Because Somebody Has to Watch the WNBA - right?

So, I took a month (or two) off of basketball, because I did. They do not exactly back trucks full of money up into my yard to write these things, and I am somewhat confident that the fourteen or so people who regularly read this page have found some way to stagger forward into their world.

I notice with some sadness that no one has joined my crusade to demand some way to post four column tables on this web site. I shall have to carry on The Struggle alone.

I tried to follow the WNBA. I really did. For about a week. Then my real job flared up. Then I went camping Then... you get the idea. They're in playoffs now, and I couldn't tell you much about it except that Diana Taurassi couldn't drag my hometown Mercury into the post-season. Some other team will win. And someone will cheer about it. Good for them.

I had decided months ago that should I run out of real basketball issues to write about, I'd do some reviews. I'd review websites in this blog, and books in the regular articles. There is a theory, shared by Suite 101 management, that one should not link to other websites when you're getting paid by the pageview. This is hooey, and I can prove it.

When you're surfing around the search engine looking for an answer to a topic, do you stop at the first relevant website and shout "Mission accomplished!"? Well, I don't. And I'm certain that the folks who have any interest in how many rebounds George Mikan might have pulled down in 1951 (my blessed if microscopic target audience) don't either. They'll hit several sites, because they have long ago learned not to take wiki-whatzit's word for anything.

If you want to know (as I admittedly do - now) which WNBA teams made the playoffs, your first stop is going to be the WNBA homepage. Like it's NBA counterpart, it consists of many frames, each a bright variant of red, white or blue, and takes forever to load - even on my cable modem.

It does, however, have the brackets and the current standings right on the front page. You'll also find some needless animation, and some brazen marketing tie-ins, but these are typical of pro-sports web sites.

Let's suppose I care about the Sparks/Storm series. It takes only two clicks to get to a page with a narrative summary of their regular season clashes, and then links to recaps and box scores from each of their regular season games. From this, I could begin to form some opinions on teams I haven't actually seen play.

We note here, with some dismay, that the highlight box claims the Sparks won two out of the three regular season meetings, when, in fact, it was the other way around. The Sparks eeked out their only victory over the Storm by one point, due to last minute heroics by Lisa Leslie. The Storm won the other two games handily.

I could, then predict that the Storm will win the series (and indeed they won the first game of their best-of-three), but we know better. A three game series is one step removed from a coin toss. More on that some other day.

The site has some hyperbolic and strategically incomplete history articles, a section where you can e-mail players, and blogs from writers who actually follow the games.

The WNBA cares about you and your feelings, and they'll go out of their way to mention this about every fives sentences or so. But none of that goop kept me from finding my numbers, so good for them.

I'd call for a group hug, but we're already way over word count.