The Storm appears tired, the result of playing just 24 hours earlier in Los Angeles. The Storm did not arrive in town until 10:30 p.m. last night; factor in time to get home, unpack and unwind … well, you get the idea. The Sun, meanwhile, have been in Seattle since Monday, waiting to play this game. And it shows.

Seattle has scored just five points in the quarter. Oh, one other sign: Sue Bird is in street clothes on the Storm bench, recovering from knee surgery.

With 2:53 to play in the half, Connecticut leads 33-21.

Anne Donovan has taken her second timeout of the game following the Storm’s slow start to the qaurter — three points in just under three minutes.

Meanwhile, Nykesha Sales and Le’Coe Willingham are leading the Sun. Sales scored back-to-back buckets in the paint and Willingham scored from outside to push its lead to 26-17. The lead grew to 11 on a basket Kristen Rasmussen.

Consecutive baskets by Betty Lennox (outside) and Lauren Jackson (inside) have pulled the Storm to within 28-21.

The Storm went on a strong 8-2 run to take its first lead since Izi’s basket at 7:56. Guard Tanisha Wright put the Storm in front 12-10 on a beautiful defensive play, stealing the ball at the top of the Sun’s key and driving down court for a contested layup.

The Storm would score only one more basket in the quarter.

The Sun went to work down low with Dydek and outside with Lindsay Whalen. Connecticut closed the quarter on a 10-2 run.

Statistically speaking: Lauren Jackson had two blocks in the quarter; Betty Lennox led the Storm with six points and five rebounds.

The game is off to a fast pace. Betty Lennox scored the game’s first basket on a baseline drive at the 9:23 mark, giving the Storm a 2-0 lead. The basket was followed by a nice defensive play by Lauren Jackson, who rejected a shot by the Sun’s 7-foot-2 center Margo Dydek.

The Sun’s Nykesha Sales evened the game on a fadeaway bank shot to beat the shot clock, but the Storm continues to struggle from outside. Iziane Castro Marques scored on a strong drive through traffic, but it’s been as Connecticut since. Make that, all Katie Douglas. The Sun forward made four consecutive free throws and scored on a 17-foot baseline jumper before Storm coach Anne Donovan had seen enough and called her first timeout at the 5:25 mark.

We are less than five minutes away from tipoff, and KeyArena is bustling. It’s Kids Day, and the arena is full of colorful T-Shirts, thundersticks, mascots and excitement.

The only thing missing is storm.wnba.com beat writer Kevin Pelton, who is on assignment in Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS – I’m sitting outside a Sonics practice at the Athletes’ Performance facility in Las Vegas, listening to the online webcast of the Storm’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks. Isn’t the Internet grand?

Somewhere in Seattle, Sue Bird is also tuned in via storm.wnba.com, as she blogged about in the latest installment of the Bird and Dee Blog at WNBA.com:

So far since I have been away, I have been IMing, texting, calling and emailing
my teammates and coaches as much as I can. I am so used to being a part of a
team, and then to not be there, I have FOMS. Fear of missing something. It’s a
serious case. I want to be a part of everything. Tanisha Wright has been doing a
great job of recapping everything. Unfortunately we haven’t been on NBA TV so I
had to listen on the internet via radio webcast (which is awesome, by the way).
Thanks to Adia Barnes and Alan Horton. It’s interesting to listen and be a fan.
I’m living and dying on every possession. I’m just glad I can follow it. It’s
like what you had to do during your time off … of course, neither of these
times have been our choice.

The Storm closes out the first half of the 2007 season with tomorrow’s Kids Day against Connecticut. I hope you’ve got your tickets for that one. Regretfully, I won’t be there. It’s the first Storm game at KeyArena I’ve missed since July 2004 and only the second since I first started following the Storm in 2002. The good thing is the Storm only plays that one home game while I’m in Vegas, and the rest of our coverage should be uninterrupted.

My real point in posting today, however, is to discuss All-Star reserves, which were announced yesterday. Janell Burse did not make it at center, with coaches opting to reward the veteran experience of six-time All-Star Taj McWilliams-Franklin.

For the most part, it looks like the coaches did a good job. The names getting thrown out as “snubs” – a word I hate because it is so overused – don’t look like terrible mistakes to me.

The All-Star roster is not yet complete. WNBA President Donna Orender will name a replacement for Bird, who will miss the game after her knee surgery. I’ll humbly submit my contention that replacement should be Bird’s backcourt-mate, Betty Lennox.

If you look at PER numbers for the WNBA, the top players not to be selected for the All-Star Game were:

1. Cheryl Ford, 22.9 (thanks pilight … of course she was a starter)
1. Erin Buescher, 21.8
2. Betty Lennox, 20.4
3. Nicole Powell, 19.8
4. Sophia Young, 19.8
5. Monique Currie, 19.8

Amongst the West guards who have not been selected, Lennox is the leader in scoring (12.5 ppg), third in rebounding (4.5 rpg) and fourth in assists. She’s even second in True Shooting Percentage despite her reputation as an inefficient scorer. Part of that is Lennox is shooting a cool 93.5% from the free-throw line, good for third in the WNBA.

Even when she has not shot the ball well this season, Lennox has contributed with her rebounding, her passing and her ability to get to the charity stripe. Though this is not her most spectacular season since joining the Storm, I think it’s been her best (so far). Lennox always seems to be on the cusp of making the All-Star team. This is the year she deserves to make it.

UPDATE: My argument fell on deaf ears at the league office. Sacramento’s Kara Lawson has been selected to replace Bird.

The Storm had lost 12 times in 13 regular-season visits to Houston. The Storm was without starting point guard Sue Bird. With Bird, the Storm lost at Houston eight days ago. It all added up to a loss tonight at the Toyota Center.

Nope.

Instead, the Storm controlled most of this game and took care of business in the second half for a 71-55 win over the Houston Comets.

Lots of kudos tonight. Lauren Jackson was, of course, brilliant. Jackson was two points shy of another 30-point effort, but shot 11-for-17 from the field and grabbed 13 rebounds despite occasionally facing a box-and-one defense. (That reminds me of how New York Coach Pat Coyle joked before Sunday’s game she would defend Jackson: A box-and-one with the box on LJ.)

Betty Lennox was outstanding, hitting four three-pointers, and Iziane Castro Marques hit two to supply the needed outside shooting. Wendy Palmer gave big minutes off the bench, putting up six points and six boards in 15 minutes.

Still, I think Alan and Adia were right to bring Tanisha Wright over for their postgame interview on 1150 AM KKNW. Starting in place of Sue Bird, Wright wasn’t perfect – as she pointed out afterwards, her five turnovers were too many, though tempered by the presence of pesky Crystal Smith – but she gave the Storm everything you could ask for. Wright had some big offensive boards and a big steal, handed out five assists and scored eight points. The Storm can win with play like that.

The only disappointment – and there isn’t one, really, but bear with me – was Shona Thorburn did not get in and I’m excited to see Thorburn get some run. The newly-signed point guard won me over with her play for the University of Utah during the 2006 NCAA Tournament, when the Utes advanced within an overtime of the Final Four.

Now it’s off to San Antonio. Frankly, by winning one game on this road trip, the Storm has met my expectations. A win tomorrow against the Silver Stars or Tuesday in L.A. would make this an incredible trip.

- After the game, Sue Bird talked to the media about her decision to undergo surgery. Bird explained that she might have been willing to fight through the injury, but when her doctor told her the injury could get worse, that was the deciding factor.

I thought Bird’s most telling comment came when she said, “It may look normal, but it doesn’t feel normal.” Under the surface of apparently strong play, Bird is clearly dragging a little bit. She shared for the first time that the injury has also been very painful off the court, acting up at night.

So Bird will have the surgery done by Dr. Michael Joyce, the UConn team physician who performed the previous two surgeries Bird has had on her left knee (to repair a torn ACL during her freshman year of college and a microfracture procedure after her second WNBA season) and knows her knee better than anyone. Dr. Joyce knows Bird’s knee so well, in fact, that he predicted after the microfracture that Bird would need a clean-up surgery in four years.

The hope is that Bird can recover quickly enough to return after the All-Star break, though it’s possible she’ll miss more than the four games the Storm has between now and the break. Bird is thinking bigger picture. Her eye is toward being at full strength in time for the playoffs.

- With three blowout wins in the last four games, the Storm’s reserves have gotten plenty of playing time. I think the action has been useful from a confidence perspective. We’re also seeing Wendy Palmer look more and more comfortable all the time, as she confirmed in her postgame interview with Alan Horton. I love watching Palmer play when she’s using her veteran tricks to beat younger opponents. The sum is that the Storm’s bench is playing as well as it has in some time.

- New Sparks owners Kathy Goodman and Carla Christofferson were in the KeyArena stands tonight. I had read they like to sit in amongst the crowd and saw the L.A. PR representative taking box scores up into the stands after the first quarter, but couldn’t pick out Goodman and Christofferson. I did spot them after the game, not exactly thrilled with the result.

- Thanks to everybody who helped put Bird and Lauren Jackson into the All-Star starting lineup and helped make Bird the leading vote getter in the entire league.

As for Janell Burse, fingers crossed on her chances of making the Western Conference roster as a reserve.