u/aratcalledrattus

>Breanna Stewart had enough. During a recent workout with Liberty director of player development Andrew Wade, she told him as much.

>“F–ing start fining me every time it’s short,” Stewart said. “I’m over it at this point.”

>...

>Stewart worked on her 3-point shot last season with assistant coach Olaf Lange, who stressed the importance of her lift. Wade has picked up where Lange left off. The emphasis has more or less remained the same.

>“[It’s about] making sure my legs are under me, especially when I’m tired, or later in the game,” Stewart said. “I have to have the power underneath or it’s just not gonna go the way I want it. It’s gonna be short.”

>...

>Stewart said when she’s feeling fatigue, it’s even more important to drive through her toes. Her long arms — she has a 7-foot-1 wingspan — make the shooting motion even more “annoying,” she said, because it would be easier to just fling or push the ball toward the basket. Instead, she has to dip and ensure her shot is one fluid motion.

>Stewart believes if she focuses on her mechanics, her shot will fall eventually.

>“I’m not even thinking I’m in the slump,” she said. “I’m just sticking [with it]. Like, my percentage isn’t where I want it, yeah.”

This article is both poignant and hilarious.

New Liberty YouTube series with the legends revisiting iconic moments. Great content.

Celebrating 30 seasons since the historic tip-off of the WNBA, the league has put up the full video on YouTube of the first-ever game - between the Liberty and the Sparks on June 21, 1997. 

Or you can watch just the highlights, with some very 90s pregame footage from what was then Great Western Forum (now the Kia Forum)

The W has also been posting some nice behind-the-scenes clips and pictures from the game on their socials this weekend. Here’s Rebecca Lobo and Jamila Wideman. T-Spoon getting in the zone. And some game pics.

The Sparks’ Penny Toler famously scored the very first bucket of the game. Comedian and women’s sports podcaster Erin Foley had an excellent interview with her last year about that game and the beginning of the league in general, it’s really funny and worth your time, she’s a great storyteller. 

The game itself was pretty sloppy, with the two teams coming together just a few weeks beforehand.

Here is how the New York Times described it in the paper the next day:

>The Women's National Basketball Association had "next," rented the Forum today for two hours and pretty much copied the men -- scoring was down.

>Otherwise, there was the prerequisite drama: one marquee player trying a dunk (and getting all rim) and the other marquee player finally getting her chance to impress Red Auerbach. The W.N.B.A., after one game, is obviously a work in progress. The shooting was atrocious and the turnovers arrived nearly two a minute, but someone paid to see the game (attendance was 14,284) and the league is no longer just an ad campaign.

>So, the first stat sheet is in. The Liberty is the W.N.B.A.'s first winner after today's 67-57 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks. The players spent too much time staring into the NBC cameras, which may explain why both teams shot a combined 47 for 128 from the field.

The two teams will face off again tomorrow to mark the anniversary at 8 pm Eastern, both in their court-origins jerseys - less baggy, less shiny versions of the original uniforms.

Lobo will, of course, be on the call for ESPN. In the pre-game show starting at 7 pm, they'll air a conversation between Lobo, Lisa Leslie and Hannah Storm, who was the play-by-play commentator for the first game. They're also promising that unspecified "WNBA legends" will join the broadcast throughout the game.

No paywall this time.

Topics/events covered: Media day; new assistant coaches; Stewie is awesome; Astier is awesome and enjoys "taking a matcha"; oh no we keep losing; new coaches get mad; hooray we won.

Really interesting article - includes audio of each player saying their full name.

>Andscape spoke with Ogwumike; fellow WNBA players Okikiola “Kiki” Iriafen, Tèmítọ́pẹ́ “Tèmí” Fágbénlé and Eziyoda “Ezi” Magbegor; and free agent Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda about their relationships with their names and how they’ve navigated presenting themselves over the course of their lives.

A nice profile of Roneeka Hodges and her rise through the W's coaching ranks as a former player. I know she was beloved by players in New York and she was really impressive as the Phantom coach in Unrivaled this year.

The whole backstory of just learning the ropes as a coach is interesting - glad there's more of a pipeline now for former players in the W, but of course few head coaching jobs have been going to those women lately.

>A decade ago she was still playing professionally overseas after a 12-year career in the WNBA. Hodges, a swingwoman and role player by craft, often worked out in between pro seasons at LSU, the school where she spent three of her four collegiate years playing before finishing her career out at Florida State.

>Hodges played pick-up games with current Las Vegas Aces president Nikki Fargas, who was LSU’s head coach at the time. While Hodges was in the waning half of her playing career, Fargas asked Hodges multiple times if she wanted to learn about coaching. While she initially said no, the wheels began turning once she jetted off to Spain to play for a team in Zaragoza, a city located in the Northeast region of the country.

>Hodges was at a point in her career when she was exhausted by living out of a suitcase and couldn’t bear to miss more birthdays of family and friends. Amid the grind, she found herself most fulfilled by mentoring one of her teammates who was a first-year pro. Hodges took to making sure this young player with high potential knew what it meant to be a professional.

>The coaching bug had officially been planted. But what was next?

>“I couldn’t necessarily get a job as soon as I finished even with my body of work. There was no job waiting for me,” Hodges told NBC Sports.

>...

>To get her feet wet, Hodges began volunteering at a high school in New Orleans. She was living in Baton Rouge at the time and she drove an hour each way to volunteer. While she was only supposed to be going twice a week, she ended up in New Orleans volunteering every day of the week.

>She questioned why she was putting so much time and effort into something that gave her at most a $1,400 stipend. But that was when the light bulb really went on, and after she told Fargas “no” so many times, this time it was a “yes.”

>Fargas didn’t have the money to pay her at the time, but the idea was that Hodges would be in every room she could. She began ripping clips in the video room and sat in on all of Fargas’ coaches meetings. “She allowed me to see and feel what my dream really was and if I really wanted that,” Hodges said about Fargas.

>...

>And then Hodges got the opportunity to return to the place she calls home: the WNBA. She still remembers exactly how it all went down and how she ended up on Brondello’s Liberty staff. Hodges had heard that Brondello just took the head coaching job in New York and since Hodges was coaching just 250 miles from Brooklyn, she thought she’d shoot her shot.

>Brondello had coached Hodges back in 2010 on the San Antonio Silver Stars and Hodges still had her number. She sent her a text and moments later Brondello responded, setting up a time for a phone interview. Weeks following the phone call, Hodges was hired and she didn’t have to move all that far, just a four and a half hour drive.

A nice article on Juškaitė, who I think has been one of the more underrated new imports this season. Not an all-star, but a really solid starter for the Tempo.