From the beginning of the offseason, it was clear the Storm was heading in a new direction. The veteran laden group from 2014 had not yielded results and it became clear the team needed a reboot.

Once the season ended, Storm president and general manager Alisha Valavanis began the process of remolding the roster and turned one of the older teams into one of the younger teams, highlighted by rookies Jewell Loyd and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis.

The youth movement was on and Seattle finished strong, winning five of its final 12 games, with the third best shooting percentage in the league (44.1) and was holding opponents to the third lowest (41.5).

While it was a season of ups and downs, the Storm made strides by the end of the season that leave a great deal of optimism going into next season.

“It’s been a really rewarding season, one of the most rewarding in my WNBA years, which is a long time now,” Storm head coach Jenny Boucek said. “The reason being that every single day we did, whatever was in our control, we did the best we could with that.

“They also maintained an attitude, positivity, and hopefulness, and resilience, thankfulness. It’s hard to have when you’re not getting the external reward. It’s says a lot about the character they have that’s deep. When you get squeezed, you really realize what is inside of people and I thought we had an incredibly high character locker room and it will be a season I will never forget.”

There were some early growing pains as the team had a new system under Boucek, who was in her first season at the helm for the Storm, and were inserting eight new players into it. Six of those eight (Loyd, Mosqueda-Lewis, Abby Bishop, Angel Goodrich, Markeisha Gatling, Ramu Tokashiki) also had fewer than three years of WNBA experience.

What made the process longer was the little amount of practice time. The Storm averaged 1.6 days in between games prior to the All-Star Break while playing a league-high 18 games.

Despite the difficult schedule, there were glimpses of the development of some of the younger players. With the Storm taking on Tulsa in Oklahoma on June 28, Loyd and fellow rookie Tokashiki took control of the game with both scoring a career-high 21 points.

The team dropped that contest but saw the Shock two days later at KeyArena and remedied the situation when Sue Bird put the team on her back as she scored seven of her team-high 17 points to pick up the 74-69 win.

It was a sign that the team was beginning to learn from its experiences and put them to good use.

“For young teams, there are a couple of things that are usually challenging,” Boucek said. “One is sustained focus. You usually see a lot of inconsistency. We actually didn’t see that as much as you would expect from a team as young as we are and I credit them with that.

“Credit our veteran leadership as well. Sue, Alysha [Clark], Jenna [O’Hea], some of our more experienced players are uncanny in their focus and I think that standard was set from within.”

Bird, who was selected to her ninth WNBA All-Star Game, continued to play at a high level and was one of only two players in the league to averaging at least 10 points (10.3) and five assists (5.4) with the other being Chicago’s Courtney Vandersloot.

Bird also cemented her legacy on Aug. 2 in her home state of New York when she eclipsed the 5,000-point mark to become the only WNBA player to record at least 5,000 points and 2,000 assists.

Crystal Langhorne, who surpassed the 3,000-point plateau early in the season, was also part of the small veteran group and was one of the more efficient players in the league and shot 54.9 percent from the field, third in the league.

The Storm started to hit its stride after a long six-game road trip to begin the second half of the season.

What was likely the team’s best performance of the season came in a game that looked like it was going to get away from the Storm early.

On Aug. 30, Seattle was hosting Washington and found itself down by 14 in the second quarter and were being dominated inside. But then something clicked and the generally undersized Storm found a way to climb back into the game.

The Storm went on a 19-0 run between the third and fourth quarters to take an eight-point lead and never looked back. It was a balanced attack that saw Bird, Langhorne, and Loyd reach double figures.

Loyd, who scored 18 points in the game, showed why she was the top overall pick and drilled all 14 of her free throws, which set a franchise record for most free throws made without a miss in a single game, a record that had been previously held by future Hall of Famer Lauren Jackson.

“I’m just trying to stay out of her way as much as possible and not mess her up,” Boucek said. “When she is playing free, she usually does a lot of good things. I thought today she was pretty instinctual in what she was doing, didn’t have hesitation, and wasn’t missing moments.”

It was just one of 10 times where she led the Storm in scoring on the season, which led all rookies, the next being Tokashiki at four.

Loyd ended up being the only player to rank in the top five for scoring (10.7), rebounds (3.5), and assists (1.9) among rookies.

The game against Washington was part of an 11-game stretch to end the season where the Storm went 5-6 after beginning the season 5-17, which included wins over playoff teams Minnesota, Washington, and Los Angeles.

Mosqueda-Lewis also came on strong late and posted three double-digit games over the last five of the season, including a career-high 19 in the season finale. Gatling and Goodrich also posted career highs in several categories.

“We’re really pleased with this team’s growth and that was our No. 1 objective this year was to find some young players and grow together with them,” said Boucek. “It’s really honestly not just our young players that have grown. We’ve seen great growth in all of our players from Sue all the way across the board. Alysha Clark, Jenna. I could go down the line.”

“My standard as an athlete and a coach has always been reaching your fullest potential is my evaluation and measure of success… That’s going to be our measure. Whether we win or lose the game, whatever the score is, did we do our best? Did we do our best today in practice? That has been our measure of success from day one and we feel like we’ve done everything we can do reach our fullest potential. They’ve focused every single day on getting better and they’ve done everything possible to do that individually and collectively and I don’t think any of us have any regrets.”

With a young, developing core, some key veterans in the mix, and another high draftee on the way, the Storm appear to be pointing in the right direction heading into the 2016 campaign.