MINNEAPOLIS — Her bio may say she’s a rookie head coach, but Stephanie White sure isn’t coaching like one. She’s the first rookie head coach to reach the WNBA Finals.
But White said she learned a valuable lesson Tuesday following the Indiana Fever’s 77-71 loss to the Minnesota Lynx loss in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.
“I learned that it pays to go public with comments about officials,” she said passionately. “Who would have known that? Because this game was a bloodbath. I’ve never seen a player of Tamika Catchings’ caliber get so disrespected in my life. Never. And, to me, that’s a travesty.
“So one up for the veteran [referring to to Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve], and a lesson learned for the rookie.”
Reeve, who’s led the Lynx since 2010 and has two WNBA titles (2011, 2013), knew what she was doing the day before. Standing in the paint of the basket closest to the Lynx bench, Reeve said the following in response to Lindsay Whalen, who had just four points in Game 1, not playing aggressively.
“Don’t get fined. I don’t want to go down this road,” Reeve said, and then she went down that road. “She’s had to adjust to a new style because, like I said, it’s not the same when she goes in [the paint]. Every game, we’ll go, ‘Whalen doesn’t get that call,’ and it’s very discouraging.”
When asked to respond to White’s comments, Reeve said “I can’t comment on officiating,” and then joked in a sarcastic manner, noting that Renee Brown, the Chief of Basketball Operations and Player Relations was in the room, that it was the first time she had nothing to say regarding the officials.
Before the game, when the list of officials was distributed, I turned to those on press road and said how this was a bad crew. And it was. It certainly was not a Finals-worthy crew.
The Fever were a confident and determined bunch Tuesday but they got taken out of their game and lost composure in a 77-71 loss. The Lynx evened the best-of-five series at 1-1.
They had a two-point lead at the half despite getting little from their leader, Tamika Catchings. She played a little more than eight minutes and was scoreless.
Catchings was disappointed in how the team closed Game 2, a loss in Minnesota.
Officiating was an issue all game long because it limited Catchings, who felt “very strongly” that her team missed a real opportunity, and the game was called inconsistently. The way the way the game was trending — the calls, the turnovers, the poor execution — got to the Fever and they lost it in winning time.
“We put ourselves in the position to win this game and at the end of the day, we’re frustrated more so because we didn’t take advantage of the opportunities we had,” said Catchings, who finished with 11 points, nine rebounds, five assists.
“… As a team, we lost our poise, we lost our composure — and we’re too good for that. We’re too good of a team to let things like that detour us in what we’re trying to do and what we’re trying to accomplish.”
The Fever got the lead — both in the series and in Game 2 — by playing their style of basketball of getting everyone involved, limiting their turnovers and minimizing the Lynx’s impact on the glass.
Over the final 5:20 of the game, the Fever made one field goal and scored just four points. They committed turnovers on six consecutive possessions. Ball game.
Shenise Johnson on how the Fever closed the game. “We didn’t take care of the ball the last two minutes of the game. It was a one-possession game and we had about five turnovers in a row.”
Still, the Fever got the stops they needed in the final minutes to have a chance. They trimmed the deficit from five, to three and then they committed a shot-clock violation with 56.5 seconds left. Anna Cruz scored at the other end as the Lynx held on for a six-point victory, the same point total separating the two teams in Game 1.
After three turnovers in the first half, they gave it away 14 times in the second half. Indiana’s three primary ball handlers — Catchings (6), Briann January (5), and Shavonte Zellous (4) — were responsible for 15 of the team’s 17 turnovers. Crazy-high numbers.
[Special Edition Fever Podcast featuring January, Catchings, Moore, White, and Kloppenburg]
What was the biggest contributing factor to that, I asked a very upset coach White.
“Besides the officiating? We didn’t handle the pressure,” she said. “When we were getting mauled, we got passive and we would try to get rid of it instead of getting around them.”
For example, Johnson got drilled on a blindside screen and although she said she was “OK” in the locker room afterwards, but she obviously was a bit shaken up. So much so that after it happened, she slammed her fist on the scorer’s table — and received a technical foul.
“She got nailed by a screen and I don’t know what her condition right now besides doubled-over,” White continued. “I really don’t. Was it a legal screen? Probably. But Tamika Catchings’ was a legal screen, too.”
Where the Fever are usually under control of the situation and together, they lost their poise and composure, as Catchings noted. Frustration mounted and the Fever made more mistakes, like Marissa Coleman’s technical. She earned that one, stomping in the face of official Lamont Simpson multiple times.
The Target Center was announced as a sellout, with 12,134 fans in attendance.
“We got out of playing Fever basketball,” Coleman said. “I think we all wanted it so bad so we all were trying to make the home-run play instead of playing what got us this far.”
Coaches are known to speak out in defense of their players or a situation. Remember Pacers coach Frank Vogel’s flopping comment ahead of his team facing the Miami Heat? Or Phil Jackson, one of the greatest at using it as a tool?
As White said, it’s a veteran move that is often pulled — and worth a fine.
Beyond officiating, the Fever have to get back to taking care of the little things. They allowed Sylvia Fowles, the birthday girl, to score far too easily in the paint. She had a game-high 21 points on 10-of-13 field goals. The Lynx had 15 offensive boards leading to 21 second-chance points. (They kept the Lynx to 12 points in Game 1.) And they have to keep their cool.
“Even with all the craziness that went on during this game, we lost by six,” said Coleman. “We had all of those turnovers and we gave up a lot of (offensive) boards and that’s all things we can control. That’s the good thing.”
The other good news: The series now heads to Indianapolis for Games 3 and 4 on Friday and Sunday, respectively.
“We are going to bottle up every sense of frustration, every sense of anger, every sense of knowing what we didn’t do and what we didn’t accomplish tonight, put that in a bottle and let it explode when we get back home,” said Catchings.
Notes:
- Shenise Johnson and Marissa Coleman for Indiana both received technical fouls.
- Former Fever shooting guard and Indianapolis native Katie Douglas was in NBA TV’s Atlanta studios Tuesday night talking about the Finals and NBA preseason games going on with Kristen Ledlow and Dennis Scott. She plans to be at Game 3 on Friday.
- Timberwolves point guard Ricky Rubio sat courtside by the Lynx bench.
- The Target Center announced the game as a sellout with 12,134 fans in attendance.
- Caleb, an Indianapolis-based cameraman traveled to Minneapolis to work the baseline camera for the ESPN2 telecast. He works most Pacers games at Bankers Life Fieldhouse for FOX Sports Indiana.