The long offseason is almost over. On Sunday, the Storm will begin training camp at the team’s practice gym in Royal Brougham Pavilion on the Seattle Pacific University campus. It’s an abbreviated camp, as the Storm will host the Phoenix Mercury at KeyArena on Opening Day three weeks from Saturday, June 4. In between, the Storm has a pair of preseason games: May 25 against the Los Angeles Sparks in Carson, Calif. (on the Cal State Dominguez Hills campus) and May 29 against the Tulsa Shock at the Key.

The Storm brings 17 players to training camp, including two draft picks and five players (three of them rookies) signed to training camp contracts. Teams are allowed 15 in camp at a time, so the coaching staff will have some decisions to make when Sue Bird and Swin Cash begin practicing on Tuesday after taking some time off following this week’s USA Basketball mini-camp in Las Vegas. (Everyone else on the roster is expected for Sunday’s practice.) By the end of camp, the Storm will have to be down to a final 11-player roster.

This camp will be different from past ones because the Storm will have close to a full complement of players from day one as opposed to integrating starters and other key players as they finish their overseas obligations. Last year, Svetlana Abrosimova and Jana Vesela did not join the team until the week before the opener. The final roster will have more time together, which will help the Storm integrate newcomers like Katie Smith and Belinda Snell into a rotation that features seven players from the championship team.

Stay tuned for complete coverage from training camp on StormBasketball.com and via @SeattleStorm on Twitter.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 13th, 2011 at 4:14 pm and is filed under training camp. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.