Mercury sets WNBA season technical record, falls to Aces on A’ja Wilson’s historic night

Of all things the main storylines of the season, I didn’t have the Mercury breaking the all-time single-season record for team technicals (33) on my bingo card.

A record the Liberty set in 2001 before Phoenix tied it 2022 with 27 techs and there are still seven games to go in the 2024 season.

“Those refs are eyeing people like no other,” Sophie Cunningham said. “Don’t be so sensitive. But we have to own it. Sometimes, we need to focus on ourselves…We’re not gonna get every call…I know we have a lot of fiery people. I know we’ve set the record for most techs, so we have to look ourselves in the mirror…but moving forward…we’re grown women, stop being so sensitive on both ends.”

Diana Taurasi (7), Natasha Cloud (7), and Kahleah Copper (6) are top three in techs with Brittney Griner (4) and Cunningham (3) not too far behind, per Across The Timeline.

While Cloud is expected to miss the next game due to her seventh tech, Taurasi says they’ll rescind her tech and she’ll be good to go for Tuesday against Atlanta at 7 PM.

“Mine’s definitely getting rescinded,” Taurasi said. “I’m good. I’ll be playing the next game.”

No official word yet.

Head Coach Nate Tibbetts has a pair of techs himself as his team hits a three-game skid, albeit against some of the best squads in the league (Liberty, Lynx, Aces).

“The technicals are frustrating,” Tibbetts said. “The way we’ve been playing is frustrating…We ran into a team that was trying to find themselves like we were…They’ve been through battles, they’ve won championships together and I thought they were better early than us. I thought we were trying to do the things that we had worked on the past two days…It didn’t carry over right away but I thought in the third, we played more like us.”

Vegas led by as many as 34 points, before winning 97-79 behind A’ja Wilson’s 41 points and 17 rebounds on 16 of 23 shooting.

Candace Parker is the only other player to ever put up 40/15 and A’ja’s the first to a 40/17 game.

“What she’s doing right now is unthinkable,” Taurasi said. “How well she’s playing on both ends. She’s unguardable. You guys look at her as a post, I look at her as a guard. It’s not like she’s posting up. Everything’s face up, jab steps. I believe she’s making threes now…good luck for the next 10 years for this league…Kudos to her. Every year, she’s gotten better, she’s added something to her game, she’s in amazing shape…She’ll continue to do it. Just being around her for a little bit, that’s the mindset she has.”

The Aces also outscored Phoenix in the paint 44-34 and had 13 second chance points to Phoenix’s one.

“It’s gonna take a lot of determination by us to be willing to do the things that it takes to be really good in this league,” Taurasi said. “We’ve shown that we can do it. In the last two games, we haven’t done those little things that make offense work. When it’s working, you think, ‘It’s just cause we’re playing well,’ but you have to do certain things to make it work. Basketball, I always say, is a two-way street. Defensively, we haven’t been good, so we’ve been walking the ball up a lot…we haven’t been particularly good on either side.”

As the Fever and Mercury battle for the sixth seed, PHX is currently one game back from Caitlin Clark and Indiana.

If Phoenix can course correct soon, we might be looking at a dramatic sprint to the postseason.