Seattle Storm Win the W.N.B.A. Championship
Written by laserteam on October 7, 2020
The Storm beat the top-seeded Las Vegas Aces behind Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird, Jewell Loyd and a talented roster of veterans.
(The New York Times) – The Storm dominated the Las Vegas Aces, 92-59, on Tuesday night to complete a sweep in the best-of-five finals series in Bradenton, Fla. It was Seattle’s fourth championship, tying a league record shared by the Houston Comets and the Minnesota Lynx.
Seattle’s title win — which was cemented by the largest margin of victory in finals history (33 points) — capped a 6-0 run through the playoffs. It also concluded a W.N.B.A. season like no other.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the league’s 12 teams played a shortened 22-game regular season and a playoff slate starting in late July inside a bubble at IMG Academy. The league and its players also took on a bigger purpose, putting Breonna Taylor’s name on the backs of their jerseys as part of a broader push for awareness about social justice issues.
The Storm fulfilled preseason expectations to win their second title in three seasons. That was largely because of the return of Stewart and Bird, who both missed the 2019 season with injuries.
Stewart won the 2018 Most Valuable Player Award, then ruptured her Achilles’ tendon while playing overseas in April 2019. This year, she returned to dominant form. Her regular-season production — 19.7 points, 8.3 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.3 blocks per game — was perhaps surpassed only by that of Las Vegas’s A’ja Wilson, the newly crowned M.V.P.
