These don't sound like people on a mission.

"Ooooh," Steve Lincoln groans. "Missed shot!"

Another play follows quickly, and his wife, Leslie, throws out an encouraging "Nice move, nice move."

Their kids, Aubrey, 10, and Matt, 14, add cheers and play analyses of their own.

At a Phoenix Mercury game against the Connecticut Sun, the Scottsdale family is, above all else, having a blast. But there's more behind their having been season-ticket holders for two years.

"We want to make sure that when our daughter grows up and wants to play basketball, there's still going to be a WNBA," Leslie says. "Steve and I have a passion for basketball, and both of our kids do, too."

The kids have played on AAU club basketball teams since they were 5, and their parents coach.

To play in the WNBA, as Aubrey hopes to do one day, a player must prepare by being "aggressive on the court and working hard," the Liberty Elementary School fifth-grader says. "You have to get good grades in school, and you have to practice a lot."

Before the Mercury game, Aubrey donned her "Mighty Mercury Kids Club" T-shirt and shorts and painted her fingernails white, then added a tiny purple "M" to each nail on her left hand. The nails on her right hand stay blank: Even her team spirit can't help this right-hander draw legible letters with her left hand.

Aubrey and her brother often bring teammates to the games. "It's fun because you can cheer with them," she says. "They understand the game like me."

Moments later, Aubrey laments a player's missed shot, confiding to her mom: "She can't even make a layup with no one on her."

Aubrey says she most admires Mercury players Lisa Harrison and Adrian Williams, "because they're very competitive and they play the game really well."

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Matt, too, finds much to admire in the Mercury players, especially their execution of the fundamentals.

"It's a different style of play," explains the Sunrise Middle School eighth-grader. "Men slam-dunk. Women play together as a team."

"These games are a time for us to be together as a family," Steve says. "And they're a great experience for the kids. I like the environment here, and the spirit of the fans."

The games also are family time for Mercury general manager Seth Sulka, his wife, Carla, and their twins, 7-year-old Emily and Madeline and 1 year-old Audrey and Miles.

Seth was born in 1968, the year the NBA's Phoenix Suns began playing. Emily and Madeline, who will be 8 in October, were not yet 2 when the Mercury played its first game. With the WNBA's summer schedule eliminating worries about later bedtimes, the girls rarely miss a game.

Before the game, the older twins take turns on an inflatable slide in the Inhale Life Kids Zone, a free play area sponsored by the Arizona Department of Health Services.

They move courtside at game time, where Grandpa, Al Sulka, holds Audrey. Emily and Madeline entertain Miles.

A referee calls timeout, and Emily and Madeline rush over to the bench to hand towels and water to the Mercury players.

"I think the girls know the procedures and the layout of the arena better than most of us," Carla says. "They've grown up along with the Mercury, just like Seth grew up being a ball boy and statistician for the Suns."

COPYRIGHT 2002, AZCENTRAL.COM. Used with permission.