The Washington Mystics rejoice in their 89-78 victory over the Connecticut

Sun, giving the Mystics their first-ever WNBA championship.

By Bob Phillips





WASHINGTON, DC— In the end, the Connecticut Sun were simply beaten by the better team. Although Jonquel Jones put up the game’s only double-double (a game high 25 points and 12 rebounds), it wasn’t enough to stave off the Washington Mystics, who defeated the Connecticut Sun, 89-78, before 4,200 fans at Entertainment and Sports Arena on Thursday night. The game was televised nationally on ESPN2.





Case in point: Elena Delle Donne. Playing with one herniated disc is painful and heroic. Playing with three is Herculean. Delle Donne showed the world why she was the WNBA’S regular-season MVP. Playing with a severely compromised (and certainly painful) back, Delle Donne scored 21 points and, just as importantly, grabbed nine rebounds, to help lead the Washington Mystics to their first-ever WNBA championship.





“Well, I always knew she had grit, it's sometimes you need the opportunity to display it,” said Thibault of his wounded warrior. “You know, she was injured in the Chicago Finals that year and a lot more injured, I think, than she was here. You've got to want to play through it.” Thibault went on to praise the Mystics’ medical stass, mentioning injuries to Ariel Atkins and Kristi Toliver that were treated in a way that allowed them to play effectively. “We've had a lot [of] bumps and bruises; injuries. It’s not that they were from everybody, We just don't talk about them.”





This was Delle Donne’s third trip to the Finals, but she had never tasted victory. And we’re talking about a single game. As a member of the Chicago Sky, her team was swept by Diana Taurasi and the Phoenix Mercury in 2014, and last year the Mystics were shut down cold by Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird and the Seattle Storm. This year, with Bird and Stewie out for the season, the Mystics entered the postseason as the tournament’s No. 1 seed. Their biggest obstacle was the No. 2 seed, Connecticut. And the young Sun nearly pulled off the upset.





Indeed, the reversal of the Mystics’ fortunes can be directly traced to acquiring the former Delaware All-American from the Sky. Delle Donne, UConn fans will remember, had committed to play for the Huskies, but left the summer before her freshman year to stay close to her sister, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy. She had to sit out that year, but stayed in shape by playing varsity volleyball for the Fightin’ Blue Hens.





Washington had not been a successful team before EDD’s arrival in 2017. It had failed to even qualify for the postseason 10 times, and had won just one playoff series. But the Mystics reached the semifinals that season, then the Finals in 2018. And this year, the championship.





Emma Meesseman scored 22 points off the bench to lead the Mystics in scoring, while Kristi Toliver and Natasha Cloud added 18 points apiece for Washington.





Bench play—or, more specifically, the play of Meeseman—proved to be the difference. Take her out the mix, and the game was fairly even, statistically speaking. A 17-point advantage in bench scoring (the Washington reserves outscored Connecticut’s second unit 24-17) is usually enough to win. With 22 of those points coming from one player off the bench… well, it’s easy to see how Meesseman earned the Most Valuable Player of the series.





Emma Meeseman was lights out off the Washington bench throughout the

series, earning her WNBA Finals MVP accolades.

Her motivation was simple: “The trophy,” said the Belgian marksman, who was 69.2 percent from the field (9-for-13, including 1-for-2 from beyond the 3-point arc). “It's a championship game. That's all I need. I'm just playing basketball. Today I just shot my shot. Coach has been [saying] if your shot is going in, or even if not, you just have to take your opportunity. I don't think that I would have done this a year ago or two years ago in the past. I think that these playoffs were the moment that I really realized that I have to take my responsibility and I can play.”





For the record, Meesseman shot 69.2 percent from the field (9-for-13), 50 percent from beyond the arc (1-for-2) and 60 percent from the free-throw line (3-for-5). That’s great shooting by anyone’s standard.





Meesseman got rolling when the Mystics most needed her. With Connecticut leading by nine in the third, Meesseman brought her inside-outside game off the bench and popped in 11 points to move the Mystics within a deuce as the teams rounded the third pole.





No big deal, right? Wrong. Very big deal.





“She's one of the top players in the world,” said her adoring coach, who dropped his first three chances at the WNBA title—both during his tenure roaming the Sun sidelines in 2004 and 2005, and last year with the Mystics.





While Meeseman is a decent shooter from the perimeter, it’s her inside game that dominates. That was painfully apparent to the Connecticut faithful last night.





“I just really, really wanted to win this game,” she said. “So I just came on the court, and I knew that it was a moment that we needed some energy. I was just going at the basket, and it was going in, so I just kept going. Coach has been [saying], ‘If your shot is going in, or even if not, you just have to take your opportunity,’ I don't think that I would have done this a year or two years ago. I think that these playoffs were the moment that I really realized that I have to take my responsibility and I can play. So that's just what I did.”





Members of the Mystics show off their championship trophy to their

jubilant fans.

A look at the stat sheet shows the teams playing virtually even. Indeed, the Sun may have even owned a slight edge. Take, for instance, The Sun outscoring the Mystics in the paint, 14-12. The teams were equally ineffective from three-point land (Connecticut 1-for-4, Washington 1-for-7). The Sun scored two buckets in transition; the Mystics had none. Both teams had one started with minimal offensive output. Sun guard Jasmine Thomas had two points on 1-for-6 shooting in over 34 minutes played. She did have three rebounds and six assists to her credit. Mystics starting center also scored just two points in nearly 15 minutes on the court. She was 1-for-2 from the field without a three-point attempt, with no rebounds and no assists. Her lone contribution was one blocked shot.





Several key factors proved to be the ultimate deciders of this contest. Among them:

Shooting . The Mystics sank 33 of their 66 shots from the field (50 percent).

Bench play (which really means Meesseman). The Washington reserves outscored Connecticut’s second unit 24-7. But take Meesseman’s numbers out of the mix and Connecticut’s bench won 7-2. Arial Powers (2 points) was the only other Washington sub to score. She was 1-for-3 from the field.

Blocked shots . The Mystics swatted away six shots by the Sun. Connecticut had no blocked shots.

Fourth period scoring . Connecticut entered Q4 leading by 64-62, but was outscored by 13 in the final frame. Natasha Cloud led the way with nine points, all on three three-point plays (two from beyond the arc, one traditional), followed by Kristi Toliver with eight points and Delle Donne, the wounded warrior, with six.

The intangibles : The Mystics were embarrassed by last year’s whitewashing in the Finals and were committed not to repeat. Of course, last year they were playing without Meesseman who took the entire 2018 season off for some personal time.

And there really isn’t any way to measure the importance of the impact that Delle Donne, the regular-season MVP, brought to the table playing with a significant back injury.

“It feels phenomenal, my goodness, feels so good—hard to put it into words, to win it with such a great group of people,” said Delle Donne, who fell short in two previous Finals appearances (last year with the Mystics and 2014 with the Chicago Sky). “We wanted to win it for the person next to us. My goodness, we sure ended this on a high note.”





It was a back-and-forth affair for most of the game. The Mystics held a three-point advantage, 23-20, at the first turn. Indeed, it was the first time in the series that one team did not lead in double digits after the first period. The Sun rallied in the second period, however, and took a one-point lead, 43-42, into the locker room at intermission. The teams played evenly in the third period, as the Sun took a 64-62 lead into the fourth quarter.





Then, with the Sun up by three, 70-67, with 7:02 remaining in regulation, the Mystics tapped into that “champions” thing.





“We defended the arc really well, but they're pulling at you because they've been so successful with points in the paint and they've been successful playing one-on-one in the low post,” said Sun head coach and general manager Curt Miller after the game. “We get caught on a little bit of an in-between dig and they kick it out and [Natasha] Cloud makes a three, and all of a sudden it's 70-70.”





And then came the Mystics’ “champions” moment when they went on a 13-2 run. “That was deciding run in the game,” said Miller.





Emma Meesseman (left) and Elena Delle Dona, the heart and soul of the

Mystics, get their groove on during Game 5 of the WNBA Finals.

For Thibault, who earned his first WNBA title in four attempts (the first two with the Sun and last year with the Mystics), the difference between the two teams was easy to identify. ”Making free throws,” he said. That logic cannot be argued with. Overall, the Mystics outscored the Sun by seven at the charity stripe (24-17). Indeed, Washington held Connecticut to just one point from the free-throw line in both the first and third periods.





Thibault also credited his team maturity; that is, it’s ability to take things one day at a time.





“There's a process to getting this done,” he explained. “It's individual work, it's teamwork, it's video work, it's scouting reports, and if you look too far ahead, you lose sight of the little things you have to do to get better. We got better all year long, and it's because they were able to not jump a month or two months ahead.”





Mike Thibault, the winningest coach in WNBA history (and, coincidentally,

the winningest coach in Connecticut Sun history) finally gets his first

WNBA championship with the Mystics.

Then Thibault pointed to the ultimate advantage his team held: Playing the deciding game on the Mystics’ home court in front of the home crowd. Indeed, Washington held the home-court advantage coming into the series, but temporarily lost it when Connecticut stole Game 2 in D.C. The Mystics regained home-court advantage by stopping the Sun in Game 4 at the Mohegan Sun Arena. A win by Connecticut in that game would have won the series for the Sun.





“It ended up being a difference, and that work we put in to get the fifth game on our court paid off tonight because this crowd was great [and] our energy was great,” he continued. “But you don’t do that in the last two weeks of the season. You do that throughout, and I think they’ve been great at it.”





So now it’s off to Europe or Asia for most of the players in the WNBA, because the salaries afforded them at home are a mere pittance compared to what they make abroad. Twelve-month basketball takes a toll on the health and welfare of the entire league. (Note not only Delle Donne’s back, but the fact that Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart missed the entire 2020 campaign with injuries.) But that won’t change until salaries rise, which won’t happen until overall revenues increase (gate and television), which isn’t on the foreseeable horizon.

—with staff reports