Seattle, the second-oldest team in the league, pushed their starters for 172 minutes in their Sunday win over Los Angeles. A. Robinson played 10:05, the only Storm reserve to play more than 10 minutes.
Perhaps Seattle’s rotation will bear continued attention, or maybe Brian Agler just thought the starters were playing too well to take off the floor — there’s a pleasing balance all over their boxscore.
Only Los Angeles is older than Seattle. The Sparks had the sense to limit T. Penicheiro and D. Milton-Jones to 46 minutes.
Coaches say they’d like to get 40 minutes of good basketball from their teams, but they’ll settle for 30 if that’s enough to win. If a team seems to play well for 20 minutes in every game, that drives coaches crazy, while less than that is just the mark of a very bad team.
Minnesota played 12 excellent minutes Sunday against Washington, but that will prove to be an anomaly. My feeling is that when the Lynx turned to ice, it would’ve been necessary for a star to carry them for a while, but Minnesota is waiting for Augustus and Wiggins to heal.
Seattle could easily win again by 14 points Wednesday, which I imagine the spread would reflect with Seattle -5.5 or -6, while the total could be around 168.
The oddsmaker thought it more pronounced than that — the line is -9.5. When the spread on a WNBA game is around 10, the action might be equally divided, but I suspect there’s less action. Sure, the favored team could win by a dozen as expected, but it’s common for an uneven performance to cause grinding — then an under is probable with a relatively narrow margin.
Over 152.5 looks like the most reasonable play, but I don’t feel so strongly that I’ll make the play. Thursday is another day.
No pick.
Sunday 2-1
Season 4-2
