Seattle to Face Cat-Astrophe in Finals

When it comes to streaks, the Dream was one of the WNBA leaders in a stat I like to call "streak wins".  Streak wins are wins only counted if they are part of a 3-game winning streak or longer.  The Dream were fourth in the league with 14 out of their 19 wins being streak wins.

The problem:  The league leader was Seattle.  All of Seattle's 28 regular season victories are streak wins.

How about home field advantage?  Atlanta was 10-7 at Philips Arena...good for fifth place in the Eastern Conference.  Whereas Seattle was 17-0 on the year.  The last time Seattle lost at Key Arena was almost a year ago - September 20, 2009 when the Sparks knocked them out of the semi-finals. 

Can the regular-season series tell us anything?  Out of the 14 previous WNBA finals there have only been three cases where a team had a losing record against their WNBA Finals counterpart - and 1997 was a best-of-one series.

So what hope does Atlanta have?  Will Atlanta even manage to avoid being swept?  Maybe so...but then again Seattle has never encountered the amazing force that is the secret to Atlanta's post-season success.

Is that force Sancho Lyttle?  Is it Angel McCoughtry?  I'm afraid not.  The key to Seattle's WNBA Finals defeat is below.

For nearly two weeks of my life I've believed that the secret to a cat's good luck comes in his feet.  As a result, I needed a test subject and found one in a Felis domestica named Malcolm. (*)  Malcolm, who is entering his fifth month as a women's basketball fan, is so large for a kitten that I suspect his father is actually Panthera onca, otherwise known as the black panther.  (**)

Suspecting that Malcolm's good luck - a critical part of a cat's nine lives - comes from his feet, I made the effort to extract the luck from his feet by rubbing his paws 10 times each day. (***)

I'm sure that many of you are screaming "superstition!"  Please.  Superstitions come from old wives' tales and coincidental occurrences.  The proof in the pudding is that in a sample of n=4 trials, the extraction of cat-like luck granted to the Atlanta Dream has been nothing short of overwhelming to Dream opponents.  If Angel McCoughtry's reflexes were anything but cat-like during their Game Two Eastern Conference Finals win over New York, then I'm not a scientist.  New York's problem wasn't in Atlanta's defense or Leilani Mitchell wearing a toe-tag, but rather that the Liberty did not have Malcolm on their side.

Is Malcolm afraid of the Seattle Storm?  Clearly not.  I posed the question three times to him and he simply turned away, pretending not to listen to me or even care about the topic.  Which is okay, because Malcolm's large size allows me to catch him easily and obtain all of the luck that the Dream will need to sweep Seattle in the WNBA Finals and shock the universe.

On the other hand, Seattle should provide an entertaining diversion - much like that of the toy with feathers that I use to tease Malcolm.  But the Storm's quest for a second title shall have to wait - the Storm are behind the cat's paw of fate.

______

(*) - Named so because he will obtain food By Any Means Necessary.
(**) - Not the Black Panther, beloved comic-book character.  That would just be wrong.
(***) - The amount of luck extraction must be carefully limited, lest it reduce Malcolm's own luck.  Only the amount of luck that Malcolm could naturally replace during his daily activities is extracted, as the scientist's motto is "First, do no harm."