Candace Parker shook off the regular season woes and took the helm to lead the Los Angeles Sparks to victory over Minnesota Lnyx 92-75 in Game 3 of the WNBA finals. The Sparks now hold a 2-1 lead in the series.
Stepping up their aggression on the defensive end, the Sparks capitalized on 13 forced turnovers to take a commanding lead in the first quarter. Maintaining their rhythm through the game, the Sparks were able to cruise with relative ease to victory.
Candace Parker lead all scorers with 24 points with Nneka Ogwumike and Essence Carson cashing in for 21 and 16 respectively for the Sparks. Dominating the Lynx in the paint, Parker says the presence that wasn’t there in the regular season showed up tonight at the Galen Center.
“That was a product of me being nonexistent in every game we played Minnesota this year,” said Parker. “I went back and watched film, and my presence wasn’t there.
I mean, I myself, my teammates played well in Game 1 and Game 2, and we were aggressive defensively, but I was just there. We’ve worked too hard to get to this point to just be there.’
Essence Carter attributed the Sparks big win to better effort under the basket.
“Rebounding if you want to talk,” said Carter. “But also, on the other side, intangibles,”
“But definitely we had to take care of rebounding, keep them off the boards. They’re a great rebounding team.”
The Lynx regrouped to pull within eight (48-40) going into the half but were unable to narrow the gap further for the duration of play. Maya Moore, who was held to dismal 9 points attributed the loss the frequent turnovers that lead to easy scoring opportunities for the Sparks.
“We have to be able to respond and anticipate ways to get out of their pressure because they converted those turnovers into fast break points, transition, easy points, where we can’t even give our defense a chance to stop them. “
Minnesota center Janel McCarville left with a back injury off of a hard foul in the forth corner never to return to action. Her status for Game 4 is unclear at this time.
Game 4 of the best-of-five takes place at the Staples Center on Sunday. Tip-off begins at 5:30 PM PT. If the Sparks are successful, they will win their first time since 2002.