Same old story for Storm ends in loss to Breanna Stewart’s Liberty

SEATTLE – Sami Whitcomb believes at some point the Storm must learn from their miscues and stop repeating mistakes if they’re going to reverse the troubling trend that threatens to doom their season.

“We can’t just keep having the same conversations with each other,” she said. “There has to be things that we’re doing — tangible things and real things that we’re implementing.”

However, Seattle has been trapped in a vicious cycle for weeks that goes something like this.

The Storm fall behind early. Jewell Loyd, the WNBA scoring leader, pours in a bunch of points, but isn’t terribly efficient. Seattle gets solid contributions from Ezi Magbegor and Whitcomb and pulls relatively close in the second half, but it’s not enough and the defense fails to provide adequate resistance.

It was the same old story Sunday afternoon Climate Pledge Arena.

Loyd scored a game-high 27 points, Magbegor had 12 and Kia Nurse and Whitcomb each chipped in 10.

However, the Storm trailed by 10 points after five minutes and were never truly in this game before falling 81-66 to the New York Liberty.

Seattle (4-12) has lost five of its past six games.

In her second game against her former team, Breanna Stewart tallied 20 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five steals for New York.

Courtney Vandersloot finished with 18 points and 12 assists, Sabrina Ionescu added 13 points and seven rebounds and Betnijah Laney added 10 points for the Liberty (11-4).

Before the 9,110 fans at Climate Pledge had settled into their seats, the Storm trailed 7-0 and were down 13-3 after five minutes.

Stewart connected on six of her first eight shots to match Seattle’s scoring in the first quarter and carried New York to a 26-14 lead.

The Storm held New York’s offense in check in the second quarter, with the Liberty shot 33.3% from the field, including 1 of 8 on three-pointers.

Still, New York outscored Seattle 18-13 in the period and had a 44-27 lead at halftime.

The Storm’s deficit swelled to 22 points (49-27) early in the third quarter before they seized momentum late in the period and pulled to 58-45 after Whitcomb drilled a three-pointer with 2:55 remaining.

Seattle next embarks on a four-game trip that includes stops in Connecticut, New York, Washington and Atlanta.