Marina Mabrey couldn’t stop smiling.
She smiled as she sunk three three-pointers, she smiled during her halftime interview, and she smiled postgame, as she took questions about what it felt like to wear a Connecticut Sun uniform.
In her first game as a member of the Sun, Mabrey looked like she could be the missing piece in the team’s pursuit of a WNBA championship. The veteran sharpshooter who the Sun acquired from Chicago last month finished with 17 points (7-13 FG), 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 steals, as the Sun dominated the Wings from start to finish.
Postgame, Mabrey sat alongside DeWanna Bonner and reflected on what it was like to play with such experienced players. It’s a sharp contrast from the younger, rebuilding team she played alongside in Chicago just a few weeks ago, where rookies led the way and everyone worked to figure out their role.
“Just playing with vets like this who make things so much easier for everybody, it’s kind of easy to just read-and-react off them,” Mabrey said. “They just make everybody look so much better, so I’m appreciative of that.”
Bonner, the Sun’s leading scorer this season, exploded for 29 points on 8-14 shooting, while Alyssa Thomas posted a quintessential near triple-double — 12 points, 14 assists, and 8 rebounds.
“Marina just adds another dynamic to our team,” Alyssa Thomas said after the game on the ION broadcast. “We need three-point shooting, and that’s her specialty.”
The Sun finished the game with 11 three-pointers — 4 from Bonner, 3 from Mabrey and 3 from Ty Harris, who scored 14 points on 5-8 shooting. It’s an unusually high figure for a team that ranks toward the bottom of the league from beyond the arc, and it’s something they know they needed to work on.
“Three-point shooting is what you need to win a championship and even compete,” Thomas said. They’re one step closer now.
With the win, Connecticut improves to 19-6 on the year, good for second overall. The Wings fall to 6-20 and further from the last spot in the playoffs. Dallas was led by Arike Ogunbowale (21 points, 6-12 FG) and Satou Saballay (20 points, 6-17 FG). Sabally played her first game as a Wing after missing the first half of the season with a shoulder injury.
DeWanna Bonner finds a groove in win
For Bonner, the efficient shooting (4-7 from three) was a welcome sign. She spent her Olympic break in Paris, cheering on fiance Alyssa Thomas and hitting the gym every single day in Paris: “I’m a workaholic.”
“Two days after I landed, I found a gym and a trainer and worked on my shot,” Bonner said. “I feel like it wasn’t the best in the first half [of the season]. But, I’m old. I need to rest. So that also happens.”
The shot looked smooth in the win over the Dream. It also didn’t hurt that there was another sharpshooter looking to create her own shot alongside
“When you add a piece like Marina, who can just jump in and fit in to what we’ve been doing, we don’t have to slow down at all,” Bonner said. “I think that’s huge that we can do that — you can just put her out there.”
