The greatest Cinderella story in WNBA history came to an end shortly thereafter, just short of a championship. The Sting had squeaked by—the Sparks, their finals opponent, clinched their berth with a 93-62 win over the Monarchs, with league MVP Lisa Leslie putting up 35 points, 16 rebounds and seven blocked shots.
This time, there would be no miracle. After a 75-66 Los Angeles win in Charlotte to kick off the best-of-three, the season ended with the anticlimax of an 82-54 loss at the Forum.
“It just really wasn’t good,” Reeve said. “It was the best of three still at that time in the final, so, we lost Game 1 at home and then lost Game 2 and had confetti dropped on our heads. So.”
Unfortunately, what should have been the beginning of something ended soon thereafter, betrayed by the transient and fleeting nature of ownership in Charlotte. Just before the 2002 WNBA season began, George Shinn moved the Hornets to New Orleans, and cut ties with the Sting, relegating them to league ownership.
“They took the franchise and left,” Reeve said. “You can’t make this stuff up. There were moving trucks at the training facility and taking the stuff and leaving. It was kind of hard to watch, kind of hard to go through. I started to wonder: is this really where I want to be? The WNBA, is this the kind of stuff that it’s going to be like? The league hadn’t made any comments about it and so we all kind of read the writing on the wall going, this doesn’t look good.”
The Sting finished 18-14 in 2002, lost to Chamique Holdsclaw’s Washington Mystics in the playoffs, and then the team began dispersing to the corners of the basketball world, coming to define much of what’s happened in women’s basketball ever since.