Fire vs. Storm: Bridget Carleton's Career-High Seven 3s Power a 10-0 Closing Run in a 94-89 Portland Win

With 2:39 left on Wednesday night at Moda Center, Dominique Malonga scored from four feet out to put the Seattle Storm up 89-84. Those were the last points of a career-high 28 for her, and every piece of evidence in the building said Seattle was about to finally win a basketball game.

The Storm did not score again. The Portland Fire took the night's final 10 points, Bridget Carleton buried a career-high seventh 3-pointer with 41.4 seconds left, and the expansion Fire walked away with a 94-89 win in Commissioner's Cup play. Seattle has now lost nine straight.

Nine Lead Changes and One Very Bad Ending

This one swung all night. Portland was comfortable at 21-14 late in the first quarter before Seattle closed the period on a 9-0 run and took a 23-21 lead. The second quarter was a staring contest that ended 48-47 Storm.

Then Seattle looked like it had solved the thing. An 11-0 burst in the third turned 57-56 into 68-56, the biggest lead either team would have all night, and the Storm carried a 74-67 advantage into the fourth. Malonga was getting wherever she wanted around the rim. Seattle finished with 40 points in the paint to Portland's 18, and at that point the Fire's plan of firing away from deep looked like a coping mechanism.

Portland kept firing anyway, and the fourth quarter turned into a shootout. Carleton hit from 23 feet to make it 81-79. Awa Fam answered from 24. Megan DiLeo scored inside, and Natisha Hiedeman drilled one from 26. Emily Engstler matched her with a 26-footer of her own. Malonga's short one made it 89-84, and that's where we started.

Up to that point, the quarter had been two teams trading tough shots, with Seattle getting the better of it. The last two and a half minutes belonged entirely to one side.

Seven 3s and a Whole Lot of Leite

Carleton's line is one of the odder and better ones you'll see. She finished with 24 points, and every one of her seven field goals was a 3, on 13 attempts, with three free throws for good measure. She also had three steals and two blocks in 29 minutes, so it wasn't exactly a one-trick evening.

Carla Leite was the conductor. She finished with 20 points and 10 assists, went 9-of-10 at the line, and turned it over only once. Four of those assists came in the final five minutes, on Carleton's 3, DiLeo's layup, Engstler's 3 and DiLeo's 3. Her plus-13 was the best on either team. Sarah Ashlee Barker scored 12 despite a rough 3-of-11 shooting night, and Karlie Samuelson gave Portland 10 off the bench. Engstler's nine points came with six rebounds, five assists and two blocks, and that all-around work mattered on a night when her team took 60 percent of its shots from behind the arc.

On the other side, it's hard to overstate how good Malonga was. Twenty-eight points, 11 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals, on 12-of-19 shooting, without being charged with a single foul in 35 minutes. Hiedeman scored 19 and went 5-of-8 from deep with six assists, although she also had five turnovers. Fam added 18 on 3-of-5 from 3, Jade Melbourne had eight assists, and Zia Cooke scored seven off the bench. Flau'jae Johnson scored eight but picked up six fouls in just 22 minutes, and her plus-8, the best on the team, suggests Seattle really could have used her at the end.

Sixteen Seconds That Changed the Night

It flipped with 2:22 left. Seattle got tagged with a flagrant foul, the only one of the game, and Leite calmly made both free throws to cut it to 89-86. Sixteen seconds later, DiLeo let one go from 24 feet, and it was tied at 89. A five-point lead had vanished in 16 seconds of game clock, and you could feel the whole night tilt.

Engstler put Portland ahead with a six-footer off a Carleton pass at 1:17. Then they swapped roles, with Engstler finding Carleton for the 24-footer that made it 94-89 and set the place off. With 13,084 people making noise, Seattle's offense went completely silent, failing to score for the final 2:39 of a game it had led for 54 percent of the night.

The Case for Just Shooting

• 17-of-42: Portland from 3, against 9-of-24 for Seattle. That's a 24-point swing in a five-point game.
• 39 percent vs. 48: The Fire shot much worse from the field overall and won anyway.
• 40-18: Seattle's paint advantage, which would usually be the end of the conversation.
• 14-8: Offensive rebounds for Portland, the hidden fuel for all those extra 3s.
• 27-15: The fourth quarter, Portland's favor. Seattle had led by seven when it began.

Two Teams, Going Opposite Ways

Portland moves to 8-9 and 6-5 at home, and this was a nice response after getting flattened 107-74 at Minnesota on Monday. It also makes two straight home wins, following Saturday's 84-83 escape against Dallas. An expansion team sitting one game under .500 in mid-June has earned the right to feel good about itself. The Fire are at Chicago next Wednesday night.

The Storm are in a much darker place. They're 3-13 overall and 1-7 on the road, and they haven't won since beating Washington 97-85 on May 24. That's nine straight losses, and this one might sting the most, since they had the lead, a career night from Malonga and the final stretch in their own hands. They're at Phoenix on Saturday.

Seattle Can't Blame Billy Joel

Billy Joel spent a whole song insisting he didn't start the fire. Seattle can't make that claim. The Storm had a five-point lead with under three minutes to go, then committed a flagrant at the worst possible moment and stopped scoring altogether. They brought the kindling and held the door. Portland just kept shooting from 24 feet until the whole place was lit.

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