Washington trailed by 20 in its 96-92 win.
Somehow, in the late minutes of a 20-point blowout that had morphed into an exchange of tough shots, what didn’t happen is what mattered most.
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For most of Wednesday night, the Washington Mystics trailed by double digits. Then, in a whirlwind of a 52-point second half, the game was right there. A Sonia Citron basket on one side. A Paige Bueckers response on the other. The type of basketball Washington fans haven’t seen much this decade.
Which is why, with a three-point lead in the final 30 seconds and a foul that would’ve sent the Dallas Wings’ Arike Ogunbowale to the line, the crowd stood silent. The CareFirst Arena screen played the review 17 times. Demonstrations broke out in seating rows. And, finally, a roar. And the seconds ticked and ticked. And a night of big shots finished as silently as it could on the court, Washington winning 96-92, and as disruptively as it could in the WNBA ecosphere.
“You can feel it,” Mystics coach Sydney Johnson said. “We’re riding with each other, and I think when you do that, you trust and you believe and you feel a bit deeper.”
In the cruel world of 2020s Washington Mystics basketball, a competitive loss to one of the top four teams in the WNBA would’ve sponsored positive break-room conversations the following morning. In this world, though, the Mystics (17-13) had won four straight, including three against the league’s second-, third- and fourth-best teams. They kicked this Wings group (19-12) around in an 81-75 win Friday. A second showing and a chance to double down? Yep, that meant something.
So cue the roar, no matter how messy the product that initiated it may have been.
“We’ve grown a lot from the reps that we’ve gotten. A lot of close games,” Johnson said. “We’ve won some. We’ve lost some. We’ve learned a lot.”
The Mystics didn’t lead once until the final three minutes. At halftime, they were down by 15. The primary culprit was their transition defense, which Johnson heralded before the game. But the Wings scored 14 points on the fast break in the first half. The Mystics scored 2. Each entered their locker rooms feeling like they had something more to prove.
During its recent winning streak, Washington hadn’t scored fewer than 81 points. The trio of Citron, Shakira Austin and Kiki Iriafen blossomed into one of the WNBA’s best offensive cores, with all three averaging at least 15 points per game on the season and 17 since July 20.
A bit of a celebration even unfolded at the Mystics’ Wednesday morning shoot-around. Austin, the typical third fiddle in that group, had been named AP WNBA player of the week. She’s “one of the best frontcourt players in the league,” Johnson said. How she didn’t receive an all-star bid? “Who knows,” he said. She’d focus on end-of-season awards, he said.
Her game-leading 27 points certainly did not make for an awful start — a season-high. After a lull in June, she hasn’t scored fewer than 11 in 10 games. This August evening, she was the spark.
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“Once we get out there, the ball is up and we’re trying to win a game,” Austin said. “We just had to go out there and just want it.”
Her supporting cast came alive down the stretch, even if Citron and Iriafen, the typical stars, finished with only 23. In their wake, rookie guard Cotie McMahon shined. Her 18 paced only behind Austin, and when she dropped in a crucial jumper in the final minute … whew.
“She got a little different crazy over there,” Austin said.
“It’s always been in me,” McMahon said. “My coaches and my teammates, they don’t want anything else from me. They don’t want me to bottle it in.”
Before any of this, Wings coach Jose Fernandez said Dallas needed to control the game’s speed. “With dictating pace, shot selection is crucial,” he said. And the Wings did that perfectly in the first half, shooting well over 45 percent from deep until late. Along the way, four Wings finished in double digits, Jessica Shepard leading with 22. When Washington’s offense bubbled, though, Dallas lost control. Three turnovers in the final minute certainly were of note. As were its 12 total points in the final quarter.
“Our schemes are pretty solid,” Johnson said of the evening. “Just a much, much better account of ourselves on the defensive end.”
But what makes this crescendo most piercing is the fitting perfection of the moment it has arrived. In early August last year, the Mystics sent away Aaliyah Edwards and all-star Brittney Sykes before the trade deadline, opting to reset. Young bench contributors got far more minutes than they signed up for, and the Mystics sputtered to their third consecutive losing season.
Running it back with largely that same band to begin this year, Washington’s roster could’ve interchanged positions and question marks. But there’s this wily thing in sports — and life — known as improvement. In an age in which franchises often opt to spend a bigger buck for the immediately proven thing than develop the next one, certain instances stand out.
Win after win, Washington certainly does. It has more victories with two months left than it finished with either of the past two years. And squarely in the playoff hunt at eighth in the WNBA, the Mystics decided at Sunday’s trade deadline to keep their hand tight. Why? The youngsters, like Austin and McMahon, are developing.
“The growth that they have now is a by-product of just that daily work,” Johnson said. “Which is something that you couldn’t necessarily have imagined with this young of a team.”
There’s no need for imagination here. The Mystics didn’t trade away their stars. They didn’t collapse when down 20. And, as the WNBA certainly learned Wednesday night, they didn’t lose yet again.
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