Seattle: you have no excuse not to be watching the Storm

Photo courtesy of Getty Images-2020 NBAE

The Storm are the most successful professional sports franchise in Seattle history. Their three championships in 20 years of existence earn that title easily.

This year’s team has taken that torch and swiftly burned down the WNBA bubble, leaving only a trail of ashes in the lunch line. The one constant across the three championships and the 2020 roster is Sue Bird, an icon in every sense of the word and one of the greatest point guards to ever play the sport. Bird is the most accomplished basketball player in Seattle history, but her teammate and 2018 MVP Breanna Stewart is on pace to snatch that crown from atop Bird’s signature ponytail.

Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp were great, but they were never the best player in the league like Stewart. They also failed to win a championship, while Stewie already has one and Bird has a trio of her own. Bird is certainly on the short list for best player in WNBA history, but Stewart is on the short list for best players in the league right now, and with her dominance on both ends of the court, the best in Seattle superlative could evolve into best player the women’s game has ever seen.

Bird and Stewart are supplemented by Jewell Loyd – one of the game’s most dynamic, albeit streaky scorers – and the smothering duo of Natasha Howard and Alysha Clark. Howard brought home the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2018. Clark could very well win it this year.  

After demolishing Chicago in their last game, the Storm hold the top spot in the league with a 13-3 record. The 13 wins include a straight up oppressive stretch from August 1-18 when the green and gold rattled off nine straight W’s, taking each game by an average of 18.1 points. Seattle played five of those games without an injured Bird, allowing third-year point guard Jordin Canada to take the offense for a joyride and preview what Storm basketball will look like in a post-Bird universe. The 2020 Storm have emphatically proven that they’re built to win now, but with Canada, the 26-year-old duo of Stewart and Loyd, plus rookie Ezi Magbegor, they may have enough juice to be contenders years from now as well.

Canada started 29 games in 2019 while Bird sat out with injury, and finished the year with 5.2 assists per game, good for fifth in the whole damn league. When she’s pressed into starting duties, Canada’s productivity not only mirrors Bird’s, but also provides even more maturation reps to prepare for taking Bird’s spot one day. When she slides back to the bench when Bird returns, she'll inhabiting the same backup role she did when the Storm won the 2018 championship. Canada is one of the most overqualified reserves in the league, leading a bench mob that combines effectiveness, fun, and an easy to root for spirit.


Do you like wonderful, redemptive human-interest stories? Let me introduce you to Sami Whitcomb. Following an exceptional college career at the University of Washington, Whitcomb went undrafted in 2010 before inking a training camp deal with Chicago. Her tenure with the Sky lasted all of two preseason games before the two sides parted ways, leaving Whitcomb at a crossroads. “Do I take my game overseas and try things out in Switzerland?” Whitcomb pondered, “Or do I stick around in Seattle and try to land a job in basketball?” 

She ultimately opted for the latter, remaining at UW to be a video coordinator for the Huskies. Even though she led the team in points, rebounds, and assists during her senior year, Whitcomb was, puzzlingly, undesirable for every WNBA team. Her stint in the video room lasted just one season as the itch to keep playing settled in. She found a home in Germany for the 2011-2012 season and then bounced to a different German team, the Wolfenbüttel Wildcats, for 2012-13. The Wildcats even qualified for the finals, but they literally ran out of money and could not finish out the season.

At this point, a move back home could have meant a 9-5 job or something outside the comforting world of basketball, while staying abroad could have spelled even more uncertainty. If not for the Rockingham Flames, an Australian squad who took a chance on her in 2013, the ballad of Sami Whitcomb could have ended before its grand chorus.

Either through sheer determination to avoid regular life in America, the lack of intel on her in Australia, taking the pill from Limitless, or all three, Whitcomb revved up her career and spun donuts around everyone else. Her accolades from eight seasons in the Aussie leagues, shifting between the State Basketball League (SBL) and Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) to play year-round, are the kind of stuff they write Hallmark movies about.

·         Seven All-Star teams

·         Three MVP’s

·         Three scoring titles

·         Two championships

·         Two Finals MVP’s

·         One All-Defense team

·         One top shooter award

In short, Whitcomb and her quick draw proved that she could be the best player in an entire country for multiple seasons at a time. On the Storm, she’s the fourth guard. Find me another team who’s fourth guard can do stuff like this.

Do you like obscenely talented, instantly playable rookies still figuring out how to properly harness their powers? Have yourself a little Ezi Magbegor. The 6’4” Australian went to Seattle with the 12th pick of the 2019 draft and has already made an impact on the Storm’s front line. Magbegor is second among all qualified rookies in field goal percentage and averages 19.9 points and 7.2 rebounds per 40 minutes. Playing behind Stewart and Howard has limited the 21-year-old to just over 13 minutes per game, but it’s certainly not a lack of talent holding her back. 

Photo courtesy of Getty Images-2020 NBAE


Fellow Aussie and Storm legend Lauren Jackson has already supplied her stamp of approval. Jackson both served as Magbegor’s assistant GM in Australia and conducted one-on-one workouts, something they were reportedly hoping to do more consistently but “only ended up getting in one before the stadiums closed down,” according to Women’s Hoops World.

Still, the Jackson influence has paid dividends, with the student learning valuable lessons from her famed teacher. “Lauren would tell me that if you’re weak on the court or come across as being weak (in the WNBA), they’re professionals and they’re going to take advantage,” Magbegor said in the same Women’s Hoops World interview. “She’s always been supportive, sending me messages. Hearing that she sees a lot of potential in me…that’s pretty incredible to hear from Lauren Jackson.”

While this development is sure to make Storm fans giddy, the tasty inverse of that is the rest of the league quaking in fear as they realize that Magbegor is training with Lauren Jackson while Canada learns from de facto player-coach Sue Bird. The next generation is arriving, and unlike the trends in Seattle at-large, the previous one is doing its best to ensure the kids can make the city a home.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images-2020 NBAE

The easiest way to illustrate how dominant the Storm has been this year is through their offensive and defensive ratings, or the amount of points they score and allow per 100 possessions. Seattle’s offense puts up 106.9 points per 100 possessions while the defense limits opponents to just 91.0. Both of those are the best in the league, meaning Seattle also has the best net rating, or difference between offensive and defensive ratings. At 15.8, the Storm’s net rating is over six points better than Vegas', their closest competitor. 

Quite simply, the Storm has the WNBA’s best offense and its best defense. Since 1997, when offensive and defensive ratings started being tracked, only six WNBA teams have led the league in both categories over a full season: the dynastic Houston Comets from 1998-2000, the 2014 Phoenix Mercury, and the Minnesota Lynx in 2016 and ‘17, all of whom went to the Finals. No NBA team since 1997 has ever finished a regular season with the league’s best offensive and defensive ratings. For the haters, there’s something the Storm can do that men can’t.

Stewart and Howard root the impenetrable defense in the post. Clark’s sprawling arms and extensive impact are the branches. Interim head coach Gary Kloppenburg is the mastermind planting the tree.*

*Kloppenburg is serving as head coach while Dan Hughes, who opted out of the season, recovers from a 2019 surgery that removed a cancerous tumor from his digestive tract.

The son of Bob Kloppenburg, the assistant coach who oversaw the Sonics’ defense in the early-to-mid 1990s, Gary has implemented a hybrid version of his father’s patented SOS defense. The basic rules of the SOS defense are predicated on ball pressure, forcing opponents to the sidelines, and weakside rotations. With a system designed to create chaos and disruption, the Storm’s defense forces turnovers at a dizzying rate and results easy buckets in transition.

Unsurprisingly, the swarming, SOS manifesto leads to the third-highest percentage of fast break points in the league. When it’s Stewart leading the break, scrambling defenses can only stand and watch.

The Storm’s straitjacket defense also allows the fewest points in the paint and holds opposing offenses to a league-low 39.3% field goal percentage while forcing 17.0 turnovers a game, second only to Los Angeles. So what doesn’t this team do well?

In jarring contrast to their top-of-the-table status in most team stats, the Storm ranks dead last in defensive rebounding percentage. As a unit, the Storm grabs only 67.7% of available defensive rebounds, a few ticks below the league average of 70.8 and a far cry from the league-leading Aces at 75.1. Stewart paces the team with 7.2 defensive boards per game, but Howard (5.1) is the only one of her teammates averaging more than five. At 6’2”, backup forward Morgan Tuck could theoretically help out when she returns from knee troubles, but despite her size, the UConn grad has never been a prolific rebounder.

Seattle’s ability to generate turnovers certainly eases some of the rebounding burden, but when considering that Las Vegas and Los Angeles, two of the teams Seattle could very well face in the playoffs, are among the least turnover prone in the entire league, the concern slightly grows. Every team gunning for the title has a towering figure in the post that can control the glass. Whether its A’ja Wilson for Vegas, Candace Parker and Nneka Ogwumike in LA, or Brittney Griner with the Mercury, the Storm will undoubtedly be tested in the rebounding department during their pursuit for a fourth championship.

Crystal Langhorne presents one possible solution, as the 13-year-vet had no problem collecting rebounds when she received regular playing time. This season, though, Langhorne has been increasingly marginalized. After four years as an ironclad starter, she moved to the bench when Seattle acquired Natasha Howard in 2018. This move paid off with a championship, but left Langhorne in limbo. The lefty post presence went from playing 28 minutes a night before Howard came along to just 13.9 during the championship season. She’s down to 7.9 this year, banished below Mercedes Russell on the depth chart.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images-2020 NBAE

Langhorne has always been an efficient scorer, even setting a team record with 21 consecutive made field goals in ’17 and challenging the WNBA’s single-season record for field goal percentage. With experience behind her and the stats to match it, Langhorne’s absence is one of the more curious aspects of Seattle’s otherwise sublime season. 

It’s possible that Kloppenburg sees Langhorne as a poor fit for his defensive system, wants to keep a shorter rotation, or merely prefers Russell, who is four inches taller and nine years younger than Langhorne. Of course, with the way things are going, it might just be that Kloppenburg doesn’t want to mess with the juju. But as the games become more meaningful and the pressure on young players like Magbegor and Russell mounts – particularly if the rebounding issues persist – Langhorne could be a potential resolution.

No matter how this season plays out for the Storm, the opportunity to watch their greatness is exactly what sports fans wait their whole life for. Almost all of their games are broadcasted by the ESPN or CBS families of networks. Local cable subscribers can even tune in on JoeTV, which provides the added fun of learning what JoeTV is. The only downside to watching their games is that often times the fourth quarter becomes a formality, as the Storm lead the league in “Wait, they’re up by HOW much? When did that happen?”

Some of y’all are supporting Seattle’s hockey team that barely even exists more than its basketball team that is obliterating everything in sight. The entry point to women’s sports does not have to be as daunting or complicated or, for the toxically masculine, embarrassing as you think. The same rituals like talking and tweeting about the games, inviting friends over to watch, or arguing with fans of rival teams, can be applied to the WNBA just the same as they are for the men’s sports you obsess over. Quite easily, actually! Wednesday night’s game on CBS Sports Network is a beautiful place to start.

If you’re the type of person who is fully crazed, yelling at the television and agonizing over every coaching decision, you already have sports fandom programmed into your settings. If you have these settings set to basketball, and you won’t accept the WNBA, then brother, ask yourself what the problem is.

They’re not good enough? The Storm are one of the best basketball teams we’ve seen in years, putting up historic numbers and displaying unbothered excellence during a pandemic.

The games aren’t on TV? The circumstances of this strange season have actually allowed their games to be more accessible than ever before.

There’s nothing else left aside from the same gendered excuses that have held the WNBA back for decades. With America’s increased attention on social justice and equality, supporting the WNBA is a fun and tangible way to back up your hollow social media statements. And if you’ll go to war for the day’s societal issues but turn a blind eye to the women at the forefront of the movement, we don’t need you anyway. 

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