Daggers don’t really belong to any spectrum. They matter much more to their outcome – the finality, the punctuation, the loss of hope – than their means, so it’s kind of silly to compare them to each other. Still, there was something particularly dangerous about the last shot Alyssa Thomas took in Game 1 of the Sun-Lynx semifinals on Sunday. It was the hottest dagger you would ever see.
Certainly, the Aces-Liberty series could offer fans more in the way of on-court star power and even off-court star power (the first game of that series featured Spike Lee). yelling at kelsey plum Courtside). But for those who are into action, just interested in pure hoops, this is the series for them. The expected drama at Sun-Lynx happens between the lines.
In their regular season series, The styles of Minnesota and Connecticut tended to have the best battles. (The Suns won two of three close games.) Both teams play active, switch-willing defense. Anyone trying to plan the series in advance probably and correctly imagined that it would be exhausting to watch. The Lynx spent parts of the game shuffling through a rare offensive slump. Kayla McBride, the league’s most consistent three-point shooter this year, went just 1 of 5 from outside. Call it an off night, not something the Lynx will worry too much about the rest of the series, or give some credit to the Suns defense, which remained disciplined enough to deny Minnesota open looks. Whose offense has flowed seamlessly throughout the season.
The combination culminated in a stomach-churning fourth quarter, with each team trading sloppy shots until the final minutes, when no one was really scoring. Bridget Carlton hit a transition layup to bring Minnesota within one point of Connecticut, 69–68, with 3:50 to play, it would take three more minutes until the score changed. Thomas made a layup through Alana Smith; An exceptionally pleasant lynx ato The game ended with Nafeesa Collier galloping into the wide-open lane, bringing the game back to one point. But Thomas knew this didn’t mean a series defined by elegance. On the next possession, after the Lynx were completely relaxed, she did the terrible, amazing thing she can do when given a little space at the top of the free-throw line.
It’s hard to explain what I find so devastating about Thomas’s dagger – maybe it’ll become clearer later. Often when people say that a game “can only end like this,” they do so in a figurative or poetic sense. I guess this saying applies in a figurative sense, but in the case of Thomas, who (say it with me) plays with torn labrums in both shoulders, the phrase is also literal. The world’s ugliest one-handed push midrange shot is basically the only type she can physically take. For all its aesthetic shortcomings, there isn’t a shot any Suns fan feels better about in clutch time.
Her performance wasn’t as spectacular as Marina Mabrey’s 20-point night, but Thomas has always been one of those players whose box-score talent is only realized after the fact. He finished the game with 17 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists, just short of a triple-double. Discussion of end-of-season awards may incorrectly suggest that the 32-year-old had a very poor season last year, when she finished second in MVP voting. (This year, with her fellow power forwards having career seasons and a shiny new phenomenon in Indianapolis, she may be denied some first-team All-WNBA ballots.) But the story of Alyssa Thomas never changes. She doesn’t worry about how or how much.