Actual commentary (with many parentheticals)

This Finals have been talked about a lot in terms of contrasting styles. It's the Bad Girls of Detroit vs. the Running-and-Gunning Mercury. During the Eastern Conference Finals, some of the announcers were saying things about how the style of play wasn't very pretty or entertaining. The Phoenix team was obviously set up as the contrasting style.

In this season (34 games) and the first two rounds of the playoffs (4 games), Phoenix had 16 games in which they put up more than 95 points. Of those 16, 9 games were over 100 points (including 2 losses). All of that does not include a double overtime win against Connecticut (111-109) on July 6th. It's important, especially for NBA fans, to remember that these scores (save for the Connecticut game) were in the context of a 40 minute game. It seems that Paul Westhead has finally found a team that can play Paul Ball and play it well. He's only been looking since 1980, when his Lakers won the Championship.

The three main scoring threats for Phoenix are Diana Taurasi, Cappie Pondexter, and Penny Taylor. It's proven difficult for opponents to guard them, and in fact the trio has been averaging 66.6 points in the playoffs (54.2 in the regular season). As Kara Lawson said in one of her half time commentaries, teams need to have three great defenders to shut down the Mercury entirely. Most teams do not have three defenders of the caliber necessary to do it. Hell, most teams don't even have two players that can defend at that level. (It's interesting to note that even in game one's eight point loss to Detroit, these three combined for 69 points. That's even with Taurasi's meager 10 points in 22 minutes, and Pondexter's clear irritation with Deanna Nolan's tight defense.)

(As a side note, Penny Taylor was the MVP for the Australia team that won Gold at last year's FIBA World Championships. This is especially a big deal considering she was on the same team as the 2007 WNBA MVP Lauren Jackson and Indiana's Tully Bevilaqua. Also considering that, for the most part, the rest of the world hasn't nearly caught up with USA's women and that they were far more favorites to win Gold than even the Team USA men. This not only illustrates what an amazing player she is, it also gives her one of the more entertaining cheering sections in Jackson and Bevilaqua.)

Basically, much like today's Suns or the Golden State Warriors (or any team that Paul Westhead has coached in the past), the Mercury have their best chance at a win if they can keep running. Slow half court play is like poison to them.

(Here's an article about how wacky Westhead is. Some years ago I knew my team had a real struggle, so I went to National Geographic and got a two-minute clip of salmon jumping upstream, indeed!)

Theoretically the Shock's biggest threats are Nolan, Katie Smith, and Cheryl Ford. This is only theoretical because Smith has been in a slump the entire season, and Ford was out for 19 of 34 regular season games, and the first game of the Finals with a knee injury.

These problems are balanced out by a few factors. One, when it's needed Deanna Nolan can put her team on her back and carry them through rough patches until other people find their hot hand (witness her 20 points in 14-minutes in the first half of game three of the Eastern Conference Finals).

Two, a slump for Katie Smith is a good season for most players. She has more career points than any other professional female basketball player, and this season was only a disappointment from that perspective. She still averaged double digits in the regular season, and her assists are up.

Three, Cheryl Ford has been amazing when she has played, and when she hasn't the other big players like Kara Braxton and Katie Feenstra have really stepped up their play and filled in the hole admirably.

Detroit's biggest liability is that sometimes they don't play up to their potential. Bill Laimbeer has a habit of benching some of his stars (Swin Cash and Kara Braxton) because they start playing lazily, but it's an attitude that can extend to the entire team. It seems odd saying that about a team that had the best record in the league this year, but they sometimes visibly lag. They aren't quite as quick to come back up the court, especially on defense, and you can see that their drive to win isn't there. If they can avoid that, their chances are very good in this series.

The biggest misconception about Detriot is that they are a slow team. They do have a lot of traits that are generally grouped with sluggishness, much like the old Bad Boys of Detroit in the late 80s and early 90s they're physical, gritty, and great at grind-it-out defensively minded games. However, they really don't shy away from running, and indeed in Deanna "Tweety" Nolan have one of (if not the) fastest players in the league, with or with or without the ball.

They should not be fooled into thinking they can run with the Mercury for the whole series though. Not only is Phoenix hoping that they'll do exactly that, but if Ford decides to play in any of the upcoming games, they will have a major player (who wasn't too fast to begin with) sporting an injured knee.

However this series shakes up, it'll be interesting (and fun) to watch.