Lynx vs. Sparks: Olivia Miles Sets WNBA Rookie Record With 24 First-Half Points on Her Way to 31

Halftime on Wednesday night at crypto.com Arena came with a small piece of league history attached. Olivia Miles had 24 points, and the WNBA's record keepers had a line to update, because that's a rookie record for first-half points. The Sparks, meanwhile, had a 15-point problem.

The No. 2 overall pick finished with a career-high 31 on a comical 12-of-15 shooting, and the Minnesota Lynx rolled past the Los Angeles Sparks 99-83. That's 10 wins in 11 games for a team now sitting at 12-3, and it came against an LA group playing without Kelsey Plum, who sat with a leg injury.

A Quiet Start, Then a Very Loud Second Quarter

It didn't begin as a coronation. Los Angeles led by as many as four early, and the two teams swapped the lead five times before Minnesota took control for good. Courtney Williams was the one who finally grabbed the wheel, hitting a mid-range jumper to put the Lynx ahead and following with a 3 that made it 23-19 at the end of one.

Then came the second quarter, and that's where the night got away from the home team. Minnesota poured in 29, Los Angeles managed 18, and it was 52-37 at the half, with Miles responsible for 24 of those 52 all by herself.

They kept going after the break, too. Minnesota's lead hit 61-41 with 7:05 left in the third, and at that point the only remaining question was how much of the fourth quarter the starters would have to play.

The Sparks made them sweat, briefly, and we'll get to that. After that it was just a matter of running out the clock. It was 88-68 with 4:59 left, the lead got as big as 22 at one point, and Los Angeles had to settle for trimming the final margin. Emma Cannon hit a 25-footer, Chance Gray hit a 30-footer, and Anastasiia Olairi Kosu finished things with a pair of driving layups for Minnesota, the last with 6.4 seconds left.

Into the Miles-Verse

There's efficient, and then there's whatever this was. Miles needed 26 minutes to score 31. She went 12-of-15 from the floor, 2-of-3 from deep and 5-of-6 at the line, with four rebounds and four assists on top of it. She added only seven after halftime, because she didn't need any more. The one blemish was five turnovers, on a night when Minnesota had 20 as a team. Rookies get to keep a little chaos in the game.

According to the AP's story on Sydney Taylor in Chicago the same night, Miles is the only rookie with more 20-point games this season than Taylor. That line is getting harder to catch.

She had plenty of help. Natasha Howard finished with 15 points and nine rebounds, four of them offensive. Kayla McBride scored 14 with three steals, and Williams had 13 points and five assists. Nia Brodie scored seven and collected a career-high five steals, which is its own kind of unfair. Maya Caldwell came off the bench for seven points, seven rebounds and three assists, and her plus-18 was just behind Brodie's plus-20 for the best on the floor.

For Los Angeles, Rae Burrell led the way with 19 on 6-of-10 shooting. The feel-good story was rookie Jihyun Park, who walked in with six points on the season and scored 13 on 5-of-7 shooting. Dearica Hamby had 12 points and nine rebounds and missed only one of her six shots, and Nneka Ogwumike added 10 points and eight rebounds. The problem was two other starters. Without Plum, who averages 25, Erica Wheeler and Ariel Atkins combined to shoot 3-of-17 for 10 points. Ta'Niya Latson scored six without making a field goal, all of it at the line on 6-of-9, and that was the story of the LA offense in a nutshell: it could get to the stripe, but it couldn't get much else. Minnesota made 15 more baskets.

The 13-8 That Closed the Door

Los Angeles did have one real moment. From that 61-41 hole, the Sparks ripped off 10 straight in a span of about two and a half minutes, and suddenly it was 61-51 with 4:32 left in the third. A crowd of 11,481 had a reason to lean forward. Another couple of stops and this is a game.

Minnesota didn't let that happen. The Lynx won the rest of the quarter 13-8, took a 74-59 lead into the fourth, and turned what could have been a nervy finish into an extended victory lap. Good teams answer those runs, and a team that's 6-1 on the road has obviously answered a few of them.

Numbers Worth Your Time

• 56 percent vs. 42: Minnesota's shooting edge, on 40-of-72 against 25-of-60.
• 52-36: Points in the paint for the Lynx.
• 25-16: Minnesota's advantage in points off turnovers. Both teams were careless, with 20 giveaways for the Lynx and 19 for the Sparks, and only one side made the other pay.
• 7-of-26: Los Angeles from 3.
• 26-of-32: The Sparks at the line, against 10-of-14 for Minnesota. It's why the score wasn't uglier.

Where Everybody Stands

Minnesota's only loss in those 11 games was the 100-97 thriller in Las Vegas on June 13, and the Lynx have answered that with a 107-74 win over Portland and this one. They're 12-3 overall and head to Golden State on Friday.

Los Angeles slips to 7-8, and the home record is a real concern at 2-6. This was a second straight loss, following a 78-58 beating at Golden State on Monday that ended a three-game winning streak. New York visits on Sunday.

Miles Morales Would Understand

The whole premise of the Spider-Verse movies is that there's more than one version of Miles out there, each doing something absurd in a different dimension. WNBA defenses might want to check, because the one who showed up in Los Angeles was 12-of-15, and she already has her name in the rookie record book for what she did in the first 20 minutes.

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