What went wrong in the Seattle Storm’s season opener

“They got the jump on us from the beginning,” veteran point guard Skylar Diggins told reporters after the loss. “They kicked our ass. It’s embarrassing.”

The Storm struggled on multiple levels on Saturday night. Offense was one of the clearest issues as Seattle converted only 33.3% of their field goal attempts and didn’t break 60 points. Diggins said credit should be given first and foremost to the Mercury and the good defense they played.

“I thought they did everything better on paper than we did tonight, you know, let’s just be honest about that,” Diggins said. “I think we did get a lot of the shots that we wanted to get and maybe they didn’t fall for us, and I think they took us out of some of our stuff too.”

Getting into some specifics after the game, head coach Noelle Quinn told reporters she felt her team wasn’t intentional enough about getting downhill, played too much side-to-side, especially in pick-and-rolls, and needed to be more aggressive. Phoenix’s defense also seemed to speed her team up on the offensive side of things, not getting set or spaced in the right spots, and dictate Seattle’s offense. They also failed to match Phoenix’s pressure and physicality. All these things Quinn felt were uncharacteristic of what she’d seen from the team since preseason began.

Diggins and fellow veteran All-Star Nneka Ogwumike both took responsibility after the loss and spoke to their frustration with their own performances. Diggins in particular felt that she didn’t get the offense organized the way she wanted to and should have.

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“As a unit, the last few weeks, our principles, systems, that we’ve been pretty locked into. I thought we were very undisciplined in that,” Quinn said postgame. “But we have a mature group, and we have a connected group, and so we will look at it and get better from it.”

As Quinn pointed out, the good news for the Storm is that they have a veteran group who know how to move on from this.

“That’s not the identity that we’ve had for the last month and a half. But we’re still coming into our own, coming into ourselves, and it’s the first game,” Diggins said. “We have a locker room full of veterans. We’ve been in this game a long time. We’re not going to be married to this first game. And the thing about this league is that you have to be ready to respond quickly, because the games are going to come.”

Diggins said her team will not shy away from feeling the negative emotions this game made them feel. It will be a part of what fuels their response.

New team struggling to gel or just the first game of the season?

It is too early to ring any serious alarm bells after just one game. Seattle didn’t start last year well but improved throughout the season and still made the playoffs. However, the Storm’s expressed focus on getting a team with six brand new faces on the court to gel makes the lack of offensive cohesion mildly concerning.

Seattle officially waived three players on May 12 to functionally finalize their opening day roster. That marked the earliest the franchise had finalized said roster in Quinn’s tenure as head coach. It was an intentional choice to make the decision as early as possible in order to hopefully see the team benefit from knowing their pieces and places at least five days before their regular season opener.

“This week, it was about being definitive and really defining roles, defining where our shots can come from within the offense and be more specific about the who, what, when, why, where about it,” Quinn told reporters at practice on Wednesday. “It just lends to just more chemistry building immediately, and more focus space.”

The idea was that cutting the extra bodies would allow the main core to get more intentional reps together and fine tune things rather than spend the entire preseason focusing on evaluation of talent. This should’ve been further beneficial because the team have French forward Gabby Williams in camp to start the season, the earliest she has reported in all her years with the Storm, rather than having her jump in midseason.

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Seattle had time they haven’t had in the past to get their starting group of Diggins, Williams, Ogwumike, free agency addition Alysha Clark and young Australian center Ezi Magbegor, clicking. The bench made up entirely of players new to Seattle also got time to learn their roles. Shooting guard Lexie Brown, veteran guard Erica Wheeler, 5’9 Zia Cooke, 6’7 center Li Yueru and 6’6 versatile forward Dominique Malonga make up the bench half of the 10-player roster. Katie Lou Samuelson is the required minimum 11th player on the roster but tore her ACL in training camp and will be unavailable all season.

On Wednesday, opinions on how the team was gelling to that point were high. The Storm had scrimmaged the Los Angeles Sparks the Sunday prior, after which someone told Wheeler that her team’s gel looked like it was in midseason form.

“That’s a big compliment, because, you know, we know each other, but not as well,” Wheeler told The Next. “I think what plays a big part is that we have great human beings, and you also have great basketball players. So when you can mix those two things together, it’s kind of easy. And when you have great human beings who have the will and want to learn, you take nothing personal. So yeah, we get on each other’s asses but we’re not taking it home and being mad at each other.”

Wheeler was hesitant to agree with the complimenter’s assessment. The first undrafted player to win All-Star Game MVP in 2019 said her team still has a lot of work to do because their standard is very high and they are not content.

“If this is great to people then we’re going for Hall-of-Fame-type shit,” Wheeler said.

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Bench players will be consistently key

The 2025 season will be the longest in WNBA history with each team playing a record 44 games. Starting the season with 10 active players and knowing they can’t add an 11th for a big chunk of the season while one starter is the oldest active player in the WNBA this season (Clark, 37) and two will turn 35 this season (Diggins and Ogwumike), Quinn said she expects to consistently use her entire roster.

“They also are probably the top athletes in the league who take care of their bodies,” Quinn said of Clark, Ogwumike and Diggins. “They’re very intentional about that. So to me, age is nothing but a number when it comes to how these guys are preparing themselves. The reality of it is, yes, that’s there. But at the end of the day, it’s about being smart — sometimes working smarter, not harder. But yeah, we’re going  to rely on all of our players to contribute.”

Regardless of the age of those three starters, the length of the season and small nature of the roster ensure the bench’s importance. This proved true in the first game of the season as all 10 players played at least nine minutes and the bench put 20 points on the board.

“I think that what our bech was able to come in and do with how we started was okay, I’m actually okay,” Ogwumike said. “They came in, they were trying to do what they could to shift the energy. It’s not at all what I think our bench is capable of but it’s on us to put them in a position to come in and continue to build in the game. So I think they did good.”

Of that group, Cooke’s performance particularly stood out. Cooke was one of the four players vying for the 10th and final spot on the Storm’s opening roster, eventually beating out Brianna Fraser, Serena Sundell and Mackenzie Holmes. In her first regular season appearance for Seattle, Quinn said Cooke played good minutes, providing a needed burst of energy, good physicality and athleticism — embodying the sort of attributes that earned her the roster spot in the first place.

Speaking to national media over Zoom on the same day the team made its final waives, Quinn explained that Cooke’s understanding of and fit within the team’s system played a large part in her inclusion on the roster.

“She was here early before camp started and so she was able to get acclimated to the building, to us as coaches, and learning our system pretty early,” Quinn said. “She’s one of our quickest players here in camp. Her ability to defend is what I’ve been really emphasizing with her.

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“She’s played with Nneka [Ogwumike] before, but coming back in a different environment and having different resources and just a different team makeup I think has really empowered her to bring out her strengths. She’s a student of the game, watching film every day and you can see the professionalism — she’s learning it and exuding that every single day because of who we have here around her. And I think she’s done an excellent job in camp with giving exactly what we’re asking for.”

Quinn noted that she thinks Cooke’s defensive strengths go back to her time at South Carolina playing for Dawn Staley. The Gamecocks head coach is well known as putting a heavy emphasis on defense, pointing to defense as a strong suit of all her players drafted into the WNBA this year.

“Her No.1 role is to be a physical perimeter defender,” Quinn said of Cooke. “I think that’s one thing Coach Staley stressed or emphasized with that team in general, is some defensive presence. Being able to not only defend physically but also with your mind, understanding scout-specific and understanding who you’re on the court with and rotations and all of those things. So I think having her here early, she picked up on a lot of key elements of both of our systems, defensively and offensively.” 

The former Ann Meyers Drysdale Shooting Guard of the Year award winner and 2022 NCAA Champion struggled offensively in her first two years as a professional. After being drafted No. 10 overall in the 2023 WNBA Draft, Cooke played 14.1 minutes per game and averaged 4.8 points while shooting 28.9% from the floor and 26.1% from three. In her second season she averaged 8.9 minutes per game and her shooting only slightly improved.

In her first appearance for Seattle, the typically poor three-point shooter ironically hit two of her team’s three total made shots from beyond the arc on two attempts. While her other three attempts came from inside the arc and missed, Cooke brought energy and defensive presence for 13 big minutes. 

While the starting players aim to tip off future games with better energy and overall play, bench players like Cooke will look to continue maximizing their impact in a short amount of time and bring whatever their team needs to the game.