Motor City Sports

So now that we’ve established that the Shock are leaving Detroit, heading to Tulsa and getting a new coach/GM in Nolan Richardson, what happens next?

First off, they are going to need a new name. WNBA teams always take new names – the Orlando Miracle became the Connecticut Sun and the Utah Starzz became the San Antonio Silver Stars. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to guess that the Shock will now be known as the Tulsa Lightning. It fits in with the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, and there’s also some poetic justice to the name. After all, the NHL has the Tampa Bay Lightning, another team that won a championship while owned by Bill Davidson.

Second, they need a roster. Luckily, that’s pretty much done. All but three of the Shock’s key players are under contract for next season, including Katie Smith, Plenette Pierson, Deanna Nolan, Kara Braxton, Shavonte Zellous and Alexis Hornbuckle. They do have three unrestricted free agents – Cheryl Ford, Taj McWilliams and Nikki Teasley – but they can keep one of them by designating them as their “core” player. That would give the player a max contract, but take away their free-agent status.

So who do they core? Teasley helped some, but was just a role player brought in during the season because of injury problems. McWilliams is a great leader, and they wouldn’t have won the 2008 championship without her, but today’s her 38th birthday (happy birthday, Taj!), and she’s probably not the best choice.

It’s actually an easy decision. Even with two bad knees, you have to keep Cheryl Ford. She and Nolan are the last links to the 2003 championship team that started Detroit’s incredible run, and with more time to rehab her knees, I expect her to be closer to what she was – the best rebounder in league history.

So the Lightning will have plenty of talent – they’ve still got the same nucleus that won the 2008 title, since McWilliams replaced Ford. In 2009, they overcame a great deal of adversity – Pierson’s season-ending injury in the opener, Bill Laimbeer’s abrupt departure, the cloud of the move to Tulsa hanging over their heads – to come within a game of a fourth-straight Eastern Conference title.

They also have Nolan Richardson, a hugely successful coach at the men’s college level. He won a national championship with unfancied Arkansas and went to two other Final Fours. He also coached at the University of Tulsa in the 1980s, so he’s got local credibility. If you wonder how important that is, think about how Bill Laimbeer turned around the Shock.

Unfortunately, while Richardson is unquestionably a successful coach and he’ll bring fans to the building, I think there’s a major problem – his legendary “40 Minutes of Hell” playing style. Richardson’s teams won with sheer effort and fitness – they played 40 minutes of up-tempo offense and pressing defense and wore out the opposition.

The high-speed offense isn’t a problem in the WNBA – Phoenix has proven that with two championships in three years – but no one has tried to do it on both ends of the floor. The Mercury are one of the league’s worst defensive teams, because they are only focused on trying to outscore the opposition.

Richardson makes it work by stressing fitness and by regularly playing 10 or 11 players, but those are two strategies that have serious problems in the WNBA. It’s a lot easier to get a team prepared for 40 all-out minutes a night when they are playing 30 games a year, but that’s not true of the players he’ll have in Tulsa. Many WNBA players spend the offseason playing in other parts of the world, so they are carrying bumps and bruises before they even arrive in training camp in May. Also, the league only allows 11-player rosters, with no injured list, so teams often don’t have 10 or 11 healthy players. Because of Pierson’s injury, Detroit never had more than 10 players in uniform, and often needed to juggle their roster just to get to nine. So “40 Minutes of Hell” would always be tough to implement in the WNBA, but it is going to be even harder with the Tulsa roster.

This is a team built in the Laimbeer/Mahorn mold, which isn’t exactly centered on speed. Ford is as tough as anyone in the league, but she’s had major injuries to both knees, and has one braced so heavily that it looks like she’s got an artificial leg. Katie Smith is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but she turns 36 at the start of next season and missed the end of the year with a back injury. Deanna Nolan might be the league’s most athletic player, but she’s 30 and hasn’t had a real offseason since her days at Georgia. Every year, the grind of playing in Russia and the United States is taking more of a toll on her body. Plenette Pierson has had two major shoulder injuries in two seasons, and it remains to be seen if she will be 100% healthy by next summer.

Even Kara Braxton, who is young, healthy and vastly improved last season, may struggle in Richardson’s system due to a lack of speed. Alexis Hornbuckle and Shavonte Zellous will fit nicely on an up-tempo team, but that’s two players.

There’s a lot of talent and experience on this roster, and if Richardson adjusts his system to his players, they could still have another year or two near the top. But if he intends “40 Minutes of Hell, Part Two”, the Tulsa fans might not get the success they expect from the most successful franchise of the decade.