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WNBA FINALS: SPARKS VS LYNXOctober 11, 2016Maya MooreSeimone AugustusMinneapolis, Minnesota Lynx - 79, Sparks - 60 Q. Maya, it was a pretty tight game even midway through the second quarter, and then you went on the 17-3 run. What allowed you guys to really pull away there and find a groove? MAYA MOORE: Yeah, I think we always spark our runs when we can get stops in a row. We were able to rebound the ball. There was a stretch there where they did get a few O-boards, but for the most part we were able to secure most of the defensive rebounds and go. I think we had a better understanding of our spacing tonight, better understanding of getting the ball moving tonight, and just the pace that we played with allowed us to really capitalize when we got those stops. Q. Maya, Cheryl maybe half jokingly said you might not have slept all that well after Game 1. How did you feel after Game 1 and how do you feel now? MAYA MOORE: Yeah, there's only so many things you can do to take your mind off of a loss like that. Yeah, falling asleep was pretty hard. But thankfully I didn't have any nightmares. I was able to sleep through the night after that. But today was better. Our team is so great at being positive. Lindsay Whalen is one of those people that you get around her and she's just going to pick you up. Sylvia is always smiling, and 'Mone is going to come in and start talking trash and just get you going, just the good trash that gets you going and competitive. I'm kind of joking on that. But I think, like I said, this team bounces back well, and you can't stay down for too long when you're on this team, and I'm a part of that, of wanting to come in and bring that energy, so that's what I kind of took on myself personally today was just I'm going to bring more energy than I did last game, and it was contagious for me from other players who brought energy, and 1 through 11 it was probably one of our best games as far as energy in the Playoffs. Q. Seimone, you start the fourth on a three-point play. Half of your points come in the fourth quarter. How do you think that helped the Lynx pull away and stay away when LA was making a second threat to your lead? SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: We just were more aggressive. Like I just tried to attack more in the fourth quarter, or throughout the game I tried to attack, and it just so happened to fall my way. The fans were kind of sitting on their hands a little bit, and I think that helped them get into the game. The Target Center starts a-rockin'; that's what we always kind of pride ourselves on, like we feed off their energy, and once we got going and got that run going, it was like no turning back. Q. For both of you, the league MVP had six shots. How were you able to kind of structure your defense to limit her opportunities and kind of force them into maybe taking some shots they didn't want to take? MAYA MOORE: Hats off to our posts. They worked really, really hard tonight to just try to keep their bodies in front of Nneka, who is so good at screening and rolling or slipping. She's so fast, so quick off the ground. So just trying to do their best to make her catches hard. As guards we try to apply ball pressure, we try to do what we can, but I think they just overall had a greater sense of just focus and keeping themselves in front of Nneka and trying to make it harder for her instead of getting those open lay-ups that she's so explosive at getting with her athletic catches right down the middle. It's a hard job. They made it look easier, but it's not. She's such an explosive player. Keeping her off the boards, too. It's great, but it's going to be hard to continue to do that, but we're going to keep trying. Q. Maya, Seimone got quite a bit of mileage in the last week describing the ways where she could tell how Lindsay Whalen is going to go off. How can you tell when Seimone is about to go off? MAYA MOORE: Those dreads get to popping, nostrils get to flaring. I mean, my nostrils flare, too. We're both nostril-flaring kind of players. Just that look in her eye. You know, she -- when she -- I don't know if you get a lot of and-ones. You got some and-ones tonight, and we went crazy. That was -- she's slim but don't let it fool you. She likes to mix it up -- okay, I'm done. She likes to mix it up down there. No, she told us she was going to be better for us today. We all, I think, had that mindset, but she went out and made some big plays, continuing off the big shot she hit last game to -- before my lay-up, she hit that huge one to cut it to two, and shots like that just continued to happen for us tonight with 'Mone, just poised. Her defense was also great, and I don't know if she gets enough credit for that, as well. But that look in her eye when she gets to head bobbing and dreads popping, we know it's about to continue. Q. The talk the past few days has been about how you guys have been in this spot before. What's the confidence level like going back to LA? SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: We have a lot of confidence. Like you said, we was in this position before last year, and I mean, the thing for us is we know what we needed to do. We watched the entire game footage from Game 1, and we just seen where we made mistakes. Not saying that LA didn't capitalize on the mistakes that we made, but there was a lot of empty possessions where they were able to get out in transition and spark their offense, a lot of defensive possessions where we had a lot of miscommunication. Those are simple things that we can clean up, but those are key details that can cost you the game, which it did in Game 1, so tonight was just another night where we were able to clean these things up, and if we keep improving coming into Game 3, we'll put ourselves in a better position to pull off another win. Q. Seimone, things got a little bit dicey there in the third quarter when they went on that 14-0 run, cut it all the way down to three points. What was the team talking about? What was going through you guys' heads in terms of stopping the bleeding at that point? SEIMONE AUGUSTUS: Just that, stopping the bleeding. We're always talking about getting three-in-a-row stops, and at that point they had went on that run, and we needed to get a stop and get a score. That's kind of how we look at it. That's our mindset; once a team tries to go on their run, we try to stop the bleeding and then go on our own little bit of a run, and that's what happened. We stopped the bleeding, started to run our offense, started to execute, and defensively we started to pick it up and got back into our groove again. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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