Breanna Stewart leads Seattle to 2nd WNBA title in 3 years
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — Breanna Stewart scored 26 points, and the Seattle Storm won their second WNBA championship in three season, sweeping the Las Vegas Aces with a 92-59 rout Tuesday night.
It’s
the fourth title in franchise history for the Storm, who also won in
2004, 2010 and 2018. Seattle had pretty much the same core group that
won the 2018 championship back for this year, led by Stewart, Sue Bird
and Jewell Loyd. The Storm joined Minnesota and Houston as the only
franchises to win four championships.
Seattle has now won a record 11 games in a row in the WNBA Finals, dating to the team’s first championship in 2004. Bird has been a part of all of them. The veteran guard, who turns 40 next week, was once again a catalyst for the Storm. She finished with five points and seven assists. She finished the finals averaging 11 assists in the three games.
The 26-year-old Stewart
set a WNBA record by scoring more than 20 points for the sixth straight
finals game. She earned WNBA Finals MVP honors for the second time in
her young career, becoming the fifth player to win multiple finals MVPs.
Her play all season showed she had fully recovered from a torn Achilles’ tendon that sidelined her for the entire 2019 season.
Stewart
and Bird were both on the bench for most of the fourth quarter with the
game well in hand. The team hugged at center court after the final
buzzer.
A’ja Wilson, the league’s regular-season MVP, tried to
keep the Aces alive. She had 14 of her 18 points in the first quarter,
hitting five of her nine shots. She also took four of the team’s six
free throws in the period. The Aces, who led the league by averaging
more than 23 attempts in the regular season, only had five total in Game
2. Coach Bill Laimbeer voiced his displeasure that the team couldn’t
get to the foul line on Sunday.
Despite scoring the first seven
points of the game, Las Vegas trailed 23-21 after one quarter after the
Storm closed the period on an 11-2 run. Seattle then scored the first
six points of the second. Stewart picked up her third foul early in the
quarter and had to sit for the final 7-plus minutes.
It didn’t matter as Seattle extended its two-point advantage to 43-34 at the half.
Seattle put the game away in the third quarter, scoring 12 of the first 14 points in the period.
The
Aces’ future is bright. The team was missing Liz Cambage and Kelsey
Plum — starters from last year. Cambage was granted a medical exemption
to skip playing this season in the bubble in Bradenton, Florida. Plum
tore her Achilles’ tendon
MISSING HAMBY: The Aces clearly could
have used Sixth Woman of the Year Dearica Hamby in the series. She said
Monday she had been dealing with a quad injury for the past two months
and felt her right knee get injured in Game 3 of the semifinals against
Connecticut. Hamby played through the injury to finish that game but
didn’t return. She said she most likely wouldn’t need surgery. She
averaged 13.0 points, 7.1 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 1.7 steals during
the regular season.
WINLESS ANGEL: Angel McCoughtry came to Las Vegas this season after spending her entire career in Atlanta since getting drafted No. 1 in 2009. She led the Dream to three WNBA Finals appearances but the team was swept in each one. She’s now 0-12 in the championship round.