by Ethan Johnson
September 8, 2008
Submitted for your fan voting approval: Diana Taurasi for MVP.
The official recap is available here. The thrust of this article isn't recapping anyway. It's not even Cappie [Pondexter]. It's DT3.
I haven't been grooving to the Mercury this year, but as the WNBA regular season is wrapping up and not many games are available out of market, I opted to check out the HOU/PHX tilt to get a sense of which team wants that last playoff spot more. Sacramento seems to hold the aces right now, but my assumption was that Houston was going to deliver the goods big time, as they are under the dual cloud of possibly losing their franchise, and the post-season retirement of Tina Thompson. You know what they say about never assuming.
This game was - spoiler alert - the Diana Taurasi MVP nomination highlight reel. 33 points. 17-for-18 from the free throw line. Taking the hard fouls. Making the big plays. Blocking, stealing, assisting, whatever. Not jawboning with the refs. Whatever it was, whatever needed to be done to close the deal, Taurasi was doing it. As noted by the TV crew, the league may not cotton to giving the MVP award to a player on a losing team, but ca-mon.
To clarify my position, I had Candace Parker as a shoo-in for Rookie of the Year. There is MVP talk surrounding her, but I think the case can be made that Parker is not single-handedly keeping LA afloat this season. She's exciting and I bought her t-shirt, but I'm not thinking "MVP" for her. She'll have more awards than her fireplace mantel will be able to display anyway, no worries there. But tonight, Taurasi made the case that she is the MVP for the Phoenix Mercury.
This may be utterly irrational on my part, but Kelly Miller deserves some sort of "unsung hero" award of her own. She kinda blends in with the woodwork, only to fire off a critical shot or make a big play (she was 1 rebound away from a double-double Sunday night). The TV crew noted that Houston was starting to forget about her, only to get burned when she was wide open for an easy jumper.
Overall, this was a solid effort by Phoenix. If they get shut out of the final playoff spot, that'll be a shame, but wow, if you're blowing off Phoenix games down the stretch, don't.
Next: Phoenix travels to Detroit on September 9 (ESPN2). Houston returns home to face Connecticut the same night. Catch 'em while you can, looks like. <EM>
(The full WNBA archive may be found here.)
