Posted by Mechelle Voepel
PHOENIX -- Phoenix's Cappie Pondexter was the WNBA Finals MVP in 2007, and could well have received that same honor in 2009 (for what it's worth, I voted for her Friday night).
Diana Taurasi, however, received the award. And it's not as if Taurasi is by any means a bad choice, not with her averages of 20.4 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.8 assists in the Finals.
Pondexter's numbers were equally as impressive: 20.8 ppg, 4.2 rpg and 4.8 apg. There's no sense of any competition between the two of them, though, so Pondexter was not worried about the individual honor.
Still, Pondexter's performance in the Finals was even more impressive Friday after she was hit in the eye while trying to stop Tamika Catchings going to the basket.
"When she was walking off the floor, I was worried because she was walking like she couldn't see," Phoenix coach Corey Gaines said of when Pondexter left the game in the first half. "I was afraid she wouldn't come back for the rest of the game. Because Cappie is my X factor. I always call her that.
"People ask me why -- that's because Cappie doesn't need a play in order to score points. When things go bad, we get the ball to Cappie and get out of the way. It's a gift that she has, and a gift that helps our team."
For her part, Pondexter -- who had swelling around her eye after the game -- was sure she'd be able to return after halftime. She finished with 24 points on 11-of-20 shooting and had four rebounds and two assists.
"I wasn't going to let my teammates down," she said. "Just got an elbow and couldn't see for a couple of seconds. But I was able to come back."
Pondexter at times proved impossible to stop no matter what Indiana did.
"Some of the Cappie shots in crunch time really were tough for us, when we defended her really well," Indiana coach Lin Dunn said. "She is running around and running around, then she just rises up and hits a big shot.
"I thought our defensive game plan was good. We did what we wanted to do. At the end of the day, you have to give credit to Cappie Pondexter. She stepped up and hit some big long-range shots with very few seconds left on the clock. And that's the sign of a champion."
Going the distance
As much praise as the 2009 Finals deserve, the 2007 Finals should not be short-changed for how good that series was between Phoenix and Detroit. Like the first game of the 2009 Finals, 2007's first game was high-scoring, as the Shock won 108-100.
However, the second game was the kind of blowout the 2009 Finals didn't have, with Phoenix winning 98-70. The third and fourth games were very close, with the Shock winning 88-83 and then the Mercury taking a 77-76 victory.
But Game 5 that year was pretty much all Phoenix, with the Mercury winning 108-92. The last matchup didn't go down to the wire the way it did this year.
Since the Finals went to a best-of-five format in 2005, the series has gone the distance three times. Besides 2007 and 2009, the other time was 2006, when Detroit beat Sacramento.
In those Finals, though, the first four games were not really close, as they were all won by an average of 18.5 points. Only the fifth game of that series was a nail-biter, as the Shock won 80-75.
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