October 10, 2009 - 6:36am
In front of a boisterous home crowd of 17, 313 at U.S. Airways Center, the Phoenix Mercury took their second WNBA crown in three years, defeating an intrepid Indiana Fever side. For the second time in the club's history, the Mercury came back from a 1-2 deficit in the best-of-five series WNBA Championship series to win it all.
Throughout the regular season, Phoenix and Indiana had battled each other for bragging rights to the league's best overall record. They split their regular-season head-to-heads, and throughout this Finals series, they have battled one another like punch-drunk fighters, neither one prepared to give an inch, with Game Three decided by a single point and all but one of the others extremely close. Coming into the decisive Game Five tied at two games apiece, it seemed appropriate that this game, too, would come down to the wire, as Indiana tied the score at 80 apiece with 4:29 left on the clock.
In the end, however, it would be Phoenix who prevailed, as Tangela Smith, who had been scoreless all evening, stepped into the gap with back-to-back three-pointers to spur her team to the win, and with it the title.
But it was the talented trio of Diana Taurasi, Cappie Pondexter and Penny Taylor who would carry the freight for the Mercury most of the night and fall into one another's arms in celebration and relief at the final buzzer. Taurasi, who had struggled with her shot over the past three games of the series, picked a fine time to rediscover her stroke. The WNBA's high scorer and regular-season MVP scored a game-high 26 points, including four long-balls, three of them coming at a critical juncture in the second quarter, when the Mercury had been trailing the Fever, and providing the momentum for her team to retake the lead. Though the Fever would tie the score twice thereafter, they were never able to retake the lead.
For her efforts, the Mercurys Taurasi was named MVP of the Finals series, making her just the third player in WNBA history to sweep both the regular-season and Finals MVP awards. (Cynthia Cooper accomplished the feat in 1997 and 1998, and Lisa Leslie swept the two awards in 2001).
Without taking one iota away from Taurasi, who had six boards, four assists and three blocks to go with her 26 points, an equally strong case could be made for her running mate Cappie Pondexter, whose night included 24 points, four rebounds and two assists and had performed significantly better than Taurasi over the five-game series. Taurasi seemed to acknowledge as much. After being presented with the MVP trophy by league president Donna Orender, Taurasi pointed to her teammates, then handed the crystal piece over to them. As they raised the MVP hardware as a group, Taurasi reached for the Championship trophy and held it aloft. If there was ever a year that the MVP award was to be given to a player on the losing side, this might have been it.
"I proceeded to give the [MVP] trophy to the team, because that's who deserved it," said Taurasi. "It's not one player that makes the MVP, never has been and never will be. And the big trophy is what we were after. So I'll take that one in the memory of our team."