Storm wins WNBA title for 4th time
Breanna Stewart scored 26 points, and the Storm won their second WNBA championship in three seasons, sweeping the Aces with a 92-59 routTuesday night in Bradenton, Florida.
It’s the fourth title in franchise history for the Storm, who also won in 2004, 2010 and 2018. TheStormhad pretty much the same core group that won the 2018 championship back for this year, led by Stewart, Sue Bird and Jewell Loyd.
The Storm joined the Lynx and Comets as the only franchises to win four championships.
The Storm have now won a record 11 games in a row in the WNBA Finals, dating to the team’s first championship in 2004. Bird has been a part of all of them. The veteran guard, who turns 40 next week, was once again a catalyst for the Storm.
“I don’t cheat, I don’t cheat thegame. IdowhatIhave todo tobeable to playat a high level,” said Bird, who missed all of last season with a knee injury and only played in half of the team’s regular-season games while dealing with a bone bruise.
She finished with five points and seven assists. The league’s career assists leader averaged 11 assists in the three-game sweep.
“We’re chill. We’re made for a wubble,” Bird said. “We don’t get too high or low. You saw it off the court with what we stood for and saw it on the court with howwe played.”
The 26-year-old Stewart set a WNBA record by scoring more than 20 points for the sixth straight finals game. She earned WNBA Finals MVP honors for the second time in her young career, becoming the fifth player to win multiple finalsMVPs.
Her play all season showed she had fully recovered from a torn Achilles tendon that sidelined her for the entire 2019 season.
Stewart and Bird were both on the bench for most of the fourth quarter with the game well in hand. The 33-point margin of victory was the biggest in finals history.