By Mark Moschetti, Seattle Storm
Jewell Loyd put her name into the record book.
Ezi Magbegor put hers into the All-Star game.
Jordan Horston put hers into the starting lineup.
Sue Bird put hers into the rafters.
And during a summer when they put more new names onto the roster than almost any other season in franchise history, the Seattle Storm put themselves into contention almost every time they took the court.
“I think a team that could have folded but didn’t, we were competitive in a lot of games,” head coach Noelle Quinn said during the Storm’s day-after-the-season exit media interviews. “We worked our butts off despite being young and inexperienced in a lot of ways, and I’m proud of that.
“Obviously, it’s tough to have a team like this and expect to win every game. But we were in every game, or most every game, and we made it respectable.”
Seattle’s final mark of 11 wins, 29 losses left it short of an eighth straight playoff berth, although it was mathematically and realistically in the chase until less than two weeks remained in the season.
But after an 0-4 start and a 10-game losing streak that extended from late June through late July left them at 4-19, the Storm showed signs of finding some rhythm, finding some more familiarity with each other – and finding the win column more often, as they went 7-10 the rest of the way. That included a stretch of six wins in nine games that had them seriously pondering the possibility of squeezing into the playoffs.
“It was an up-and-down season, probably for the team as well as myself,” said guard Sami Whitcomb, who returned to Seattle as a free agent after two years with New York. “It took us a bit to find rhythm together, find chemistry together, figure out a little bit what our identity was going to be.
“The second half, we hit a little bit of a stride,” Whitcomb added. “There were some good moments, things we can build on individually, as well as collectively.”
Jewell Loyd always insisted it was never about her – and she genuinely meant it.
But when opposing teams drew up their defensive game plans, it was very much about Loyd and how to stop her – or at least slow her down a bit.
Those plans usually didn’t work very well. Her lowest scoring night was 11. Her highest was 41. She hit for 30-plus 11 times. On the final day of the season, she needed just nine points to get the WNBA’s single-season scoring record after going back and forth with former teammate Breanna Stewart through the final week.
Stewart had just nine points in her regular-season finale, giving her 919. Loyd started the day with 911. Not even three minutes into the opening quarter against Los Angeles, Loyd had eight points for 919. Then, with 6:34 left in quarter, she pulled down a rebound, took it all the way down the left side of the court and buried a 3-pointer from the corner to make it 922.
Loyd finished the day with 28 points and the season with 939, way beyond what had been the old record of 860 set by Diana Taurasi of Phoenix in 2006.
“It’s pretty cool,” Loyd said. “It wasn’t a goal of mine, quite frankly. It wasn’t something I set out to do. It naturally happened that way.”
“I never wanted to make it about me,” she said. “It was always about my teammates. I always told them, ‘It’s not about me. It’s our team and our journey.’ The more we hung together and played together, everything kind of happened naturally.”
In retrospect, however, Loyd wasn’t necessarily surprised by her accomplishment, either.
“It’s something I believed I could do, be an efficient scorer in a very unique way,” she said. “It’s not something I’m super-shocked about because I’ve prepared for it.”
Head coach Noelle Quinn most definitely wasn’t shocked by it.
“She came into camp in amazing shape, not just physically, but mentally,” Quinn said. “She was in an amazing space and understanding what type of season this year would potentially be for her.
“For her to consistently show up and score like that, with double teams, box-and-one, jump defenses, all the physicality – all the things you can think of that she saw, she was able to score at a very high level, that says a lot about her,” Quinn added. “To have the year she had with the team we had and still be able to be (MVP) in the WNBA All-Star Game … I’m proud of her. She committed to the process, she stayed focused on the process – and look what she did.”
Now, Storm fans can count on seeing Loyd come back for more. On Sept. 9, the day before the season-ender, she signed a two-year contract extension, thus bypassing the opportunity to test the free agency market during the upcoming offseason.
"The easy decision was to leave. At the same time, the easy decision was to still be here,” Loyd said. “It felt right for me for personal growth and on-court growth, as well. For me to do that and see the impact I’ve had on my teammates and how the city has embraced me through and through, it just made sense for me to come back.”
While Loyd certainly drew a large share of the spotlight, she wasn’t the Storm’s only star. She wasn’t even the Storm’s only All-Star.
Ezi Magbegor was very quietly effective in making her own place in that spotlight.
Having turned 24 just a month before the end of the season, the Australian did a little bit of record-book rewriting herself, pulling down 322 rebounds to set the team’s single-season standard. The old mark of 317 was set in 2017 by Stewart.
But that wasn’t the only dimension to her ever-blossoming game.
Magbegor, who was selected by the coaches for her first All-Star Game, averaged a single-season career-best 13.8 points, pouring in 550 for the year – 235 more than ever before. She buried 30 of her 217 field goals from downtown, way beyond her previous best of 10. She came up with 10 double-doubles. And she was a shot-blocking force with 74, ranking No. 2 in the league with her average of 1.9 per game, helping her earn a spot on the All-Defensive second team.
As Magbegor tells it, her blossoming is far from done.
‘I think there are so many areas I can grow in on the court and off the court,” she said. “Being more of a vocal leader, that’s probably the main thing. I think just continuing to work on my perimeter game, but post play as well – down in the post and being more of a presence and kind of just not forgetting about that stuff.
“It has been a big focus for me to work on my 3-point and perimeter play, but I am a post player, so I think it’s just getting back to that.”
Quinn says Magbegor not only is capable of delivering even more …
… it’s going to be expected of her.
“She was put into a position that she’s never played on this team: having to score, having to defend, and leading, as well,” Quinn said. “This was a huge step in the right direction for her to have a season like this.
“(But) I’m going to demand way more because she has shown the ability now to be mentioned among the top players in this league,” Quinn added. “You saw what she can do. I want more of that.”
With so few roster spots available, it’s tough for all but the most elite rookies to make the final cut for any WNBA squad.
Jordan Horston certainly fit into that “elite” category for the Storm. But she was far from the only rookie to earn her place.
The Storm brought four rookies into the season, three of whom were truly in their first year as pros. (Ivana Dojkic, who left the team in August, was technically a WNBA rookie, but had played pro overseas prior to coming here.) Those three not only made it all the way through, all of them had their shining moments as the summer continued.
“They got some reps they wouldn’t have gotten on other teams as a rookie,” Quinn said. “I think they’re one-up on that process – the feel of it, the physicality of it. The reps matter, and how you approach those reps matter. We kept up the preparation process of it, the player development process of it, and I think we remain steadfast to that – and it showed in the productivity level in our younger players.”
She produced three double-doubles, had nine games overall in double-digit scoring and five in double-digit rebounding. What’s more, she did much of that while dealing with a lingering shoulder injury.
“Coming into it, I didn’t expect anything,” Horston said. “I was just trying to make the team and doing whatever I could to stay on the team. For them to see and trust me and believe in me and put me in the starting lineup and guarding All-Stars in the league, I was flattered.”
Horston played the small forward and the power forward spots during the year. She will have surgery on her shoulder, then stay in Seattle during the offseason to rehab and work on her game.
“We started the year with her at the ‘4’ and she did a lot of really good things,” Quinn said. “She’s a playmaker. She can take the ball to the rim and push. She obviously can rebound at a high level. She’s very versatile, and I don’t want to put her in a box.”
Also making their marks were 6-3 Cameroon native Dulcy Fankam Mendjiadeu, taken No. 21 out of South Florida, and 5-11 Australian guard Jade Melbourne, who just turned 22 in August.
“The reps matter, and how you approach those reps matter,” Quinn said. “We kept up the preparation process of it, the player development process of it, and I think we remain steadfast to that – and it showed in the productivity level in our younger players.”
Turns out that you can go home again – or least, you can if you’re Sami Whitcomb.
The former University of Washington star who subsequently helped the Storm win the 2018 and 2020 WNBA titles, Whitcomb returned to Seattle after spending the 2021 and 2022 seasons with New York, having been traded there along with Natasha Howard.
A free agent last winter, Whitcomb returned to Seattle. She came off the bench for 21 of the first 22 games, then started the last 18 and helped spark the offense, especially with her long-range shooting. Through those first 22 games, she averaged 8.2 points. Through the last 18, it was up to 11.5, and that was while playing at the point guard spot for a team that did not have a true point guard.
“I was happy to step into that role this season when it was asked of me – anything to be on the court,” said Whitcomb, who made at least one 3-point shot in each of her last 21 games.
Along with her multi-dimensional roles on the court, Whitcomb served as a steadying influence off it as the second-oldest player on the team (35), a real mom away from the Storm and a team mom of sorts around the other players.
“The thing that stood out about this team more than other teams (that I’ve been on) was the sort of locker room environment and support and connectedness that we maintained,” Whitcomb said. “Sometimes, that can go out the window… As much as I know our record wasn’t what we wanted it to be, it could have been a lot worse if we hadn’t stayed together.”
It had been a rough go for Mercedes Russell. A big factor in the middle for the Storm, she missed most of the 2022 season with a non basketball-related health issue (recurrent headaches), but was back and ready to go for 2023, starting 10 of the first 13 games.
Then for a stretch of six games, she was a “DNP – Coach’s Decision” in three of them, and saw a combined total of 10-plus minutes in the other three.
But her playing opportunities gradually increased again, to the point she was going 20-plus minutes in several games, contributing eight or nine or 10 points here, five or six or eight rebounds there. She was finally back in the starting five for the last two games of the season, finishing with averages of 5.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and 51.6 percent shooting from the field.
“I think it was just me having time and having games under my belt helping me get my rhythm back,” said Russell, who is signed for next season. “I just want to continue to play through the offseason. … The fact that I found a better rhythm in the second half of the season, I want to continue to improve and get better in the offseason.”
For 21 years, she was a force on the court for the Storm. For those same 21 years, she was the face – and very often the voice – of the team off the court. So many people said there would never be anyone like her again.
As of this past June 11, there most certainly will never be another No. 10 wearing a Storm uniform again.
It was on that day, after almost three hours of speeches and plaudits and a lengthy list of genuine heartfelt thank-you’s from Bird herself that a green and gold banner with “10 Bird” on it was slowly elevated toward the ceiling of Climate Pledge Arena.
WNBA titles. Olympic gold medals. Multiple lines in the record book with her name on it.
In a way, it seemed like only yesterday that she was just starting out as a rookie.
But on that afternoon, she formally was recognized as a legend.
“I think the fact that my jersey is in the rafters is – I’m not sure who said it – is a period. End of sentence,” Bird said.
In Sue Bird’s case, it wasn’t so much a period …
… as it was an exclamation mark.
Noelle Quinn is a lot of different things as Seattle’s third-year head coach: Tactical. Organized, Definitely patient. Many times, when the Storm have the ball coming out of a timeout, they’ll score on whatever play Quinn has drawn up for them.
One thing she typically is not, however, is a yeller or a screamer. Even during pre-game or postgame press conferences, she’s so soft-spoken that it’s not always easy to hear her, even when she’s talking into a microphone.
Even so, Quinn has become more and more effective at making her point – and her players are noticing.
“She’s definitely using her voice a lot more,” Jewell Loyd said. “I think from the outside, people see her as quiet and timid. But she’s very cool how she goes about her work… She’s constantly asking advice from NBA coaches and scouts about walkthroughs, shootarounds – everything to learn more. Her growth and using her voice a little more and showing us her personality has been a great journey for me.”
Quinn knew even before the first day of training camp last spring that the entire 2023 season would be a much different journey than those that marked the 2021 season, when she took over after Dan Hughes retired, and 2022, when Loyd, Sue Bird, and Breanna Stewart made one more run at another title before Bird retired and Stewart moved on to New York.
“I’m resilient. The competitive spirit is strong, but the desire to build and the process of that takes time,” Quinn said. “I’m a naturally patient person. But with this process, you have to be super-patient with the team, going from having arguably one of the best point guards in the world (Bird) to having rookies and trying to navigate our point guard position.
“It was tough,” she added. “Every day required a new level for me of teaching the basics of the basics. But that pushed me and challenged me to continue to stay steadfast and know that the tide will turn eventually.”
After the 4-19 start, that turning tide was at least somewhat noticeable during the second half of the season. But as Quinn said, it’s going to take time.
“I think we’re a few pieces away – I don’t think it’s a complete overhaul,” she said. “This is a big offseason, not only for free agency but for how our players are going to prepare, how they come back with the knowledge that they understand how we want to play.
“We have good pieces in places,” Quinn added. “I think those are some pieces to help build with.”