{"id":776942,"date":"2026-07-03T04:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776942\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T04:57:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:57:11","slug":"copper-scores-23-of-her-30-points-in-first-half-as-phoenix-mercury-race-past-seattle-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/776942\/","title":{"rendered":"Copper scores 23 of her 30 points in first half as Phoenix Mercury race past Seattle Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Kahleah Copper scored 23 of her 30 points in the first half, Valeriane Ayayi added 18 points and the Phoenix Mercury beat the Seattle Storm 90-67 on Thursday night for their third straight victory.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Copper was 9 of 12 from the field in the first half to help Phoenix (8-13) build a 55-36 lead. Copper scored her first points of the second half with 8:39 left for a 75-60 lead. She finished 12 of 21 from the field.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Lexi Held had 17 points and a career-high five 3-pointers for Phoenix. Alyssa Thomas had nine points, 13 rebounds and nine assists, and DeWanna Bonner was held to six points on 3-of-10 shooting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Awa Fam and Natisha Hiedeman each scored 13 points for Seattle (5-16), which dropped to 1-9 away from home this season. Flau\u2019jae Johnson and Jade Melbourne had 11 apiece. Seattle was outrebounded 40-29. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Ezi Magbegor made her season debut for Seattle after missing the first 20 games with a foot injury. She had eight points in 17 minutes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Up next<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Storm: Host Portland on Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Mercury: Host Chicago on Tuesday night. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AP WNBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba-basketball<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX (AP) \u2014 Kahleah Copper scored 23 of her 30 points in the first half, Valeriane Ayayi added&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-776942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}