DeWanna Bonner is the truth for Mercury, and other observations.
PHOENIX — For all the craziness that this WNBA season has had, and the variety of possible MVP candidates, there’s one award that seems locked up.
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Comeback Player of the Year? Mercury forward DeWanna Bonner.
The Mercury used a huge 31-point night from Bonner — along with 20-point double-doubles from Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi — to beat the Los Angeles Sparks 86-78 Sunday afternoon in a nationally-televised game.
And now, with just a week to go in the season, the Mercury feel like they’ve finally turned things around after going 2-9 from July 8 to August 7 and are starting to find a groove again.
“I thought tonight was one of our better games. We knew that we were going to turn it around,” Mercury coach Sandy Brondello told High Post Hoops. “We had been playing better lately, we just had to play a bit more consistently. I thought we did a really good job of executing the scout.
“This is a team we played just a week ago, and we had an opportunity to win that game, we just missed so many open shots. Tonight, we were making shots and it really was the difference.”
Los Angeles Sparks coach Brian Agler wasn’t pleased with his team’s performance, saying, “I just didn’t think we fought it hard defensively and we were really stagnant on the offensive end. There was no question that they just outplayed us.”
So what else did we learn?