San Antonio Stars (+10, -110)
Seattle Storm (-10, -110)
Total: 162
I mentioned it briefly before but the Stars gave an admirable effort against the Sparks last time out. Moriah Jefferson came off the bench (something that I can’t imagine she will be doing much longer) to score a game-high 24 points, while Isabelle Harrison poured in a career-high 22 in the loss. Just seven losses away from tying the worst start to a WNBA season in history, the Stars are desperate to get a win. Scoring a league worst 73.7 points per game, San Antonio faces struggles every night to get quality shots. Second to last in both effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage, the Stars also have the second lowest assist-to-turnover ratio. One bright spot for this team is that in a league that is relying on the three ball more than ever, San Antonio allows the fewest percentage of points from deep in the entire league.
Seattle, a team that started the season 4-0, has sputtered lately, dropping three straight games and four of the last five. The last loss came at the hands of the Atlanta Dream, a 91-86 final that saw Damiris Dantas for Atlanta completely dominate, scoring 22 points off of the bench. The game also revealed what Seattle’s biggest achilles heel might be: their bench. Contributing just 10 points, the bench of the Storm was a collective -29 for the night, with the starters all playing at least 34 minutes. Quietly, Seattle has also struggled on defense as they are now ranked the third worse in terms of defensive rating while they also have turned the ball over at the third highest rate in the league, another stat that has seemingly gone unnoticed.
The Storm are a team I believed could make a push for the title before the season started. While I’m not ready to jump off that belief quite yet, there are clearly some things that need to get addressed. A visit from the Stars is a good place to start as I think Seattle wins. I wish the spread was a little smaller, but I’ll still take the Storm and the over.