Ooops.

I may not have seen Ray Allen with his daughter at any Storm games, but Jayda Evans got the real scoop and I feel justifiedly shamefaced. Of course Jayda is a JOURNALIST and has to do research while a blogger like me is free (so far) to just run off at the mouth uninformed and opinionated without consequence. So Ray's commercial for the WNBA is genuine and from the heart and he hopes his daughter makes it to the WNBA someday. I know you are recovering from surgery Ray, but you better bring Tierra to the finals if the Storm make it back this year. It may be your last chance.

Opening night is in three days. I will have a real problem. The Comets will most likely be wearing their road reds. Connor is obsessed with LJ as I described earlier this week, yes, but LJ is second tier to the color red. Red always wins. The answer to which anything is always, "The Red one." The red women are going to try to beat LJ on Saturday, Connor, who is going to win, the red guys or LJ? "The Red grills will win." (He has a little trouble with the word 'girl.') I imagine there will be lots of "why isn't LJ Red" questions this weekend.

Jayda and Alan say the Shyra vs. Barb camp battle is no clearer with Barb here in town. It may prove good that she returned early since she has not yet proven herself in her first two days of practice and she would only have had one had she stayed in Turkey. All other things equal, I have to say height beats experience, you can't teach height as AD well knows. Come on Barb, step it up a notch, I want to see you on opening night in the wonky new tribal uni putting Sheryl Swoopes in her place.

Jayda also quotes Anne as saying that she wouldn't use Barb at the four this year but might use Shyra there if she sticks, purely because of height. Barb played 132 minutes at power forward in pairings with six centers last season and came out +3 overall at that position (she was -33 overall) so she actually played well at the four. Her best pairings were with Jackson (+13) and Robinson (+13) though she played poorly with Burse (-7) and Johnson (-14). I believe Anne COULD play her at the four against teams like Phoenix, but what do I know?

I was hard on the newbie at the PI (at least they have someone covering the team regularly, unlike the Trib who seems to only publish a Wendy Carpenter piece when the stars are properly aligned) Darren Fessenden but he had two articles this week that I enjoyed.

The ESPN piece on the owner of the Russian Spartak team that Sue, LJ and Diana Taurasi played on this spring is fantastic. I stumbled on it yesterday while looking to see what Lieberman and Voepel had to say. It is among the best sports articles I have read and may be the best WNBA piece I have ever seen. Kudos to ESPN and who the heck is this Jim Caple guy? It is a must read, this guy is fascinating. He says something about pampering the players comparing Taurasi to Madonna or Streisand saying attracting fans by singing or scoring, who cares they deserve cars, drivers and security. It is a different business model over there, but I still feel that there has to be a better way to accelerate the model here in the States, I just don't have that answer.