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So we lost to the Storm by 11 on Tuesday night, our largest point deficit in a loss all season. This Tweet from Seattle pretty much says all you need to know about the game:
The Sky just did not show up defensively, which you cannot do against an opponent with numerous Olympians / Future Hall of Famers.
Now that the Storm has passed though (lol get it???) we want to unpack a different issue that has been bothering us for the past month or so.
Let’s rewind back to the first game of the season against the LA Sparks. I’ll set the scene for you.
It’s May 6th.
The Sky Townies are at Wintrust Arena, awaiting our 2021 WNBA Finals Champions the Chicago Sky.
We are not sure what the hell is gonna happen this season because did we just get lucky last year or are we still magic I mean anything is possible with Candace but our starters are kinda old but also we have KAHLEAH FREAKING COPPER.
The game begins. We familiarize ourselves with our new forward Emma Meesseman. We say hello to Candace and Sloot. We’re missing Copper, who’s still playing for her European team, and Allie Quigley is sidelined with a minor injury. So our offense looks a little awkward.
We need energy. We need buckets. A familiar face steps on the plate: Dana Evans, our 2nd year point guard out of Louisville.
She worked on her shot in the off-season and can hit the deep three consistently now.
She’s getting more control on her drives too, able to stop and pop for the mid-range jumper. We lose an exciting game in OT, but Evans finishes with 24 points and 5 assists.
Next game against the New York Liberty. Evans comes off the bench to lead the team in scoring, finishing with 15 points on 3/3 from three-point land. We beat the Liberty by the largest margin in franchise history.
Once Copper returns to the line-up and Rebekah Gardner solidifies her role, Evans’ minutes start to go down.
And that’s cool. She’s still making small but important contributions every game. Through the first 8 games, she leads the team in 3-point percentage. She does cool stuff like this:
Then Julie Allemand returns from her European team. Allemand plays point guard too—a crafty passer who can hit the 3 as well. The Sky Townies are pumped to see what she can do for us, and in her first few games she plays decent.
But something else starts happening. In any given game at Wintrust Arena, the Townies have an acute sense for when it’s Dana Evans o’clock. Usually it’s around mid-second-quarter when our starters look tired and we need a little shot of that Dana Evans hype. All the sudden though she isn’t appearing where we need to her to be—on the court.
The Sky Townies spend the next 10 games screaming “Danaaaaaaa” at the top of our lungs whenever we think she deserves to come in.
It doesn’t help though.
Eventually the Townies accept reality.
Dana Evans has been benched.
We don’t want to get too intense with criticizing other people’s playing time decisions. The Sky Townies are coaches and know how sensitive a topic it is.
We also don’t want to be too dramatic about Evans’ reduction in playing time. Some games she still does get a nice a 10-15 minutes. But there are many games now when she gets a measly 2-6 minutes. Tuesday night against the Storm, she didn’t play at all.
Our basic stance during this difficult period has been: Free Dana. We’ve heard this stance echoed around Wintrust and on Twitter.
However, we did recently hear a compelling counterargument to “Free Dana” that goes something like this:
Dana is a player who looks for her own shots.
But we are a team loaded with scoring options (Parker, Copper, Meesseman).
Therefore, Allemand is better to feed our scorers and keep the offense moving.
“Dana’s lack of size makes some of the fluid ball reversals—core to Coach Wade’s offense—more clunky since she needs an extra dribble to get a better passing angle. A Dana deep 3 (while bringing crowd energy) foregoes a slip cut for a lay-up that Beks, Allemand and Sloot throw.”
“The Sky will finish with a top 2 record and playoff time will be about consolidating the lineup that got them there. Dana will fall outside a trusted core of 8 players and I think that is probably best.”
The Sky Townies’ counter to this counterargument goes something like this:
We agree that Dana is a scorer at heart. But that was just something she was able to work on and figure out in the off season. Given more time to develop, the same improvement can happen with her passing and offensive flow.
She earned that chance to develop with how much she contributed early in the year. Allemand is not adding enough to the team where it’s justified to replace so many of Dana’s regular season minutes.
Plus, Evans was actually huge for us in the playoffs last year (in Game 3 of the Finals, she hit three 3-pointers in a row!!). If we want that kind of clutch contribution from her again, why aren’t we building up her confidence now?!
Wade did the thing where he turned it into a “one or the other” dynamic between Allemand and Evans. But they can actually play together!
Our Big 3 scorers are great, but there are many other scary Big 3’s around the league (Vegas: A’ja, Jackie, Kelsey) (Seattle: Stewie, Loyd, Charles) (Connecticut: Jonquel, Alyssa Thomas, Dewanna). It’s a lot of pressure on our Big 3 to ask them to consistently outplay these other Big 3’s. Of course, we do have a lot of other scoring options even besides our Big 3 (Sloot, Quigley, Stevens, Gardner). But the fact that every single player on our team is a scoring threat is core to our identity, and that’s why we want Dana out there!!!
So, where does everyone else stand on the Dana Evans issue?
Selected Game Day Fits From Dana (In Case You Haven’t Seen Them)
