Final score: Storm 83 – Sting 71 (W) (8-6)

Attendance | 5003

Submitted by | Jimmy K

What a game, folks. Charlotte is a great place to watch a basketball game.
 
I, thankfully, got press passes to the event (working at a radio station accomplished that!), and got a real good view of the game. My original plan was to talk to Sue and LJ and others, but that didn't work out.  More on that later.
 
That building was so jacked up it wasn't funny. Just 5,003 people there, but they were really loud and full of energy. They actually did introductions for the reserves, which was interesting. And they did a thing for AD, and then that other one making someone an honorary Sting player, too.
 
In the first half, I was watching the game, and the pileup for the ball. Once the ball went down the court, all of a sudden I hear a whistle, and the announcer said that the Storm had called a 20-second timeout. As he got to the word twenty, I saw Sue on the floor. First thing, I thought it was her knee, which really worried me. But alas, she was holding her nose. I thought she'd be OK after the ice, but AD just kept pulling her out.
 
LJ couldn't hit water if she fell out of a boat in the first half. Thankfully, Adia was on fire. She had ten or twelve before I knew about it.  
 
Not very concerned, though, that we were down after the first half. As I told my cousin (who traveled with me and sat beside me during the game), it's better to have LJ shooting bricks in the first half than the second. And she didn't in the second half. Had a couple huge blocks, in fact. I was impressed with her play after halftime.
 
Not very impressed, though, with Alisa Burras. She scored a few times, I think, but had lots of fouls and fumbled the ball a couple times.
 
Kamila did well not fouling (or getting close to anyone) until the second half, when the calls resumed against her. She made some good moves to the basket, too.
 
Sue didn't do so well after the incident with her nose, but thankfully she didn't have to. She made a sweet no-look to LJ, who snapped it to Kamila for a layup for the best play of the day. Sue went down hard once, and before I could tell her to get up, she did, which was reassuring. She didn't look like she was favoring her knee much, which is good.
 
Free throws. Nobody missed one for either team until sometime in the second half. I noted at halftime when the stats were handed out that no one had missed one, and told my cousin to watch, that Sue with her 90-something free throw percentage would be the first to miss one. She wasn't, but she did miss her first of the night. Not a big deal in the end.
 
I had no clue who got the technical.  It was a foul on the Storm, and I was thinking a Storm player got T'ed until I saw Sue coming to the opposite free throw line. I was on the opposite side of the court, so I have no clue what was said or anything. After the game, I found out in the box score that it was Charlotte's coach who got it.
 
With Kamila at the line and 6.5 seconds left, I looked over to my cousin and told him that I have to do this again sometime. He really enjoyed the game, too, watching LJ the whole time, I might add. It was his first pro basketball game, and it was mine as well.  
 
The refs were not too bad. There were a couple bad calls both ways. The worst was on a play when Adia accidentally kicked the ball out of bounds. She was the last one to touch it, but the refs gave the ball to the Storm. We'll take it!
 
The fans behind us were great. There was the one guy who kept telling Kelly Miller (and only Kelly Miller) to get in the game. There was a woman out there who could yell at any pitch or anything. Just like one of those battery-powered noisemaker things. They had those thunder stick things, but I don't know what they called them. There were more teenage girls there than anything else, though, and some of them had pictures taken with the Sting's mascot. More on him later.
 
During the breaks and at halftime, there were goofy contests going on. They put a target at center court and tried to get the fans to hit it with paper airplanes. Another time they got a couple fans, spun them around, and had them on their hands and knees trying to find a box so they could get free food somewhere. There were others, but I really can't remember them all.
 
I did get some pics, but I didn't get any shots during play because I wasn't sure how to do that right. I know Admin Scott and others get shots like that, but I had no clue how to do those, and I didn't know what it would look like without the flash. Maybe someone can help me with how to take what and when. Anyway, I had a film camera, so the pics should be back in a few days. I'll see if I can get Scott to post them then.
 
As for the mascot, the little bee/hornet thing, he was pretty funny.  Nothing like what I've seen on TV of Doppler, but he still was pretty funny, holding up cue cards for the fans, dancing around, and generally acting goofy. I don't believe Sue looked at him, but I wasn't watching her the whole game, so I'm not sure. And she was probably more than a little concerned with her nose. But at least Ithought about Doppler!
 
After the game, I saw someone catch Adia after the postgame huddle.  They took her over to where David and Elise were sitting. They interviewed her for a long time, it seemed. I was thinking about talking to David, but my cousin noted that it might be a good idea to get back to the press area to make sure we could talk to some players. I don't think David had officially signed off the broadcast yet, either.
 
As I walked by him, I heard him tell a fan, "I told you before the game that we'd see the best player in the world tonight, and we did in the second half." Talking about LJ, of course. I don't think he said exactly that, but close enough. Wow. I know he's partial to the Storm, but it is cool that he said that.
 
The press conference with Charlotte's coach was in progress when we got there. She was very gracious, giving high praise to Sue and LJ. One person asked if she had a clue about how to stop the Storm in the second half, and she told them that if she had a clue, she would've done something about it.
 
After that, the two of us just sat around.  I thought the locker rooms opened half an hour after the game, but it was a little different, apparently, because we missed the whole thing. I thought I saw Kamila walking out, but we were so far away that we'd never have caught her. We waited for a while, and left when the Sting people started leaving.  
 
As we walked out, we noticed that the buses that were there before the game were gone. I figured that AD decided that it would be good to leave right after the game since this team seems to have swelling problems on flights (knees and feet, that is). The sooner they get back to Seattle, the sooner they could heal from the post-flight effects and everyone be able to play the next game. I was a little disappointed at not getting to talk to Sue or LJ, but it was OK. I had an absolute blast watching them play.
 
And then I got lost in Charlotte (downtown, no less) getting home.  Couldn't find Interstate 77 to save my neck. That, however, is another story for another day. This post has been way too long anyway.
 
Bottom line, it was a win for the Storm, which made it well worth the 500 mile round trip. Go Storm!!!