Happy New Year to all our StormTracker readers. I’m sure for many of you, like me, today is a chance to catch up while getting back to work after being in and out the last couple of weeks. That being the case, you might have missed our “stormbasketball.com Best of 2009″ wrapup and polling. Elsewhere, SwishAppeal.com’s Q McCall looked at Storm guard Tanisha Wright as his highlight of 2009 in women’s basketball.

While “selflessness” is not required to become a successful professional basketball player, some of the most beautiful moments in basketball are when that ethic manifests itself  as complete harmony between the actions of individual players — no-look (even look-away) passes, a Princeton backcut, a long bounce pass for a layup on a fastbreak, or a guard driving and kicking the ball out for a three.

In the celebrity culture of today — in which we scrutinize and destroy the people we worship while simultaneously seeking to construct our own personal celebrity image – the very idea of minimizing the self-absorbed pursuit of individual glory for the sake of greater team success in sport can be refreshing.

So when I thought back on my favorite moments in women’s sports for 2009, one of the first things that sprung to mind was a person — not necessarily a moment — that embodied that ethic of selflessness-in-action, both on the court and in the way she thinks about the game: Seattle Storm guard Tanisha Wright.

Meanwhile, Jayda Evans of the Seattle Times had the end of the ’00s on her mind, ranking the best of Northwest women’s basketball in the decade. Any doubt what was the No. 1 moment/story?

1. 2004 WNBA championship: Seattle has only won two titles and one came from the Storm. From Betty Lennox to the parade to Westlake Center, you can’t get any better than winning a title in your league.

Throughout Europe and Australia, international leagues have been on break for the holidays but will return to action this week. The exception is China’s WCBA, which played on. On Saturday, Storm forward Swin Cash saw her Guangdong Asia Aluminum team fall 68-62 in overtime to Shanghai. Cash had 22 points, 12 rebounds and four assists in the loss.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 4:37 pm and is filed under in the media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.