Sun looked good, though - the holdovers are showing the way but even some of the newcomers are in-step into the team ethos....of course, last night's starters are all holdovers. Little Mo is just returning from injury, so seeing short action in her first stint......but Banham looked fine.....even Olivia.
I don't know why all the gloom and doom about Stewie, with such impatience about her form. Let's see: Stewie, Vandersloot and Ionescu all shot 33% from the field last night. Stewie was the top rebounder with Jones for the Liberty. Of course, the energy level she played with was far below her usual high standard. Those three are veterans, so they should bounce back sooner than later, unless some kind of physical or mental issue is hampering Stewie.
Stewie, Jonquel and Courtney have played together a few years overseas, including Russia. There is no reason the three shouldn't be playing well together.....and they have had last year playing with Sabrina and Betnijah, so I can't explain a few moments of apparent disconnect when one may expect them to be a well-oiled machine. OTOH, that starting backcourt will likely have the same problems on defense against elite guards that they did against Las Vegas last year, so their offense had better function like the machine they should be.
Aaliyah is going to be fine.