We are the champions!

Tonight is a night for cel­e­bra­tion. The 2018 Seat­tle Storm have once again brought a cham­pi­onship home to the Emer­ald City, sweep­ing the Wash­ing­ton Mys­tics in a best-of-five series to claim their third title over­all — which is the most of any Seat­tle pro­fes­sion­al sports fran­chise. Way to go, Storm — we’re so proud of you!

NPI con­grat­u­lates Coach­es Dan Hugh­es, Gary Klop­pen­burg, and Crys­tal Robin­son, Storm own­ers Dawn Trudeau, Lisa Brum­mel, and Gin­ny Gilder, and, most impor­tant­ly of all, the play­ers: Sue Bird, Jordin Cana­da, Alysha Clark, Natasha Howard, Crys­tal Lang­horne, Jew­ell Loud, Kaleena Mosque­da-Lewis, Court­ney Paris, Noelle Quinn, Mer­cedes Rus­sell, Bre­an­na Stew­art, and Sami Whitcomb.

What a tri­umph. This was a hard-fought, well-deserved championship.

All sea­son long, the 2018 Storm played with a fierce­ness and devo­tion that earned them a top speed in the play­offs. They won twen­ty-six reg­u­lar sea­son games while only los­ing eight. Their road to the finals was a lit­tle bumpy, as they had some dif­fi­cul­ty dis­patch­ing the Phoenix Mer­cury, but they pre­vailed in the end and then had a great series against the Wash­ing­ton Mys­tics. The Mys­tics were appear­ing in the WNBA Finals for only the first time in fran­chise history.

The Storm won the first two games in the Finals series at home. They then went on the road for Game Three. And although they haven’t always had the smoothest fourth quar­ters late­ly, they were able to put the Mys­tics away in con­vinc­ing fash­ion, leav­ing no doubt who the cham­pi­ons would be when the final buzzer sounded.

The Storm don’t receive the lev­el of atten­tion in the mass media that the Sea­hawks, Mariners, or even the Sounders do. But they are a great orga­ni­za­tion and a tremen­dous asset to our region, and they deserve to be appreciated.

The Storm are dif­fer­ence mak­ers both on and off the bas­ket­ball court. The team’s play­ers are role mod­els for aspir­ing youth and the entire orga­ni­za­tion, play­ers and front office, are pas­sion­ate about build­ing bet­ter communities.

Through their Storm­Cares ini­tia­tives — Stor­mA­cad­e­my, Stor­mAs­sist, Storm­Fit, Stor­mU­ni­ty, and Storm Well­ness — the team is active­ly engaged in improv­ing lives in our region in as many ways as they can. They gen­uine­ly do care about every­one’s well being and they con­tin­u­al­ly prove it with their com­mu­ni­ty involvement.

The Storm tru­ly are the pride and joy of the Pacif­ic North­west. With this cham­pi­onship, they alone now have more league titles than all the city’s oth­er cur­rent­ly active pro­fes­sion­al teams com­bined. The Mariners in par­tic­u­lar might want to take notes, as they have yet to win a World Series and haven’t been to the play­offs since 2001, one year after the Storm came into being.

The Stor­m’s accom­plish­ment will be com­mem­o­rat­ed this Sun­day in Seat­tle with a cham­pi­onship parade. We encour­age any read­ers who can spare the time to go and hon­or this tremen­dous group of ath­letes for their exem­plary leadership.