While the Fire traveled south, I traveled east to Kentucky for a few days, where I watched this game tip-off at 10:00PM. Lord, let me never move to the eastern time zone, and Lord, let the Fire never give Golden State players room to shoot.

These are an old set of standardized “only stats that matter”. Here’s a fun explainer video from Molly Brown on Instagram, who is going to be a great follow for any fan of my writing here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXusixFkrAA/

There are competing thoughts in my head that I love turning over: the Golden State Valkyries just put together one of the best offensive games by any team this season (no team has had an eFG% over 59% with 7 or fewer turnovers until this game), which can lead to two responses: sometimes the opponent just never misses and you lose, or sometimes the opponent is getting the shots they want and we need to change our defense.

I think this game qualifies for both.

The Valkyries looked like the most confident and well-prepared team the Fire have played this season, which tracks, because they, like the Fire, just created their team whole-cloth last season with a clear vision in mind, giving them a strong and singular identity across their roster. The preparedness is going to continue getting stronger against the Fire as the season progresses and the league learns Portland’s tendencies and roster construction. Golden State was so well prepared that you can watch their lead guard Veronica Burton echoing Portland’s hand-signals for the offensive set they are about to run. The Valkyries literally know some of Portland’s playbook:

(note the lack of off-ball rotations from the Fire that lead to an open three for the red-hot Valkyries)

The Fire’s game plan, on the other hand, was not sharp enough: room to launch three-pointers was given to everyone on the Golden State roster, and everyone was hitting their shots. The Valkyries had 18 made threes (the most any team had made in a game this year) and 43 bench points.

For how bad this game felt at points, the Fire basically lost one quarter of this game, and were +1 in the other three:

Of course, you can’t lose a quarter by 20 points and still feel like you played good enough to win, but Portland played 30 really good minutes, and given it was their first road game in one of the tougher places to play, no one should choose this moment to overreact about anything.

I am, however, starting to minorly worry about two players: Karlie Samuelson and Luisa Geiselsöder. Samuelson, who is coming back from a massive injury, has played 55 minutes across 4 games, and basically has not hit a shot: she is 0-10 from three, which is her superpower, and funnily enough 2-2 from inside the arc. She isn’t an imposing defender, and is therefore not giving the Fire much so far, and the team has a -9.5 net rating when she is on the floor. Geiselsöder, who started the first 9 games of the season, has shot just 25% from the field in her last five games, has been replaced by Megan Gustafson as the starter, and has seen her minutes per game shrink significantly. The Fire are -15.4 per 100 possessions when Geiselsöder is on the floor in their last 5 games.

These cold streaks present a new challenge to this rookie coaching staff, and I’m curious how they handle it: how much do they change their rotations? When do they try to find minutes for their cold players, and when do they stop putting them in? Additionally, how can they get their players out of slumps? How can they change sometime in practice, or in games, that help these players break through and start contributing meaningfully? Both players we talked about are capable, and we’ve seen Luisa be a positive force in big wins. Do the coaches have this skill in their bag? This is our first chance to find out.

Portland needs to have a better designed shot diet in their offense. Emily Engstler (12 points) and Megan Gustafson (13 points)  took 12 shots each this game. Bridget Carleton (11 points) and Carla Leite (10 points) took 6 shots each. Those numbers, in a well-designed world, are reversed. Portland wants to spread the ball around, score from every level, and have a roster full of average-or-better shooters, but Golden State’s defense funneled the ball away from Portland’s #1 and #2 options, and it worked out great for them, even if the Fire had a good shooting game.

The Fire let go of the rope on defense. Sure, the other team shot the lights out, but forcing just 7 turnovers is antithetical to Portland’s identity. Letting opponent success take the pep out of your step is not something the Fire want to allow to happen, and it is not something that winning teams let happen. I’m betting this is a good lesson that the team will talk about and be better at in the future.

Portland is going to have a lot of first-time challenges this season. The Fire have so many close wins, blowout losses, and blowout wins, that it feels like they’ve seen so many different looks and challenges in their 11 games so far. They have, but many remain on the schedule: they have only played in 4 out of 14 opponent stadiums, and they have only played against half of the teams in the league so far. Not only are there many firsts yet to see, but second and third times playing an opponent brings new challenges. Expect skewed results to continue.

Teja, after a couple of games struggling to get the ball in the hoop from varying parts of the floor, had the hot hand, missing just one of her six shots Tuesday night, including a 3/3 second half.

The Golden State Valkyries did what they do. Hopefully Portland continues their streak of bouncing back, of looking at the film and making proper adjustments, and being resilient. After two days off, the Fire get to play back at home against the struggling Phoenix Mercury, where we maybe get to see Emily Engstler guard Alyssa Thomas, Nyadiew Puoch guard Kah Copper, and one of the best three-point shooters in the league in Jovana Nogic.

Have questions? Submit them through the link below, and I’ll answer them periodically!

Points per Possession - how many points a team scores for every possession they have

Effective Field-Goal Percent (eFG%) - field goal percentage with weight added to three-point shots

Turnover Percent (TOV%) - percent of possessions that ended in a turnover

Offensive Rebound Percent (OREB%) - percent of a team’s own misses that they rebounded

Free-Throw Attempt Rate (FTA Rate) - how many free throws a team takes for each Field Goal attempted