Only one player on the Washington Mystics’ roster has won a WNBA championship before: All-Star guard Kristi Toliver. So with their sights set on a return trip to the WNBA Finals, losing Toliver for the final four weeks of the regular season with a knee injury wasn’t how they would have drawn it up.
But Toliver returned in time for the playoffs, and both on the court and on the sidelines, Washington is better off for it. Toliver’s championship experience could be what the rest of the Mystics need to help them over the hump and win their first title.
“She’s been kind of like the Zen master for us in these Finals so far,” LaToya Sanders said.
From league MVP Elena Delle Donne to coach Mike Thibault, others agreed, using words like “calming voice” and “comforting” when describing having Toliver back in the fray.
Toliver was no doubt still vocal at practices and on the sidelines at games while she was unable to play. After all, this is the same player who spent last winter as a full-time coaching assistant for the NBA’s Washington Wizards. But she returned to action for the semifinal series and now is back in the starting lineup.
Toliver put up a clutch performance in Sunday’s win over the Connecticut Sun, finishing with 18 points and five assists. During one crucial stretch in the fourth quarter, she pulled off a textbook crossover to drive inside and dished it behind her to Delle Donne for a basket. Two possessions later, she stretched out for a finger-roll layup that put Washington up 11 with 3:16 left.
For someone who was wearing a knee brace until very recently, she hardly looked uncomfortable.
“Yeah, I feel great. We’re 1-0 in the Finals,” Toliver said. “Adrenaline takes over, and that’s what we’re rolling with right now. Since taking the brace off, I’ve been able to be able to play a little bit more downhill and a little bit more like myself, and I’m just going to continue to try to be in attack mode, whether that’s getting to the rim or finding other people once I can engage, too.”
Toliver won the WNBA title with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2016 before joining the Mystics the following year. Even before the pros, she was never one to shy away from a high-profile moment: She knocked down a game-tying 3-pointer for Maryland with three seconds left in the 2006 NCAA championship game, forcing overtime and helping the Terrapins beat Duke to win the title.
Thibault said Toliver’s leadership had less to do with whether she had a championship on her resume and more to do with taking shots in key moments.
“The best players in the history of basketball are ones who want to make plays when the game is on the line,” he said. “There are a lot of people that kind of run from it when it gets late in games, and there are others who step up. Luckily we have three or four on our team that are all willing to do that.”
Sanders said Toliver imparts nuggets of wisdom from what it took for her Sparks to win the title three years ago — but not any more than usual since they’ve reached the Finals.
“I think it’s more so off the court,” Sanders said. “She can be the feisty one on the court and stuff like that. But at halftime, she’s usually the first person to tell us what she sees, what we can do better offensively and defensively.”
“She will say her ad-libs here and there,” Natasha Cloud added, “but again, we’ve been in the final series before, so our whole roster is prepared for this moment. We had the experience. Unfortunately we got swept last year, but we made the commitment to each other and to this organization that we’d be back.”
Now they are back, and they’re only two wins away from the franchise’s first WNBA title. The Mystics host the Sun for Game 2 Tuesday at 8 p.m. Then Connecticut will host Game 3 on Sunday.
• Adam Zielonka can be reached at azielonka@washingtontimes.com.
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