PHOENIX — With about 7:54 remaining in the final quarter of the opening act of the Brittney Griner Invasion, Phoenix Mercury guard Charde Houston attacked the middle of the Chicago Sky defense.
Within a step of the rim, she went airborne, taking two stingy defenders with her and leaving one very large rookie free for a drop-off pass.
At 7:52, the rookie slammed the ball through the rim with one hand, delighting most witnesses in the sellout crowd — a group that included former Suns players Grant Hill and Jason Richardson — at US Airways Center.
It also trimmed the Sky lead to 22 points.
And so the first official performance from Griner and her Mercury teammates ended in a 102-80 defeat late Monday afternoon.
“It didn’t go the way we planned,” said Griner, who had 17 points, eight rebounds, four blocks and two dunks. “But in a loss you learn a lot.”
And here’s the most important lesson:
“Stay on the floor.”
That can be taken two ways: Stay on the floor by not fouling to excess and/or don’t leave your feet in an attempt to cancel every shot by the opposition.
With both of those variables in play, Griner’s eagerness for rejections resulted in three fouls by 2:35 of the opening quarter.
“Keeping my feet on the floor,” she said in offering a finer point of the overall lesson. “I’m already tall.”
Keep your wheels on the ground while taking the learning curve? Check.
The irony, of course, is that no WNBA player of anywhere near Griner’s 6-foot-8 has been able to get off the floor with such velocity. So the physical characteristics that have inspired such high expectations for her and the Mercury sort of got in the way of the game plan.
“I guess I was a little too pumped,” Griner said of her game-changing enthusiasm. “I was leaving the floor, trying to block everything. Doing stuff I should know not to do.”
Sharing the credit for this setback was Mercury coach Corey Gaines, who — when Griner picked up foul No. 2 at 4:28 of the first period said, “OK, I’m going to let her go.
“It hurt us,” Gaines said, “because she’s a big part of this team.”
With Griner down for the end of the first quarter and the entire second, the Sky went to work. Making shots at a 70.8 percent clip, Chicago scored 39 points in the second period. By the way, the Sky also have a pretty swell rookie named Elena Della Donne, who teamed with Epiphanny Prince to put up a combined 48 points. Della Donne had 12 of her 22 in the second quarter.
Chicago went 8-for-16 from 3-point range overall, including 5 of 7 in the second. The majority of those 3s occurred in pick-and-roll situations that forced Gaines and the Mercury to alter yet another plan.
At first they switched the screen, but they were unable to prevent the 6-foot-5 Delle Donne from getting clean looks (2-for-2 from behind the arc) over a shorter defender. The next tactic was going under, but Phoenix then was burned by Prince, who was able to unload before her defender recovered and went 3 of 5 from deep in the second.
Gaines also mixed in the “black” version of pick-and-roll defense, which — when executed properly — brings a hard hedge by the player guarding the screener against the ball handler.
That worked better in the second half, enabling the Mercury to climb to within 12 after falling behind 56-32 at intermission. But Phoenix wasn’t executing well enough on offense to convert better defensive stands into enough points.
“They played a helluva game,” Mercury guard Diana Taurasi said of the Sky. “They deserve it; they played well from the beginning to the end.
“We just couldn’t find the rhythm on either end.”
The copper lining (hey, this is Arizona) was provided by a 15-point, six-rebound performance from Griner in the second half.
“If we can get two halves of that, we have a chance to win some games,” said Taurasi, who provided 18 points.
Gaines, who rolled the dice by allowing Griner to stay in the game after those two quick fouls in the first, said he contemplated putting her back on the floor to stem the huge second-quarter tide.
“If she had picked up her fourth foul, you would be out here asking me why I put her back in,” he said.
For Taurasi, the positive takeaway in regard to the prized rookie was easy to identify.
“Foul trouble will happen,” she said. “It’s part of the game. But the way she came out in the second half was good news.”
