MINNEAPOLIS – With six games remaining in the 2010 season, the Lynx were 11-17. Their postseason chances were alive, but just barely, when the Los Angeles Sparks arrived at the Target Center for the 29th game of the season. It was a must-win game against a team with which the Lynx were jostling for a playoff spot.
The game was close throughout, and as the clock ticked down to its final seconds, the injury-ridden Lynx had a chance to seal a victory and extend their postseason hopes. First-year coach Cheryl Reeve was nervous, knowing the implications of another loss for a team that was already on the verge of elimination.
And then, those 1.1 seconds. In real time, 1.1 seconds is no longer than a quick breath or a snap of one's fingers. They're a step, maybe two, barely time to speak even a syllable, much less a sentence. But in basketball, with 10 players and one ball, with a cheering crowd and two anxious coaches, they're a lifetime. For the Lynx that season, 1.1 seconds were a both crushing blow and the last piece in a championship more than a year away. For all basketball teams, both men's and women's, they're a lesson in how hopes and aspirations should be built.
On August 12, 2010, the Lynx weren't yet thinking about Maya Moore. She was months away from the league, still training for her senior season at UConn. The WNBA playoff race was still on in a season in which it didn't take much to make it. Only one team in the Western Conference that season, the Storm, finished with a winning record, and the Lynx didn't yet suspect they'd be a lottery team.
So in that 1.1 seconds, things like playoffs and seedings and how to leapfrog ahead in the standings lurked in the back of the Lynx players' minds. That's what was worried and nagged at them as a series of errors resulted in a wide-open jumper for the Sparks' Tina Thompson. She made the shot, and the game was over, 78-77.
That game was the tipping point, in Reeve's eyes. It's easier to see it that way now, when back then it was just another obstacle, another force making her life and her players' lives more difficult in those late summer days.
"In the moment of 1.1 seconds, I can't tell you that I was thinking that it's going to be okay, everything happens alright," Reeve said. "If I'd have known in 2010 what was going to happen, I might not have taken things so hard. That year aged me quite a bit. But the reward for going through all that was to get Maya."
Now, it's clear that if the Lynx had won that game, their probability of wining the draft lottery on Nov. 5 would have been significantly smaller. They already had more than twice as many wins as the team with the worst record, the Tulsa Shock. They weren't the worst – far from it – so why should they have been thinking about building when a season seemed to be on the line?
Those final games of 2010 can still agitate Reeve. Her team was injured, far more talented than it appeared. The next season, players would joke about the challenges they'd faced in 2010, and Moore would always remind them of the upside of it all. She'd say that without the struggles, she wouldn't be in Minnesota, and she's grateful that she, as a No. 1 pick, got the chance to play on a team that didn't need much extra to win. She was the rare top rookie who wouldn't have to carry a team; her talent was allowed to grow and mature, to coexist rather than to be put to the test at every game.
"Maya's a smart person, and UConn has seen a number of WNBA players, and they stay in touch," Reeve said. "So I think Maya had a really good picture of what it would be like to be on a team that was a lottery team that was really struggling like Seimone having to carry a team (in 2006). If you do really well, maybe your team does well. If not, you struggle."
A week out from the NBA draft, and this story seems almost fairytale-esque. After months of wondering which team Anthony Davis would get the chance to save, even when the lottery put him on the fourth-worst Hornets, not the Bobcats, there's still a good chance he won't be enough to tip them toward a championship. That's in part a difference between the leagues, but it's also the perfect illustration of how lucky the Lynx were in the fall of 2010.
The story of Maya Moore and the Lynx should be an antidote to the kind of ridiculous expectations batted about after the NBA draft. The chances that Michael Kidd-Gilchrist leads the Bobcats to a championship – much less a playoff berth – are slim, and even Thomas Robinson might be a long shot to push the Kings to the top of the Western Conference. Yet that's the kind of players they're billed as in these early days. That's even how they might be used on their new squads, in leadership roles that these teenagers and 20-, 21-year-olds aren't yet ready for.
Moore's story makes it easier to understand the rumors of tanking, everything from the implicitly acknowledged "suck for Luck" campaign of the Colts in the NFL last season to the rumors that Phoenix might be sitting its best players in hopes to win one of the three stars set to join the WNBA next season. If a team is better than its record, like the Lynx in 2010, and can somehow finagle a top pick, they're likely to fill those blown-up expectations that a top pick can bring. In many cases, that's the only situation in which those college stars can find immediate success.
But here's the thing: Teams can plan, scheme, trade, negotiate all they want. They can do everything in their power to land the young man or woman whom they think will be their savior. But regardless, there are always the 1.1 seconds. There are always the things left so much to chance, missed calls and freak injuries and everything else that haunts up coaches' nightmares. That's why a team can't plan this stuff, why it can't bank on instant impact or even on controlling its own destiny.
So as teams purposefully tank, as they debate for hours the best moves to land the draft pick that they've deemed perfect, they should remember. They should know that this isn't about sustained periods of time, hours-long meetings or seasons or even streaks. So much of winning, of finding the perfect piece or formula, is about the milliseconds.
For every well-planned move, there's a missed shot that brings a team Maya Moore. There's a twisted ankle that makes Anthony Davis not only questionable for the Olympic team, but also suddenly human. So instead of finding the upside in losing, teams should take note of the Lynx in 2010. Let it hurt. Get angry. Believe that a playoff spot it better than a pick. That makes success so much sweeter.
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