2014 WNBA Finals

Result

Finals MVP: Diana Taurasi

Games

Finals context

Phoenix's third championship came against a Chicago Sky team making its first-ever Finals appearance despite a modest 15-19 regular-season record — the Sky had finished fourth in a weaker Eastern Conference before upsetting both Atlanta and Indiana to reach the championship round. The gap in overall team strength showed immediately: Phoenix, at a dominant 29-5, swept the series in three games, winning the opener 83-62 and following with a Finals-record 29-point rout, 97-68, in Game 2. Chicago's frontcourt star Sylvia Fowles, playing on the losing side of a series she would help her next team win a year later after a trade to Minnesota, could not overcome Phoenix's suffocating defensive pressure and offensive balance. Notably, Phoenix center Brittney Griner sat out Game 3 recovering from surgery following an eye injury suffered in Game 2, forcing the Mercury to close out the title without their starting center. The clinching Game 3, played September 12, was Phoenix's closest of the series, a 87-82 win in which Diana Taurasi scored 24 points, 14 of them in the fourth quarter, hitting a tiebreaking short jumper and converting the ensuing free throw with 14.3 seconds left to put Phoenix ahead 85-82; after Elena Delle Donne missed a potential game-tying three for Chicago, Penny Taylor sealed the win with two free throws with 9.3 seconds remaining. Candice Dupree matched Taurasi's 24 points for Phoenix, while Chicago got 23 from Delle Donne, 20 from Fowles, and 19 from Allie Quigley in a losing effort. Taurasi was named Finals MVP for her sustained excellence across the sweep, adding a third championship to a résumé that already included titles in 2007 and 2009 and cementing her status as the greatest player of her generation. Chicago's run to the Finals, despite a losing regular-season record by conventional standards, remains one of the more improbable Cinderella stories in WNBA playoff history, and it foreshadowed the Sky's eventual championship breakthrough seven years later in 2021, albeit against this same Phoenix franchise in a role-reversal rematch. For Phoenix, this third title in eight seasons (2007, 2009, 2014) reaffirmed the Mercury's status as one of the league's dominant forces of the era, built around the enduring partnership of Taurasi and coach Corey Gaines's up-tempo system inherited from Paul Westhead. Griner's absence for the clinching game, while ultimately not costly, underscored the death-by-injuries theme that had already touched multiple Finals in the preceding years, from Connecticut's Whalen in 2005 to Delle Donne's own back troubles that would define the 2019 championship round for Washington five years later.

Sources

• Wikipedia — 2014 WNBA Finals
• Fox News (AP) — Taurasi, Dupree score 24 each as Mercury beat Sky 87-82 to complete sweep for third WNBA title