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Thursday Therapy: Lynx Look to Calm the Storm

In today's Therapy: The Minnesota Lynx welcome the Seattle Storm to the Twin Cities and look to keep their perfect start to the season going; Game 4 of the NBA Finals, featuring more Australian than you could possibly want; and a Timberwolves player playing basketball in Minnesota!

By David Naylor
Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Good morning, and welcome to the Therapy couch. Today we open with the Minnesota Lynx, who have their third game of the season today against the Seattle Storm. The Lynx enter 2-0 with wins over the Tulsa Shock and Indiana Fever, while the Storm enters 1-1, with a win over the Los Angeles Sparks and a loss to the defending WNBA Champions, the Phoenix Mercury. Here are some quick tidbits of information about tonight's game.

  • The Lynx need to take better care of the basketball. All stats this early in the season should be taken with a grain of salt, but the Lynx's 16 turnovers per game is tied for second in the WNBA and led to problems early in the game against Tulsa when they went down by double-digits early. They obviously came back to win, but they could make things easier on themselves that way.
  • Even with the turnover problems, the Lynx are still an offensive power in the WNBA. They are one of only three teams to average over 80 points per game in these early days of the season, and one of only four with an ORtg (104.2) over 100. This game pits them against the team with the best DRtg (88.1) in the league in the Storm. The Storm also play at a slower pace than the Lynx, averaging just 73.2 possessions per game (10th in the league) to the Lynx's 77.1 (6th).
  • Reigning MVP Maya Moore has started the season a bit cold by her standards, shooting only 41.4% from the field, well below her 47.5% career average. She's balanced this by shooting well from outside the arc (6-14 for 42.9%) and getting to the free throw line (almost 7 attempts per 36 minutes, well above her career average). Leading the Lynx in per-game scoring after two games? Long-time veteran Lindsay Whalen, who started her twelfth season (sixth with the Lynx) in the WNBA with a 26 point effort to save the Lynx in their first game.

(all stats via basketball-reference.com)

The game is tonight at 7:00pm CT at the Target Center, and will be televised on Fox Sports North.

The Lynx also made a signing before tonight's game: 14 year old Ariya Smith. Check out Lindsey's piece on her here if you haven't already. Via ESPN's "My Wish" program, Smith attended Lynx practice and a press conference with Maya Moore and coach Cheryl Reeve. The team's official story is here. The ESPN feature on it will air on SportsCenter the week of July 19.

Timberwolves: Two Weeks Out

Today marks two weeks until the NBA Draft. The media rumblings have begun to shift towards the Timberwolves favoring Karl-Anthony Towns with the first pick, but that doesn't mean anything yet. This drove the question of a two-week out guarantee to twitter:

That's quite the shift indeed. There wasn't much else about the draft out there on Wednesday other than the usual mock-draft news and workout schedules. However, one of the Wolves' 2014 draft picks is back in town at his basketball camp.

Successful first day of camp! #blessed

A photo posted by Zach LaVine (@zachlavine8) on

KSTP has a full story about LaVine's camp at the St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights here.

Notes, Music and Shenanigans

  • We could be down to two games of NBA basketball left in the 2014-15 season, and one of them is tonight. The Golden State Warriors will attempt to guarantee us at least one more with a win tonight against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Cleveland. The Cavs currently lead the series 2-1. I waxed long about Game 3 in yesterday's daily article, but the short version is this: I think Golden State wins tonight, and Curry goes off.
  • In another article featured on these pages yesterday, Gorgui Dieng will play in the NBA's first exhibition game in Africa on August 1 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Lindsey has more here.
  • Today's music: I return to my video game roots, with a twist. If you're not familiar with the London Philharmonic Orchestra's series of albums of "The Greatest Video Game Music", do yourself a favor and check the rest of this playlist out. They're phenomenal recordings highlighting the potential of game music in a more traditional setting. I chose the main theme from one of my favorite games, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS3. Enjoy, and happy Thursday. Go Lynx!