SEATTLE — In a perfect world, the Seattle Storm playoff game Sunday would have ended in the most storybook fashion possible. It was all written, ready to go to print — a plot line from here to eternity.
The Storm were less than a second away from an emotional masterpiece. It was a finish that would have made a perfect climactic scene for the biopic they'll make one day on Sue Bird's brilliant WNBA career. Game 3 of the semifinal playoff round was stacking up as one of the most exhilarating triumphs of any Seattle basketball team, any level, ever. The roar inside of Climate Pledge Arena was seismic.
But then real life intervened, as it has a bad habit of doing. And instead of a rousing, heart-stopping, heartwarming victory to put the Storm on the verge of yet another trip to the finals — and punctuate Bird's final playing days with one more signature moment, maybe her John Hancock flourish — the Storm were left heartbroken and reeling.
Seattle lost, 110-98, to the Las Vegas Aces in overtime, pulling defeat from the jaws of magic and putting them on the verge of elimination. The hard-fought game — a 45-minute ode to the artistry of women's basketball — was on the verge of ending miraculously in regulation when Bird incredibly drained a 3-pointer from the corner with 1.8 seconds remaining.
That gave the Storm, who had trailed by as much as 15 points in the first half, a 92-90 lead, and sent the crowd of 15,431 into rapture. Much of this Seattle season has been focused on Bird's march toward retirement, a journey mirrored this week in the tennis world by Serena Williams. And when the Aces called timeout with eight-tenths of a seconds remaining, with the full-throated roar still echoing through Climate Pledge, it seemed as if she had outdone herself. It was all over but the celebrating.
The Aces had a different notion though. With their coach, Becky Hammon, drawing up the perfect play, Vegas somehow freed Jackie Young under the basket for a lightning-quick layup as time expired. The Storm were unable to deliver the foul they still had left to give as the play unfolded at warp speed.
It was an epic buzzer-beater, and the ultimate buzzkill. There's no question that the massive letdown — which was written all over the drained, shocked faces of the Seattle players — affected the Storm in overtime. The Aces abruptly turned what had been a dramatic, back-and-forth game into a rout with an 18-6 run for a two-games-to-one lead in the best-of-five series.
"It was really frustrating," said Breanna Stewart, who suffered the first home playoff loss of her career. "We had the game. And we gave it to them. And that's really it."
Now Bird on Tuesday will face the latest in a succession of games that could be her final one in Seattle. While everyone was lamenting Young's tying basket, Bird wisely pointed to the Storm's failure to bury the Aces when they amassed an 89-85 lead with 11.3 seconds to play only to watch the Aces roar back.
"You know, we were up four with not a lot of time left," Bird said. "And that's really to me where we lost the game, letting them take the lead. That means they scored, what? Five points in three seconds? That, to me, is where we really let this one go. I understand the last plays are going to stick out because they're dramatic and exciting. And I'm sure it was great TV. But we were up four."
Bird barely allowed herself to address the briefly triumphant shot that otherwise would have been the talk of the town. It was the first time she had hit a 3-pointer to give the Storm a lead with under 10 seconds remaining since 2011, but she brushed aside the question when asked what was going through her mind when she got the ball.
"Shoot it," she said succinctly.
Storm coach Noelle Quinn took responsibility for the messy finish, and the strategic decisions that led to it.
"It's on me," Quinn said. "I'll take it on the head. All of what happened at the end of the game, all of our execution things, that falls on me. ... I'll take the blame for everything."
The gloom of the Storm were contrasted with the giddy mood of the Aces. Chelsea Gray, who had a superb game with 29 points and 12 assists to go with 34 points and 11 rebounds for A'ja Wilson, noted the emotional swings that prevailed for the entire two hours and five minutes that the teams were on the floor.
"There was so much back and forth — 'Oh, no, they're gonna win it. Oh, we're going to win it. Now we're going to overtime,' " Gray said with a laugh.
And when it did indeed go to overtime?
"Yeah, that was a lot of momentum," Gray said. "We said in the huddle that the momentum is on our side right now. It was deflating for the home team. We were ready. We came out locked in for those five minutes."
Hammon said she was fully expecting the Storm, following a tough loss in Game 2, to come out on Sunday with "ferocity." The Storm, she said, are "always going to make a run. They're never going away."
And now Seattle's season, and Bird's career, is down to one more game. Perhaps the storybook is still to be written. Or slammed shut.
