Fire vs. Mystics: Portland Holds Washington to 56 in a 75-56 Rout, Avenging June's Four-Overtime Loss

The last time these two teams shared a floor, it took four overtimes, 247 combined points and three hours and 35 minutes to settle anything. On Thursday night, the Portland Fire had the sequel wrapped up in about 12 minutes.

Portland scored 28 points in the first quarter, led by as many as 23, and walked out of CareFirst Arena with a 75-56 win over the Washington Mystics. Carla Leite scored 14, Serah Williams added 12, and the team that lost that 124-123 marathon on June 28, a game that tied the longest in WNBA history, got its revenge in the least dramatic way available.

A Four-Point Deficit, Then a Demolition

Washington actually scored first, jumping ahead 4-0. Enjoy that sentence, Mystics fans, because it's the last good news for a while. Portland answered with eight straight to go up 8-4, then ripped off another 8-0 to turn an 11-9 game into 19-9. By the end of the quarter it was 28-13, and the Fire weren't finished. A third 8-0 run, this one starting with 44 seconds left in the first and spilling into the second, made it 32-13. By the midpoint of the period the scoreboard read 43-20.

Three separate 8-0 runs before the game was 13 minutes old. Most teams don't manage that in a week.

Washington finally stabilized, and to be clear, stabilized is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The Mystics got to 47-31 at the half and won the third quarter 14-12 in what may have been the ugliest 10 minutes of anyone's July, leaving it 59-45 heading to the fourth. They never scored more than 18 in any quarter. Portland stayed ahead by double figures for the entire second half, and Holly Winterburn's 26-foot 3 with a minute left pushed it to 75-54, which is about as rude as garbage time gets.

Balance Beats Brilliance

No Fire player scored more than 14, and that's part of the point. Leite was the engine, finishing with 14 points, five assists and no turnovers while going plus-18 in 23 minutes. Williams was the most efficient player on the floor, with 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting plus five rebounds in 25 minutes. Sarah Ashlee Barker was the most annoying, and we mean that as the highest compliment, with 10 points, seven rebounds and four steals. Frieda Buhner came off the bench to hit 3-of-5 from deep for nine, Teja Oblak added nine more, and Emily Engstler chipped in eight points and five assists. Bridget Carleton scored only six and finished plus-20 anyway, which tells you how this thing went whenever she was on the court. Portland assisted on 20 of its 29 field goals.

Shakira Austin spent the night carrying every piece of Washington's luggage: 19 points, nine rebounds, four assists and two blocks, and she was the only Mystic in double figures. Nobody else had more than eight. Kiki Iriafen, two nights removed from 25 points and 14 rebounds in Toronto, went 1-of-8 for two points. Sonia Citron scored eight on 2-of-8 shooting and missed all five of her 3s. Michaela Onyenwere went 2-of-10, and Georgia Amoore had four turnovers in 16 minutes. When your second-leading scorer has eight, you aren't running an offense so much as a search party. Washington finished with just 11 assists, and only Lauren Betts, at plus-3, and Alicia Florez, at plus-1, ended up on the right side of the ledger.

All Those Rebounds, All Those Bricks

The turning point came before anybody could get comfortable, in those first 10 minutes. But the reason Washington never climbed out lives in the weirdest line of the box score.

The Mystics won the rebounding battle 45-30. They grabbed 19 offensive rebounds to Portland's eight. They took 64 shots, just three fewer than the Fire, despite all those turnovers. A team with that many extra looks doesn't usually lose by 19, unless the looks keep clanking, and these did. Washington made 19 of those 64 shots and went 2-of-21 from behind the arc. Portland's 10-of-36 from deep was hardly a shooting clinic, and it still produced a 30-6 edge from 3 in a 19-point game.

Then add the giveaways. Washington had 20 turnovers to Portland's 11, and the Fire, with 10 steals, turned them into 22 points. The Mystics kept creating second chances and kept handing back first ones.

Stats That Matter

• 2-of-21: Washington from 3-point range, which is exactly as painful as it sounds.
• 30-6: Points from behind the arc, a gap bigger than the final margin.
• 22-10: Points off turnovers, Portland's way.
• 19: Washington's offensive rebounds, which bought a lot of shots and not much else.
• 95 percent: The share of the game Portland spent in the lead.

What It Means

Portland moves to 11-14 and 5-8 on the road. The Fire have gone win, loss, win, loss, win over their last five, and all three of those wins came away from home, at Seattle, at Atlanta and here. Consistency isn't the word yet, but road swagger might be. They visit Minnesota on Saturday night.

Washington drops to 12-11 and 5-6 at home, with a two-game winning streak gone. The 56 points are the Mystics' second-lowest total of the season, ahead of only the 49 they scored against Golden State on July 6. They head to Golden State for a rematch on Saturday night. The season series now sits at a game apiece, and the gap between these teams is down to two games.

Sequels Rarely Go This Way

Hollywood sequels almost always go bigger, with a longer runtime and a louder third act. This one went the other direction. June's original ran four overtimes and 247 points. Thursday's follow-up had 116 fewer points and was effectively over before the popcorn got cold. Portland didn't need another epic. It needed one great quarter and a Washington team shooting 3s like it owed the rim money, and it got both.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Context as reported by the Associated Press.