Storm vs. Liberty: Flau'jae Johnson's Career-High 28 Ends Seattle's 11-Game Losing Streak in 99-88 Win

The last time the Seattle Storm won a basketball game, it was May 24. Eleven losses, one gut-punch 112-110 defeat to Dallas and a full month of bad news later, they finally got to feel something besides dread.

Flau'jae Johnson scored a career-high 28, Dominique Malonga added two more entries to her growing file of youngest-ever trivia, and the Storm beat the New York Liberty 99-88 on Thursday night in front of 11,968 at Climate Pledge Arena. The skid is dead. Somebody in Seattle can finally stop checking the standings through their fingers. This skid wasn't all blowouts, either. Four of the last six losses came by five points or fewer, which is its own special kind of torture.

A Slow, Stressful Pull-Away

New York jumped out 8-4 before Seattle took over the first quarter. The Storm scored 19 of the next 26 points, with Malonga dropping nine in the frame, including a 25-foot 3 that no defense in the league is planning for. It was 23-15 with 3:32 left.

The Liberty responded with nine straight on a Leonie Fiebich 3 and a pile of Han Xu work around the rim to go up 24-23. That lead lasted 12 seconds. Awa Fam hit a 24-footer, Katie Lou Samuelson scored on a putback, and the Storm led 28-24 after one. They never trailed again.

The second quarter belonged to Johnson, who scored 10, capped by a 26-foot 3 with 50.1 seconds left. Seattle went to the half up 48-40, and it felt uneasy in that specific way 11 straight losses will make a building feel uneasy.

New York hung around in the third, closing to 53-50 on Fiebich's free throws. Then Jade Melbourne got downhill. She scored nine in the quarter, Natisha Hiedeman buried a 27-footer, and Johnson answered a Marine Johannes 3 with one of her own at the 0.4-second mark to make it 72-60.

A Rookie With a Green Light

Johnson, a 22-year-old rookie, was the best player in the building. Her 28 came on 11-of-23 shooting with four 3s, and she grabbed nine rebounds (four offensive) with three steals for good measure. She scored 10 in the second, 10 more in the fourth and spent the whole night playing like nobody had told her about the losing streak.

Malonga was nearly as good and far more efficient, posting 20 points and 10 rebounds on 9-of-12 shooting for her second straight double-double. The AP says no player in WNBA history has reached 500 career points at a younger age, and the same goes for 200 career defensive rebounds. Hiedeman added a milestone of her own, passing 2,000 career points on an 11-point night.

Melbourne finished with 18 points and seven assists, going 6-of-7 at the line, and Fam had 15 on 6-of-9 with a plus-16. As a team, Seattle shot 52 percent, and it scored 15 points off New York's 16 turnovers to keep the transition game humming. All five Seattle starters hit double figures, and together they scored 92 of the team's 99 points.

Jonquel Jones did what she could for New York, with a season-high 26, per the Liberty, on 10-of-17 shooting and 10 points in the fourth. Fiebich matched her season high with 19. Sabrina Ionescu had 14 points and five assists, nine of those points coming in the final quarter, though she shot just 1-of-7 from deep.

Sixty-Five Seconds

Jones' layup at 8:06 of the fourth cut it to 72-65, and you could practically hear the entire arena start doing math. Seattle's response was the best stretch of its month. Zia Cooke hit a 3 off a Hiedeman feed at 7:50. Johnson pulled up for a 24-foot running 3 at 7:26. Fam drilled a 24-footer from Johnson at 6:45.

Nine straight points in 65 seconds, all from behind the arc, and suddenly it was 81-65.

The Liberty are too good to fold, and they threw one last wave. Ionescu and Raquel Carrera scored, Jones hit two more 3s, Pauline Astier converted a three-point play, and Ionescu's floater made it 89-81 with four minutes left. That's exactly the moment a team on an 11-game slide is supposed to melt. Instead Johnson scored at 3:19, Melbourne drove for a layup at 2:43, and New York never got closer than nine again.

The Numbers That Explain It

• The fast break: Seattle won it 21-4, a stunning gap between a team that wanted to run and one that couldn't get back.
• The paint: The Storm scored 54 inside to New York's 42.
• The glass: Seattle won 39-28, with 13 offensive rebounds.
• The arc: The Liberty shot 10-of-36 from 3, or 28 percent. Ionescu and Johannes combined to go 3-of-14.
• The bench: New York's reserves won 23-7, and the Liberty say that's the lowest bench total by any of their opponents this season. It just didn't matter.

One Down, Plenty to Go

Seattle improves to 4-15 and 3-7 at home, with its first win since May 24. Nobody's confusing that record with a contender, but it's a whole lot easier to watch film after a win, especially one built on 18 assists and all five starters scoring in double figures. The Storm host Atlanta on Saturday.

New York drops to 12-7 and 6-3 on the road, and it has lost three of its past four. The lone win in that stretch was an 87-76 result in Las Vegas on Tuesday, which makes this one tough to explain. The Liberty visit Golden State on Sunday.

The Alarm Clock Finally Changes

Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day needed an absurd number of mornings to escape his loop, and he had to learn piano to do it. Seattle needed 11 games, three 3s in 65 seconds and a rookie who never seemed to notice how bad things had gotten. On Thursday, the alarm clock finally played a different song.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Additional details from the Associated Press and the New York Liberty.