Mystics feel there was 'a lot left on the table' in 2022 originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
Losses to end one’s seasons always hurt. Every season, 11 WNBA teams feel that pain. Seven teams were reminded of that feeling this 2022 season, so far, with four more to join them in the next month.
The Washington Mystics became one of those seven teams when they saw their season come to a close on Sunday with their Game 2 loss. But for them, their pain hurts more than just the finality of it all coming to an end.
“I feel like we had more to give this season,” Natasha Cloud said at her end-of-season availability on Tuesday. “I feel like I had more to give this season, so I’m still in a very much (in a) frustrated competitor mode. I know what we had in our locker room. And I think that’s the frustrating part is we had it, we just didn’t know how to piece it together in time.”
If anybody should know what it takes to win a championship it would be the Mystics. The organization – which still had six players from the 2019 championship team – has two WNBA Finals appearances with the current core of players. They’ve known when they were good enough to win it all (2019) and they knew when they were not (2020 & 2021).
With Elena Delle Donne back for nearly 70% of the games, everyone believed they could contend for a championship. Prioritizing their defensive efforts put the Mystics in an elite category this year. Across multiple metrics, they were considered the No. 1 defense in the WNBA.
Juxtaposed to the high-powered offense of 2019, the defense was just as dangerous. Four players have been recognized for All-Defensive honors in their career, Delle Donne is a decent defender in her own right and they also drafted the top post defender in the entire draft class; combined, it put them with a super-team cast of players on one side of the ball.
“I feel like we had a lot left on the table and it sucks not being able to show that,” defensive specialist Alysha Clark said.
That defense, in their eyes, did not let them down in the elimination loss to the Seattle Storm. All season that is what they hung their hat on. It did not take long for their goal of creating the best defensive unit in the WNBA to become reality.
The issues, surprisingly, came on the offense where they had been dominant for several seasons. That half of the game never quite could come fully together. That’s what many on the team pointed to, in not being able to keep up with the offensive prowess of the Storm, in what eventually put a sunset on their season.
“I felt like our defense had connected very much quicker than our offense had throughout the course season,” Shatori Walker-Kimbrough said. “We showed glimpses, but I feel like there was still some growth that we didn’t really necessarily tap on the offense. And as far as chemistry-wise, we had so many great players and there’s so many different lineups… So I feel like at times, especially with a shorter season, with not that many practices our offense took a little bit longer to grasp as far as chemistry than our defense.”
Each team builds as the season goes on. No one ever wants to peak in June or July. Progressing week-to-week, game-to-game is common in sports with, hopefully, the plateau being in the playoffs. Look at last season as an example with the No. 5 seeded Phoenix Mercury and the No. 6 seeded Chicago Sky meeting in the championship.
Talent-wise both teams should have been considered title contenders from the start, it just took time.
With Delle Donne in and out of the lineup – where a majority of the roster has barely played with her – there were obstacles. Ariel Atkins could be in line for another All-WNBA second-team honor this season; the fact remains that this is her first season in a scoring role when playing alongside the two-time MVP. Back in 2019, Atkins was in the lineup for her defense and to be a knock-down shooter.
Myisha Hines-Allen had barely played with Delle Donne, period. Clark, Shakira Austin and Elizabeth Williams had zero minutes of experience with Delle Donne.
Finding that chemistry, in must-win, high-stakes games was a little hard to find with her missing 11 games.
“I don’t know,” Atkins answered when asked about what was missing from the offense. “It just didn’t feel like we could get it consistently. Like there will be games where it’s like dang, ‘that feels good.’ And the next game we’d be like ‘oh,’ so just trying to find that consistency within our team, I think, would have been nice.”
Fortunately for Washington, a majority of this group will be back in 2023. After all, it took the team losing in the 2018 Finals to Seattle and then taking nearly the same roster in 2019 to ‘run it back.’ Four of the five starters are under contract plus the top bench player: Delle Donne, Cloud, Atkins, Hines-Allen and Austin.
To put that in perspective, when not factoring in injuries there are only four players from last year’s active roster that played in this year’s. Perhaps 2023 is finally when the Mystics get to hit the ground running.
“Every year we’re building to get better, every year we’re building to get back to a championship-caliber team that we know we’re capable of being,” Hines-Allen said. “…that’s where we see ourselves and (we) see ourselves playing that last game of the season because we know we’re capable of doing it, the coaches know we’re capable of doing it.”
