For the first time since becoming a WNBA franchise in 2006, the Chicago Sky will be playing for the league championship.
The Sky defeated Indiana 75-62 Wednesday night in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals to clinch a spot in the WNBA finals, which begin Sunday afternoon at Phoenix.
Chicago also is the first team with a losing record to reach the finals. But it’s what coach Pokey Chatman’s team has done in the post-season that has been extraordinary.
They trailed Atlanta by 17 points early in the fourth quarter in Game 3 of the Eastern semifinals before rallying for an 81-80 win, with Elena Delle Donne turning in one of the best playoff performances in a 34-point night.
On Wednesday, her ailing back prevented her from leading the charge against the Fever. But former DePaul star Allie Quigley stepped in with 24 points off the bench. Point guard Courtney Vandersloot, forward Tamera Young and center Sylvia Fowles also came up big in the decisive series game in Indianapolis.
The loss for the Fever also marked the end of the 44-year coaching career of Lin Dunn, who announced earlier in the season that she would be retiring.
Dunn, who also coached the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, had college stops in many places, including Austin Peay, Ole Miss, Miami of Florida and Purdue, which she elevated into the national elite.
The WNBA playoffs continue as the league continues to address business challenges that have dogged it for years. The WNBA announced at the end of the regular season that it expected at least six of its 12 teams to post profits, the same as last year, and that attendance and television viewership were up slightly from 2013.
But the league’s highly visible marketing campaign to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community during the season was met with some skepticism, as an example of cause marketing over basketball that might be seen as a “slippery slope” in reaching new fans.
Chicago advancing to the finals means that Delle Donne, who missed part of the season with a recurrence of Lyme Disease, will not be with the USA Basketball senior national team when it begins training camp next week for the upcoming FIBA Women’s World Championships.
She, Fowles and Vandersloot, along with Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner and Candice Dupree of Phoenix, are among the 27 players invited to the camp, which takes place from Sept. 8-10 in Annapolis, Md.
The team also will have an intersquad scrimmage billed as a USA Basketball Showcase at Delle Donne’s alma mater, the University of Delaware, on Sept. 11.
Coach Geno Auriemma’s squad will play Canada on Sept. 15 in Bridgeport, Conn., before finishing preparations in Europe.
While Chicago was 15-19 in the regular season, the Phoenix Mercury set a WNBA record for wins with a 25-9 record. They defeated the defending champions, the Minnesota Lynx, in three games in the Western Conference finals.
Taurasi was magnificent in the clincher, hitting a halfcourt shot at the end of the third quarter as part of an 18-0 Mercury run in the final period that blew the game wide open.
She had 31 points in that game and while her fellow UConn alum, Maya Moore of Minnesota, was named the WNBA MVP, Taurasi made a compelling case for being the best player in the league.
Game 1 of the best-of-five final series is 3:30 p.m. on Sunday on ABC (full schedule here), with Game 2 also in Phoenix Tuesday at 9 p.m. on ESPN. The series switches to Chicago on Friday and also next Sunday, if necessary. A Game 5 would be played in Phoenix on Wednesday, Sept. 17.
