Chicago Sky hand Phoenix Mercury largest defeat in WNBA Finals history in Game 3 win

CHICAGO — By the fourth quarter of Friday’s Game 3 in the WNBA Finals, a lot of the electric energy had dissipated at a sold-out Wintrust Arena.

Not because the hometown Chicago Sky were struggling. To the contrary, they are now just one victory away from the first WNBA title in franchise history. It’s just that the Sky so thoroughly dominated the Phoenix Mercury in an 86-50 victory that the Chicago fans could relax for much of the second half.

Both teams gave a lot of time to their reserves, and it was just a matter of running out the clock to get to the final 36-point margin, which is the largest in WNBA Finals history.

“I don’t focus on what we won by, it’s just how we played,” Chicago coach James Wade said. “We know we have to stay focused. I want them to feel good about tonight’s win, but after tonight we have to really hone in on the next game. We have to take care of business.”

The Sky, which came into the league as an expansion team in 2006, will host the Mercury in Game 4 at 3 p.m. ET Sunday on ESPN. They lead the best-of-five series 2-1, and a victory will make Chicago the 10th WNBA franchise to win a championship as the league celebrates its 25th season this year.

Phoenix has three titles but the fourth seems far away after just about everything went wrong for the Mercury on Friday. Their 25.8 shooting percentage from the field was an WNBA Finals low.

“We can’t be any worse than 50,” Phoenix guard Diana Taurasi said of the Mercury’s season low in points, which is also the second-lowest total in a WNBA Finals game. “We’ll be better than 50. You can take that to Vegas.”

Chicago’s Candace Parker has been in this situation before. In 2016 and 2017, when she was with Los Angeles, the Sparks faced a WNBA Finals Game 4 at home with a chance to…