The Seattle Storm have experienced plenty of growing pains this season.
With one of the youngest rosters in the WNBA, the last-place Storm (8-31) have endured a pair of 11-game losing streaks.
But they’ll have the chance Sunday to win consecutive games for just the third time all season when they play host to the Los Angeles Sparks (14-25).
Rookie Flau’jae Johnson scored 20 points Wednesday as the host Storm defeated the expansion Toronto Tempo 90-78. Dominique Malonga added 18 points and seven rebounds, and Jade Melbourne had 16 points, seven assists and six boards for the Storm.
Awa Fam and Zia Cooke each scored 10 points off the bench for Seattle, which played without guard Natisha Hiedeman (left shoulder) for a third straight game. Hiedeman averages 15.4 points and a team-high 4.8 assists.
“Let’s just keep getting better,” Johnson said of the motivation for the rest of the season. “We know we’re not playing to go to the playoffs. It’s not no miracle playoff that we’re going to get into, but we know that we can get better. We know that we can either end the season and look at ourselves like ‘Wow, we didn’t get better at nothing.’ Or we can end the season and be like, ‘Look at this growth that we had. Look at the things that we overcame.'”
The Storm are just 1-17 against Western Conference foes, with the lone victory on July 6 at Los Angeles, when Johnson scored 23 in an 82-64 decision.
The Sparks are coming off an 88-82 victory over visiting Washington on Friday, as Nneka Ogwumike, who has announced plans to retire at the end of the season, scored 24 points with five assists, four rebounds and four steals.
Rae Burrell scored 12 of her 15 points in the fourth quarter as the Sparks pulled away.
“There wasn’t a point where we weren’t staying together,” Burrell said. “I think that once we all were on the same page aggressively with the defense, I think we also made our adjustments. We knew where we were kind of being weak at and where we needed to fix. We made those adjustments in real time and then we were able to see those results and execute it on the offensive end.”
–Field Level Media
