Two different teams; one series.

In a matchup of opposites, the Los Angeles Sparks defeated the Charlotte Sting to claim the 2001 WNBA Championship.

The Sparks were a red-hot team, a team that kicked off the season with nine straight wins and went on to finish 28-4. The Sting opened the season 1-10 before winning 17 of its last 21 games to secure the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference.

Two different teams; one series.

The Sparks had league MVP Lisa Leslie at center, averaging 22.3 points in the playoffs to lead Los Angeles to its first ever league title. The leading scorers for the Sting were guards Andrea Stinson and Dawn Staley, who averaged 12.0 and 11.8 points in the playoffs, respectively.

Two different teams; one series.

The Sting defeated the highly touted Cleveland Rockers in the first round, then stunned the New York Liberty in the Eastern Conference Finals with back-to-back wins at Madison Square Garden. The Sparks swept the four-time WNBA champion Houston Comets in Round 1 before eliminating the second-seeded Sacramento Monarchs with a 93-62 Game 3 rout.

“Last year, Swoopes got the MVP and (Houston) blew us out by 25,” Sparks head coach Michael Cooper said in a press conference after the championship series. “This year, we went in and won. That’s the difference between last year’s team and this year’s team: we were mentally tough.”

They took two completely different paths, but both led to the championship series.

Los Angeles swept the three-game championship series, but not before a brief scare in Game 1 when the Sting led 39-35 at the half. Charlotte maintained its lead until midway through the second half, when the Sparks mounted a run to outscore the Sting 40-27 in the second half.

Los Angeles toppled over the Sting in Game 2, easily securing an 82-54 win. It was the Sparks’ 21st home victory this year, with their only home loss being an 80-60 letdown against Sacramento in the playoffs.

“We had a great season,” Charlotte head coach Anne Donovan told the media after the game, “and a of people counted us out, didn’t expect us to get here.”

Even though the Sting lost the championship, its season was a huge success and turnaround from 2000, when the team finished last in the Eastern Conference with an 8-24 record.

“It would have been so easy for (the players) to just say, ‘New coach, too many new players, we’re 1-10, it’s going to be another bad year,’ and just bomb,” Donovan said in an ESPN interview. “But they refused to do that.”

The Sting, a team that won its final seven games of the regular season, surprised everyone with its Cinderella postseason run.

“This sort of turnaround doesn’t happen very often in sports,” WNBA president Val Ackerman said in a press conference before the championship series. “It doesn’t happen very often in the sport of basketball and I think we will be witnessing history over the next couple of days.”