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Ava Wallace
Journalist covering local colleges and universities
Returning to their offices at Arena Capital One on Thursday morning, the Washington Mystics looked at the daily details of the day of the outage before separating for the off-season. There was a team meeting before general manager Mike Thibault led a handful of exit interviews. The players handed over game books and filled in papers. If everything seemed a little mundane a day after the end of the best race in the team's history, Thibault said: "It's a bit like that when you have a good season."
The coach's first priority was to talk to the young players on the team, who will be leaving in a week to prepare for the season in the professional leagues abroad. He will schedule post-season conversations with veterans in the coming months – after all, almost all Mystics are expected to return next year. There is plenty of time to break the season once the boring sting of 98-82 Wednesday's defeat at Seattle in the third game of the WNBA finals.
[Svrluga: Mystics’ season ends with a loss, but it feels like the start of something]
These conversations will probably be optimistic. Driven by the talented Storm, the team was disappointing, but far from catastrophic for a young team that reached the first finals of the franchise without one of its teams, Emma Meesseman, who did not play this season because of burnout.
"A success," said veteran guard Kristi Toliver when asked to evaluate the Mystics season. "You can not fail if you are in the final. You must think big picture. This team has made a lot of progress from last year to this year.
"This Seattle core has been together for a while outside of [forward Natasha Howard]; it reminds me a little of Minnesota and how they had their core when they had these races. We are still new. We always learn each other. We will have another year next year and we will continue to improve and see if we can come back. "
[With finals MVP Breanna Stewart front and center, Seattle is primed for a dynastic run]
Mystics can measure their growth by post-season progress. They revised the training after missing the playoffs in 2016, then reached the semifinals of 2017 before being defeated by a Minnesota team playing to its full dynastic power. This season marks another step forward.
Washington took advantage of a late-season push to qualify for the finals, winning eight of its last nine regular-season games to finish third in the playoffs with a 22-12 record. When Thibault gave details of how the Mystics can continue to be built next year, a better start was at the top of the list.
"It took us a lot of experiences all year long to find our best groove, and we did not really understand until the end of the All-Star Game and that went on in the playoffs," was -he declares.
He hopes the team's move to a new 4,200-seat arena in Southeast Washington will help. The Washington Sports and Entertainment Arena is scheduled to open Sept. 22 and will house the entire Mystics operation, including the offices of Thibault and his team.
Getting out of Capital One Arena, with its busy schedule of three other professional sports teams, as well as concerts and other events, should allow the Mystics to better control their schedule. The goal is that they do not have to go on the road for a month in the middle of the season because of a convention or arena changes due to a concert or renovations.
But a new home will not solve the problems on the court that were revealed in the finals. The Storm dominated the Mystics in all three games. On the defensive, Washington has lost focus too often against a team that envied the chemistry and movement of the ball.
The addition of Meesseman in the squad should help in the attack – the Belgian was the team's second-leading scorer in 2017. The Mystics did well without it in the regular season, ending with the fifth most productive offensive of the league. missed when Washington was opposed to Seattle's polite snipers.
Rookie Ariel Atkins took over behind Elena Delle Donne and Toliver, averaging 11.3 points per game in the regular season and 15.2 in the playoffs, but the gap between Atkins' experience and Meesseman is significant.
"We spent a lot of time this year relying on a novice player as the third scorer," said Thibault. "What she did this year was ahead of schedule – you talk about optimism, I see a whole lot of different things we could do."
Aside from the disappointing playoffs, the critics of the 2018 season have been positive.
Center LaToya Sanders, who suffered a sprained left ankle for a loose ball on Wednesday, spoke of her teammates' dedication to the success of the franchise.
Players such as playmaker Natasha Cloud, who became the leader of the team, and Tianna Hawkins, who lost 20 pounds before the start of the season to play more effectively off the bench, give confidence Sanders.
"I am very proud of this team. I know in the pre-season poll we were chosen to finish eighth, "said Sanders. "To get to the finals, we can look at the positives to be right here."
The mystics have also acquired a critical experience. Toliver and Delle Donne were the only players in the team to have reached the finals of the WNBA before this year. Now, Washington has seen what it takes to win a championship.
"We have the impression of having a lot of young talent," said Delle Donne. "Of course, that's not how we want it to end, but it's an experience we can inspire."
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