The Los Angeles Sparks are a win away from their second consecutive league championship after a Game 3 win, beating the Minnesota Lynx 75-64 on Friday. There were many contributors to their victory, but in this game, you can clearly point to one thing that rose above the rest: hardly penetrable, wall-to-wall defense that smothered everything the Lynx wanted to do.
Sparks defense in Game 3 now has them 1 win away from WNBA championship
Los Angeles was incredible defensively in a 75-64 win over Minnesota.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
So far, the series has played out exactly like it did last year. The Sparks stole Game 1 in Minnesota, and the Lynx tied it up in Game 2. Los Angeles has now gone up in Game 3, and a Game 4 or 5 victory keeps them atop the league as reigning champions.
It was Minnesota who came into this series with the highly lauded defense, but Los Angeles had the second best defensive rating of the regular season. It felt like the Sparks were deflecting Lynx passes at least once every trip down the floor for much of the third and fourth quarters. At one point, they forced a fruitless 35-foot heave because they had defended so well for 24 seconds.
Another moment, though, was this block from Candace Parker. She would finish with three of them, plus five steals.
After that block, the Sparks rattled off a 16-7 run to close the game.
But that also shouldn’t undersell what the Sparks guards, Chelsea Gray and Odyssey Sims, did. And no, it wasn’t just Gray and Sims, but collectively, Los Angeles held Minnesota’s starting backcourt of Seimone Augustus and Lindsey Whalen to a combined zero points.
(Whalen only played 12 minutes. Barring an injury that wasn’t reported during the game, it’s puzzling that she played so little, even though she had zero points and two turnovers. As a veteran and a steadying force to this entire Lynx team, you would imagine she would get more leeway than that.)
After two thrillers, this game was somewhat more muted, and it still featured a roaring Lynx comeback halfway through the fourth before the Sparks shushed all of that. These WNBA Finals are incredible. Game 4 can’t come soon enough.
See More:
