Former coach Curt Miller says ‘loaded’ Connecticut Sun are favorite to win WNBA title

All of the talk during the WNBA offseason surrounded two teams- the New York Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces, and the notion that anyone else was going to win the title was widely dismissed.

Those two juggernauts, emergent “superteams” playing in super-cities, were picked by pretty much everyone to meet up in the WNBA Finals. And with future Hall of Famers Breanna Stewart signing in New York and Candace Parker in Vegas– not to mention All-Stars Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot joining Sabrina Ionescu in Brooklyn, who could blame them?

The idea that last year’s runner-up, the Connecticut Sun, could return to the Finals? Nah. Too far-fetched.

Now, 11 games into the season, over a quarter of the way to the finish line, the Sun sit atop the Eastern Conference standings, a half-game up on that noisy juggernaut to the south.

As the Sun entered Sunday night’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks, their former coach and general manager Curt Miller, who led the team to the Finals last year, told reporters he believes the path to the WNBA title runs through the casino, as opposed to the Concrete Jungle.

“I think (Connecticut) is the odds-on favorite to win it. I don’t care (if) I say that,” Miller said. “I think Connecticut is loaded and so we know what’s coming through the door.”

Under new head coach Stephanie White, the Sun have picked up where Miller left them, despite trading away former league MVP Jones to the Liberty in January.

Alyssa Thomas is playing perhaps the best basketball of her career, averaging 14.9 points, 10.7 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game. DeWanna Bonner has stepped up to fill some of the scoring void left by Jones, posting a team-high 17.5 points per game, and Brionna Jones (16.1 ppg, 8.5 rpg) and Tiffany Hayes (10.3 ppg) have made major impacts as well.

Two of Connecticut’s three losses have come against New York and Las Vegas, but the Sun routed the Aces, 94-77 on June 8, a game in which Bonner poured in a career-high 41 points and Vegas coach Becky Hammon pulled her starters because they were being beaten so badly. It is the Aces’ only loss of the season to date (9-1).

“I just told them (my starters), ‘I’m not gonna watch that kind of basketball,’” Hammon said after the game. “I was gonna sit them out the rest of the game. Actually they came back and begged me to put them back in, so I did. We made a little run there, a little push, but at the end of the day we didn’t have anybody to guard Bonner. … She came out and kicked our ass, pretty much single-handedly.”

The Sun will have plenty more measuring-stick games this season, and plenty of chances to prove Miller’s comments right or wrong. Connecticut takes on the Liberty three more times in the regular season and faces back-to-back games with New York (at Mohegan Sun on June 27) and at Las Vegas (July 1) in a few weeks.

Miller’s Sparks entered Sunday’s game at 5-5, heading into the second game of a five-game homestand.