Turnaround

How quickly can a flailing, comically incompetent franchise turns its fortunes around?


It turns out that with capable management, pretty fast.

Attending Mystics games the past two seasons has been more of a political act than a chance to catch a sporting event.  I want my daughters to see women's professional basketball at Verizon because women's professional basketball should exist.  But its been a drag.  The coaching and management have been so horrid that you walk away feeling bad for the players and happy for the ones that were able to escape.  And with DC BasketCases bringing to a close their terrific blog, if the Mystics were terrible again this season, it is a tree falling in the middle of the forest.

So no pomp and circumstance for the game against the Lynx tonight.  I justified the trip downtown with reference to the homecoming of Georgetown's Sugar Rodgers and Rebekkah Brunson.

Now it bugs me that Washington opted for Ohio State's Tayler Hill over Tianna Hawkins in this year's draft.  But, with Hill getting significant minutes on the floor and Monique Currie and Crystal Langhorne at the 3 and 4, the 2013 iteration of the Mystics' is well-balanced inside and outside.

Yes, Washington fell apart in the fourth quarter.  But after scoring only eight points in the first nine minutes of the quarter, Washington notched ten in the last fifty-one seconds, including making eight of eight free throws and a back breaking nothing but net turnaround fadeaway jumper from Kia Vaughn.

Three wins in four games.  For a team that won five all of last year and six the year before that.  It has been a long time -- a long time -- since we have paid attention to the end of a Mystics game.  That was fun. 

Now if the team can convince enough people to show up to justify re-opening the Dunkin Donuts on game nights, we will be back in business.