The WNBA playoffs begin today.  The Phoenix Mercury start their run at banner 4 as everyone tries to stop the Las Vegas Aces from threepeating.  Let’s take a look at the Mercury season and what to look forward to in the playoffs.

I had high hopes for the Mercury this season.  They made some big acquisitions in the offseason in Copper, Cloud, and Bec Allen.  They still have Griner, Sophie, and Diana Taurasi, who was poised to make one last run.  They had a new coach that was bringing an NBA style offense to the team and they were ready to go.  Once Griner returned from her injury they went on a nice 8 and 4 run and seemed like they were contenders.  Things leveled off after that and then the Olympic break came.  Bec Allen got hurt (god I hate international sports) and everything fell apart.  They had a nice 5 game home stand that should have catapulted them back to the top half of the standings but instead they dropped 4 of the 5 games and were struggling to stay in the playoff picture.  They ended up backing into the playoffs and finished under .500 with a 19-21 record.  As the 7^th seed, they pulled the 2 seeded Minnesota Lynx in the first round. 

The problem the Mercury had this season is that their offense was too streaky and their defense wasn’t good enough to keep them in games until the offense got going.  This is the difference between them and the Celtics.  They run the same three-point heavy offense but the Celtics defense is so good that when they do go into scoring droughts, and it happened a lot less than with the Merc, they don’t fall really far behind on most nights.  The second half of the season saw Phoenix fall behind by double digits in the first quarter and then have to play catch up the rest of the game.  Most of the time, they either never caught up or it took so much work to catch up that they ran out of gas and were not able to get over the hump or to stay out in front once they got there.    

This became an even bigger issue once Bec Allen was injured.  The Mercury were 11-7 in games in which Allen played.  Not great but a lot better than the 8-14 they were without her.  Her numbers were solid but not great (7.4/3.9/1.1/.9) but Allen is a kind of do everything glue player a team needs.  She could score, pass, rebound on both ends, and make plays defensively to help the team win.  Also, the Mercury have little to no depth, so losing a starter really hurts.  Allen will miss the playoffs after having surgery to fix the back issue she delt with all season.  She is expected to make a full recovery for next season.  That won’t help the Merc against Minny. 

Coinciding with Allen going down was Kahleah Copper’s scoring crashing back down to earth.  In the first half of the season Copper was one of the best scorers in the W and the Mercury were one of the highest scoring teams in the league.  She had eight 30 plus point games before the break, the most in the league.  After the break she had only 1 and only scored over 20 two other times.  It was probably due to a combination of running out of gas and the other teams over playing her in the second half.  The Mercury were just too dependent on her offense and when it was basically cut in half, Phoenix struggled.    

The best thing that happened during this season may be that the Mercury have already signed Sophie Cunningham to a contract for next season.  Why they keep going year to year with her I have no idea.  Sophie is probably best as Phoenix’s 6^th man with the energy she brings off the bench but she does well when filling in as a starter.  Sophie is someone who is going to have to be huge in the playoffs if the Mercury are going to stand a chance in the 1^st round.      

Speaking of the first round, back when I was in my younger days me and my friends played softball.  Some of my friends a lot more than me.  Sometimes we would play in tournaments.  You were usually guaranteed 2 games in a tourney to make it worthwhile for a team to enter the tourney.  There was a saying back then that when a team was going to play in a tournament that they had no chance of winning.  “Two and a Q.”  Meaning the team was going to lose the two games and have a barbeque.  Well, that’s the Phoenix Mercury as they head into the playoffs this season.  They take on rivals Minnesota in the first round.  It’s a three-game series with the first two games being played in Minny.   Two and a Q.  The sad part is this is probably going to be it for Diana Taurasi and she’s not going to get to play at home again.  The Merc went 1-3 against Minny this season.  The one game they won was Brittney Griner’s first game back.  Needless to say, they were a little jacked up for that one.  And still they only won by 1 point.  The three losses were by 24, 13, and 13.  I suppose there is a chance that the Merc get hot from three in one of the games and can pull out the victory however, with the games being in Minny, I wouldn’t bet on it.  Hopefully I am wrong.