The Washington Post - 19.09.2019

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D3

wasn’t good or we get stuck in predicting: ‘Oh, I missed my first few shots. That means I’m not going to make any more tonight,’ ” Singer said. “If you’re in those spac- es, that’s where anxiety lives. So what we’re trying to teach is stay- ing present — how do you miss a shot, how do you have a bad foul call on you and regroup, become highly aware of where your emotions and thoughts are right now, and if those aren’t helping you, how do you readjust?” Delle Donne has incorporated the basic principles of meditation in that she focuses on her breath to collect herself. “I’m so much more calm. I don’t let the moment get away from me or something be too big or something bother me for too long,” Delle Donne said. “I was good at hiding it. I’m never one to vocalize things or try to show anybody my emotions. That’s always been something, like, nobody should see how I’m feeling. Especially the oppo- nent. I don’t want them to know if they were getting at me, but men- tally, sometimes they were. Now I truly — you’re going to have mo- ments where there are ups and downs, but I can really stay present. It’s b een awesome.” Having better mastery of her emotions also has helped Delle Donne’s leadership. Every player on the Mystics has mentioned throughout the season how the MVP has become more vocal, al- though that doesn’t mean she’s screaming in practice. Delle Donne does occasionally raise her voice in the huddle — and when she does, her teammates know to listen — but often she takes a player aside to dole out a pointer or two in private. Part o f her more noticeable leadership is that she’s simply more comfortable with this close-knit Mystics group than she was when she first entered the locker room in

For her 30th birthday, she
invited the entire team for a boat
party, Thibault included. She’s
close with Tianna Hawkins’s
young son. Reserve guard Shatori
Walker-Kimbrough calls her (and
Kristi To liver) “my daughters.”
For Delle Donne, a second MVP
trophy isn’t just a reward for the
work she does to keep improving.
It’s meaningful because she won it
with a team she loves and a fran-
chise that wanted to help her
evolve.
“This is my f amily; I love it here,”
Delle Donne said. “I feel like this
[MVP award] would mean even
more because it’s been different.
It’s not just scoring a ton of points.
I’ve been able to make others better
and impact the game in different
ways. I feel like I’ve become such a
smarter player. And that’s because
of being with Coach [Thibault] for
three years and learning so much
from him and being on a team
that’s so selfless and truly loves
each other and has loved this proc-
ess.”
[email protected]

When her Mystics teammates head abroad to supplement their incomes, Delle Donne takes advantage of all Washington has to offer. She starts every offseason by sit- ting down with Thibault and his son, Eric, the Mystics’ associate head coach, to plot ways to get better. Improving Delle Donne’s defense has been a task that’s spanned multiple offseasons. This year, while rehabbing a bone bruise in her left knee, the 6-foot-5 guard-forward spent all winter watching hours of film with Eric Thibault to develop better defen- sive timing when guarding smaller players. Two years ago, the focus was more targeted: Delle Donne slouches naturally, so she put in hours in the weight room working on her posture. “To play good defense, you don’t want to be leaning forward all the time,” Thibault said. Aside from her mental strength, Delle Donne believes that her defense has probably improved more than any other skill since she joined Washington. This season, she has been put to work defending shooting guards and centers alike. Her average of 8.3 rebounds nearly matched her career best of 8.4 during her previous MVP season. “She’s t hat talented. She came in the league that talented,” Las Vegas Aces Coach Bill Laimbeer said when asked about Delle Donne’s MVP award. “Okay, she’s been that kind of player her whole life, so what changed? She had to learn a little bit more about the WNBA and how big and physical they are. She’s learned to be a better post player than she was in the past. You used to just switch on her and that was the end of it.”

‘I’m so much more calm’ Delle Donne was always willing to do the on-court work required to get better, but minding her brain came less naturally. Stu Singer, the Mystics’ sports psychologist the past five years, leads the team in regular “mind-set workouts” — a term that describes mental exercises designed to help players deal with stress and teach them how to change poor habits. Delle Donne always had found the sessions helpful but wasn’t a be- liever until the middle of last season, when she dedicated herself to daily meditation and working with Singer more intensely. She wasn’t trying to fix a prob- lem; she was simply curious about the benefits of trying something new. “She’s one of those people that’s driven to be great, and when you’re driven to be great, you keep working on things,” Thibault said. Singer helped Delle Donne learn how to make in-game mental ad- justments. “The overthinking is that voice of perfection, that voice of, ‘I didn’t do it right,’ and then we get stuck in replaying what just happened if it

practice to swish a few free throws. Of the myriad tweaks Delle Donne makes to continue pushing her game forward in her seventh year in the league, it turns out that tending to the mental side of the game paid the biggest d ividends. This season, Delle Donne aver- aged 19.5 points — second in the league but well below her career high of 23.4 in 2015, when she won her first MVP award with the Chi- cago Sky — and 8.3 rebounds. But it was how she scored, not necessari- ly how much, that impressed. At 30 years old, she became the first WNBA player to sustain at least 50 percent shooting from the field (51.5 percent), 40 percent shooting on three-pointers (43 percent) and 90 percent on free throws (97.4 percent) for an entire regular season. This summer, she became the second-fastest player to reach 3,500 career points following Di- ana Ta urasi. More important, she led the Mystics to the best regular season in franchise history and the top seed in the WNBA playoffs. They hold a 1-0 lead in their best-of-five semifinal series against the Las Vegas Aces heading into Thursday night’s g ame in Washington. “It’s probably the biggest differ- ence this year, my commitment to meditation and mindfulness,” Delle Donne said. “I feel like I’ve just been so much more aware of my e motions and my t houghts. I’ve been able to refocus, re-center, ch ange the story.”

Year-round focus Delle Donne’s commitment to improvement, however, was nei- ther strictly focused on the mental game nor new to Delle Donne. In the first serious conversation Delle Donne had with the Mystics after she told the Chicago Sky she wanted a trade following the 2016 season, she grilled Washington Coach-General Manager Mike T hi- bault for 30 minutes about the tools his franchise had to help Delle Donne get better. Never mind that she already was a three- time all-star game starter, a former MVP and an Olympic gold medal- ist. “She asked us questions about all the periphery stuff, a bout sports psychology and weightlifting and facilities, what the coaching staff was like, individual work in the offseason,” Thibault said. “We told her we thought she could get a lot better as a defender. If she wanted to be the best player in the game, she had an upside in a lot of different things.” Delle Donne is the rare player who doesn’t play overseas during the WNBA offseason, in large part to stay close to her family in Dela- ware and her older sister, Lizzie, who was born blind and deaf, with autism and cerebral palsy and communicates only through touch and scent.

BY HOWARD MEGDAL MYSTICS FROM D1

uncasville, conn. — Joy radi-
ates out of Courtney Williams,
combo guard and beating heart
of the Connecticut Sun.
It is apparent at all times but
never more than when she is
around a basketball court. It
showed in the way she moved in
the layup line Tuesday night be-
fore her Sun defeated the Los
Angeles Sparks, 84-75, in Game 1
of their WNBA semifinal series.
She danced to a song playing
over the arena loudspeakers,
drawing a laugh from Sun assis-
tant coach Brandi Poole. She
went back to perfecting her mid-
range jump shot, then rushed
over to her father, Don, for a hug.
“I love basketball,” Williams
said after the game.
Her totals in the box score —
15 points, seven rebounds, five
assists, two steals and a block —
don’t make sense from a 5-foot-8
player until you watch her. Even
then, the stats underrate her.
Jonquel Jones is the Sun’s best
player by conventional measure,
at 6-6 the team’s leading scorer
and the league’s l eading rebound-
er and shot blocker during the
regular season. Power forward
Alyssa Thomas is the highly
skilled facilitator and rebounder.
Jasmine Thomas is the veteran
playmaker who seemingly always
knows where to go with the ball.
Williams, though, is the show,
“since always,” Don Williams said
of his daughter, whose jersey is
the most popular among fans in
the Mohegan Sun Arena stands.
“A lways making sure she was
best, too.”
The Sun, seeded second in the
eight-team playoffs, has been
pointed toward 2019 as its break-
through year since Curt Miller
arrived three years ago as its head
coach and general manager. Most
on the team speak of the project
in careful, clinical terms. But
Williams, who ranked second on
the team in scoring (13.2 points
per game) and assists (3.8) dur-
ing the regular season, will tell
anyone who will listen that the
Sun is going to win it all. She is
certain of it.
She appears set on recruiting
believers. The dancing comes
first. On Tuesday, she darted here
and there before the game, taking
pictures with fans in the first row
on one side of the court, then the
other.
By the time she left one group,
they were moving to the music.
The Sun’s b ench was, too, Natisha
Hiedeman and Bria Holmes
swaying as Williams clapped her
approval.
“There’s something that’s so
magical about her personality,
and it’s her positivity,” Miller
said. “You know, every single day
she walks in the building, she is
going to be positive. And no one
loves to play more than her. She
just loves the game. And so you

know what is going to happen when you get in between the lines with her. In practice, in games, she just loves the game. And she brings the positivity, which is really important around this team.” The belief extended to the game. Williams missed her first four shot attempts. Doesn’t matter, Jasmine Thomas explained. If Williams had missed her first six shots, she still would be confi- dent she could make the seventh. “We feed off that energy,” Thomas said. “A nd I think the fans, our fans, the league, they know that’s the type of person she is. When she’s feeling good and feeling like herself, she gives that energy to us.” Out of halftime, with the Sun trailing 40-37, Williams was all positivity. “Let’s go!” she shouted, and the Sun complied, hitting three three-pointers, two of them when Williams found Shekinna Stricklen. Williams is a fine scorer, capable of rising above de- fenders and getting her shot any- where on the floor, but she has improved her playmaking skills this year as well, with a career- best assist rate of 23.2 and a turnover percentage that has de- creased from last year to 10.8. But the numbers themselves understate the Courtney Wil- liams effect. Her sense of timing increases her impact; for in- stance, with the score t ied at 5 3 in the third quarter, she hit a base- line jumper at one end, then blocked 6-2 Nneka Ogwumike’s shot from behind on the other, forcing Sparks Coach Derek Fish- er to take a timeout.

“Man, my teammates want to put the ball in my h and, I’m going to deliver,” Williams said with a smile, her legs splayed in her corner of the Sun’s locker room. “I’m going to deliver. I mean, that’s all it is. Look, I’m out here trying to win games. Put the ball in my hand, I’m going to do my best to go get a bucket, I’m going to do my best to get a rebound, get a stop. Whatever I’ve got to do for us to win, that’s what I’m going to do.” She was at the center of an- other key moment with about five minutes left and the Sun leading by two, rising among the Sparks’ bigs to grab a rebound at one end and curling around a screen to bury an 18-footer at the other end for a 70-66 advantage. The Sparks would not get as close again. In the final minutes, with the Sparks hanging tough within 76- 70, Williams took the ball up the floor herself and drilled an 18- footer over Riquna Williams to bring the crowd to its feet. At the other end, she corralled a Los Angeles miss and drew a foul, then rushed to high-five a fan before heading to the free throw line. Dad was dancing. T he fans in the front row were dancing. Everybody was dancing, it seemed. After the horn sounded, Wil- liams was being interviewed on the court, her team five wins from fulfilling her prediction. “We just doing what we do!” she explained, and the crowd roared. She yelled once more: “Let’s go!” [email protected]

Williams shines brightest for the Sun MVP Delle Donne raises mental game

BY JESSE DOUGHERTY

st. louis — Try t o track Chip Hale
in the lead-up to a game — from
the coaches’ room to the club-
house to every nook of the out-
field, through any of his four du-
ties during a given batting prac-
tice — and it begins to feel like
watching a bug in w ater.
He d oesn’t s top moving. Motion
is his constant state. He told him-
self a long time ago, as an under-
sized infielder with a big baseball
dream, that he would do w hatever
was a sked o f him. He w as that way
when he debuted with the Minne-
sota Twins in 1989. And he re-
mains that way now, in the heart of
a pennant race, as a 54-year-old
fill-in manager who has been
thrust into a job t hat’s not h is.
Hale is temporarily managing
in place of Dave Martinez, who
remains in Washington after un-
dergoing a cardiac catheterization
Monday. Martinez will not need
any further procedures and is ex-
pected to rejoin the Nationals
once he’s cleared to travel. That
could be as soon as Friday in Mi-
ami. Hale will then be Martinez’s
bench coach, the role h e was hired
for two winters ago, and every-
thing will b e the s ame a gain.
But until then, Hale has a deli-
cate balance to strike. He man-
aged the Arizona Diamondbacks
in 2015 and 2016. He interviewed
for t he B altimore O rioles’ opening
this past o ffseason. Ye t he w ants t o
be clear that, no matter what, this
is Martinez’s team. That’s why
Hale hasn’t sat in the first row of
the team bus. That’s why he didn’t
get dressed in t he manager’s office
at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
That’s why he’s hesitant to discuss
his own managing style, even in
broad strokes, because that could
cross a line. He’s fine with doing
what the club needs, for as long as
it needs, for its goal of holding on
to the National League’s top wild-

card spot. He’s fine with little change. “Style-wise, you are locked i n to what your team has,” Hale said of how he’s personally approaching these games without Martinez. “If you have a bunch of guys who can run, you do it. If you’re a power gu y, you sit back and wait and go for the three-run homer like Earl Weaver. We have some really talented players that we are going to lean on down the s tretch.” Those two seasons in Arizona didn’t end l ike he hoped. He i nher-

ited a young team that few, i nclud- ing the Diamondbacks’ execu- tives, expected much from. Hale began his major league coaching career in 2007 after he played parts o f seven y ears with the Twins and L os Angeles Dodgers. His best season came in 1993 when he hit .333 in 213 plate appearances. He always fit the mold of a coach — a heady player, could field a lot of positions, had endless energy — and eventually surfaced on Bob Melvin’s staff with the Diamond- backs.

That lasted for three years before he bounced to the New York Mets. He was their third base coach and became a candidate for manager before the job went to Te rry Collins. Hale was with the Oakland Athletics for three seasons, then got his managerial shot with the Diamondbacks. The first year was a step forward for an unproven team. The second year was t oo big o f a step b ack. Hale’s record in Arizona stood at 148-176 when h e was fired. “By being better than anyone

thought that first year, we sort of created expectations for the next one that could have been unfair,” said Daniel Hudson, who played for Hale in Arizona and is now a late-inning reliever f or the N ation- als. “We just didn’t play well in his second year, and he had to fall on the s word f or the t eam. It h appens, but w e all loved playing for him.” Hudson described Hale as “always doing something.” The de- scription fits. He spends the most time with the kids of players. He’s often throwing pitches to Gerardo

Parra’s son in the early a fternoons. He spent much of the summer teaching Howie Kendrick’s son, Owen, what goes i nto g ame prepa- ration. He gathers as many bodies as he can to collect balls in the outfield d uring early b atting practice. Hale insists that this is all just a second workout for him, that he needs it to stay in shape in his mid-50s, that there’s nothing odd about how little he stands still. He runs every morning and, once he arrives with the team, gets more activity in by chasing down drives in the alley and hitting ground- balls t o infielders. But his contributions are more than extra cardio. Hale, like many older Nationals, is an illustration of baseball evolution. He’s like the 32-year-old Parra, designated for assignment by the San Francisco Giants this past spring, doing ev- erything he can in the clubhouse to keep Washington loose. He’s like Asdrúbal Cabrera, designated for a ssignment b y the Texas Rang- ers i n August, learning to play first base, h is f ourth position, at a ge 3 3. He’s like Kendrick, having his b est offensive season at 36, accepting that he’s no longer an everyday player because his body won’t al- low h im to be. When you’re older and maybe past your prime and maybe most teams aren’t rushing to bring you in, there’s increased value in always saying yes. Hale shows that by zipping around the ballpark every day. And he has shown it at the center of a trying situation, explaining decisions he hopes re- flect Martinez’s and expressing that as much as h e can. “We’re just trying t o execute the plan that we all come up with,” Hale said when asked why he has stuck to his same routine despite Martinez’s absence. “A nd Davey is a big part o f it.” [email protected]

Hale is always on the go — and right where he needs to be

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST Nationals bench coach Chip Hale is filling in for Dave Martinez after the second-year manager underwent a heart procedure this week.

JESSICA HILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS Courtney Williams’s versatile play and her charismatic personality gave Connecticut a boost in Game 1 of its WNBA semifinal series.

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The Washington Post - 19.09.2019

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