With Elena Delle Donne’s back worse than we knew, ‘Playoff Emma’ leads the Mystics to first WNBA title

WASHINGTON — This was weeks ago, after the Mystics had beaten Dallas toward the end of the regular season, on a September night before “Playoff Emma” was a thing. She scored 22 off the bench to lead Washington to its first-ever WNBA title, picking up both Finals MVP and the slack, while Elena Delle Donne had her hands full guarding Connecticut’s great center, Jonquel Jones, and while the other Mystics couldn’t make anything from deep. This title had to be earned, as all championships since Odysseus and the boys ran the ol’ fake horseplay on the Trojans, have had to be earned — in the grimiest, messiest way possible, deep in what my friend Fred Carter used to call “the gut of the ballgame.” That’s when the very best players in the world at what they do simply, and at last, don’t win as much as they refuse to lose, because their will is stronger, their concentration deeper. “I don’t think, in our minds, in the duration of the game, that it came up that we don’t want to lose,” said Cloud, who scored all nine of her points in the fourth quarter. For us, the last couple of huddles those last eight minutes, it was all about defense and rebounding.” And in the last minute, the title secure, the crowd started chanting “Run It Back.” The Mystics’ motto all season was a reference to wanting to earn a second chance in a Finals, to show what they could do, what they learned from a year ago, how they trained all winter and spring with a single focus and purpose, and that there should be no doubt, as there now was not, who the best team in the WNBA was this season.