Larkins is missing piece who gives Fever a chance to win WNBA Finals
By CLIFF BRUNT
ISL Editor
INDIANAPOLIS — Erlana Larkins is the missing piece.
For years, folks thought Tamika Catchings needed another scorer to get her and the Indiana Fever to the highest level. The Fever got her that with Katie Douglas before the 2008 season, and Catchings certainly improved. She was required to do less, and the Fever got to the 2009 WNBA Finals. Last year, Catchings won her first MVP award, and Douglas certainly played the role of Robin well.
What Catchings really needed, though, in addition to a scorer, was someone who was committed to doing the dirty work inside. She needed a pick setter, a widebody, a rebounder, a hustler, queen of the floorburn by her side.
Larkins epitomized those roles with 16 points and 15 rebounds in Indiana’s 76-70 win over the Minnesota Lynx in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals. She’s one of the main reasons the Fever, even with Douglas hobbled by injury, are two wins from their first WNBA title.
Catchings doesn’t mind doing the dirty work — she did a magnificent job of it for Team USA at the Olympics. But though she has been always willing, she always has needed her teammates to do enough of that stuff to allow her to be a superstar.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been hustle players on the Fever roster over the years. Nobody mixed it up better than Tamika Whitmore, but that was only for a brief period, and she drifted out to the three-point line just a bit too often to fully be exactly what Catch and the Fever needed. Ebony Hoffman was good at it, but she wasn’t as athletic as Larkins. Tully Bevilaqua did everything but score, but she was a guard.
Larkins is that long-awaited force inside. Katie Douglas has been Catchings’ Scottie Pippen. Larkins is her Dennis Rodman. Like Rodman, she’s smaller than most of her opponents, yet she gets under their skin, draws fouls from them, outworks them. Oh, and they both like tattoos.
Larkins hasn’t taken the typical road to reach this point, She’s a former All-American at North Carolina who was a first-round draft pick by the New York Liberty in 2008. She had been out of the league since 2009 and was playing in Turkey before the Fever brought her back to the states.
She made the Fever, then waited. The problem was, she was Catchings’ backup at power forward. Fever coach Lin Dunn had moved Catchings from small forward before this season, and there aren’t many minutes behind No. 24.
But the Fever weren’t getting as much as they had hoped for out of centers Tammy Sutton-Brown and Jessica Davenport for much of the season, and Larkins dominated whenever she hit the floor. Finally, Dunn made Larkins the starting center late in the regular season.
In the first round against Atlanta, Larkins averaged 14.3 points and 10.7 rebounds. She made league MVP Tina Charles work in the Eastern Conference Finals, then had the dominant Game 1 against Minnesota. She’s averaging 11.6 points and 10.9 rebounds during the playoffs while shooting 59.6 percent from the field.
Now, if she can do it again, a Minnesota team some have considered one of the best ever in the WNBA will be one loss away from getting swept.
And the difference will be a hustle player who was out of the league last year and is playing out of position. Give Fever management credit for adding Larkins, and give Dunn credit for making a difficult switch. It could be a championship clincher.
