> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Analysis: What’s Wrong With the Seattle Storm? - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/analysis-whats-wrong-with-the-seattle-storm/ - Published: 2025-08-14T22:30:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T05:36:46.000Z - Author: Connor Benintendi - Tags: Storm, Noelle Quinn, Nneka Ogwumike, Erica Wheeler, Ezi Magbegor, Skylar Diggins, Brittney Sykes, Gabby Williams \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2047"\] ![ Now firmly in a six-game skid that is threatening their playoff hopes, the Seattle Storm need quick answers to big questions if they hope to salvage the 2025 season. Credit: John Mac ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/53780068882_a18ab65263_k-format-original.jpg) Now firmly in a six-game skid that is threatening their playoff hopes, the Seattle Storm need quick answers to big questions if they hope to salvage the 2025 season. Credit: John Mac \[/caption\] Entering All-Star weekend, the Seattle Storm were pushing for the fourth seed in the WNBA playoffs with a 14-9 record. The team is 2-8 since then, falling to eighth in the league standings with their playoff hopes under siege by the ninth-place Los Angeles Sparks (15-17) and 10th-place Washington Mystics (14-18). This echoes last year, when the Storm struggled after the month-long All-Star and Olympic break, dropping six of nine games after entering the hiatus at 17-8\. They slipped to 20-14 soon after. Once the team dropped two of its first three games following this year’s break, Storm head coach Noelle Quinn tried to quell the concerns. “No,” Quinn said on July 26 in response to whether she saw similarities. “Our team is different.” The Storm have won one game since Quinn made that statement. Now on a six-game losing streak, Seattle hasn’t won a game in August. If there has ever been a time to panic during this peculiar season for the Storm, it’s now. ### **What changed?** You would expect previous statistical trends to shift and major injuries to play a role in such a drastic collapse. But in the Storm’s case, they just can’t seem to close out games. Despite having the youngest player in the league (Dominique Malonga at 19 years old), the Storm entered the season as the oldest team in the league (30.6 average player age). The core veterans who make this team go have to play 30 or more minutes per game for Seattle to even have a chance, and the cracks are starting to show. They’re tired. “It’s the *how* it’s happening,” Quinn said after the Storm’s sixth-straight loss on Wednesday. “We’re playing decent in the first half and even up to the third quarter … but it’s just these moments, they deflate us, and we can’t get them back.” Seattle has held at least a two-possession lead in four of their most recent six losses. The biggest collapse was in the Aug. 10 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks when the Storm led by 16 late in the first quarter and lost by three points. There hasn’t even been an atrocious shooting night — the Storm have shot above 40 percent from the field as a team in each of the six losses. But it’s the critical plays down the stretch where Seattle’s offense has no sense of urgency and the defense becomes porous. “We need to have a little bit of pride in those small moments,” veteran Nneka Ogwumike said on Thursday. “We’re doing a lot of great things. But ensuring that, for example, at the end of that third quarter, that we’re still locked in and not getting bogged down by a couple of mistakes … Ensuring that we’re about it and not just saying it is really what we need to do.” Ogwumike added that the team’s “identity” has become “fighting back,” and that has been “symbolic of how we react rather than respond.” This aligns with the results, as the Storm frequently get complacent in a lead instead of continuing to build it. That wasn’t the case before the All-Star break, when the team would still eviscerate struggling teams like the Chicago Sky by 38 points. Seattle rarely even played in close games before the break, winning their first 14 games by an average margin of 11.4 points per game. Its first nine losses were by an average of 10.7 points per game. However, their last six losses have been by an average of just 5.2 points per game. The trade for Brittney Sykes was a good move in theory, as Seattle needed another productive member in the backcourt. She showed her ceiling in the Aug. 10 loss to the Sparks, totaling 27 points and four steals. But she’s shot a combined 29 percent from the field (21 total points) and had zero steals in her other two games with the Storm thus far. Erica Wheeler’s production has also slowed now that she is coming off the bench again, combining for 11 points in the last two games. Skylar Diggins has gotten into foul trouble more as of late and doesn’t appear 100 percent healthwise — logging just one 20-point game in the last 13 contests after having 11 over the team’s first 20 games. Gabby Williams remains incredibly inconsistent offensively while being the team’s defensive backbone. She also hasn’t scored 20 or more points in over a month. Combine all that with Ezi Magbegor being on pace for her worst scoring season since 2021 (8.2 points per game), and the Storm offense has been left with one consistent producer on offense: Nneka Ogwumike. “Nneka, again, she’s willing us and keeping us in games and locked in and giving us some boost when we need it,” Quinn said. “We’ve got to buckle down and find some consistency in just the paint points, honestly. We don’t shoot a lot of threes, but what’s been our bread and butter has been the paint, and if we’re not efficient there, it’s difficult to find rhythm.” Malonga has also been a bright spot, scoring 20 points in two of her last three games while also being the most productive rebounder on the team. She can help bolster that production in the paint that Quinn is talking about, but she’s also going to have down games as she continues to learn. ### **‘Time is running out’** With the Storm being as talented as they are, a second straight season of underachievement will put Quinn’s job significantly in jeopardy — especially if they fall out of the playoffs. The coach has to put her team in the best position to win games, and we’ve seen the Storm collapse multiple times this season from poor late-game rotations. “For me, as a coach, it is empowering in providing confidence and next-play mentality and all these things,” Quinn said. “But individual players have to have that within themselves … and hopefully bring that out of each other. Right now, we’re just getting to these places and staying in them … Time is running out, and my team knows it.” It can’t all be put on the players, but Quinn is right that they also have to take control of their own destiny with the current circumstances. At some point, the great players have to make great plays. Everyone is to blame for the current skid. At 16-17 overall, Seattle has 11 games remaining in the regular season and they are just a half-game ahead of LA for the final playoff spot. The Storm are also just three games behind the fifth seed, meaning they still control their own fate. The quest for a turnaround begins in a second straight game against the Atlanta Dream at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 15\. That contest will double as the first WNBA regular season game in Canada, held at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, B.C.