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WNBA FINALS: MYSTICS VS STORMSeptember 7, 2018Mike ThibaultSeattle, Washington Storm - 89, Mystics - 76 MIKE THIBAULT: Basically we got our butts kicked in every phase of the game. The only bright spot probably for us tonight was our bench as a whole, and Ariel Atkins probably wasn't too phased by the whole experience, but we were a step behind. They were quicker than us, made us pay for every defensive mistake for a stretch, and we made enough of them to help them. Give them credit, they were ready to go, and we haven't played a game like this since right before the All-Star Game. We played Connecticut and this looked really similar. The good part of the series, we get a chance to recoup and regroup tomorrow and come back and play better on Sunday. Q. I think you had eight turnovers in the first 11, 12 minutes of the game. You mentioned Ariel Atkins not being phased by the moment. Do you attribute that to some nerves or jitters from the rest of the team? MIKE THIBAULT: I don't know if it was nerves or jitters or understanding how hard it is to play in a series like this on the little things like getting open and casual passes. The passes, they're never going to get there in games like this unless you work a little harder. We need better screening, we needed better footwork to get open. I just thought we were kind of thinking that we were going to get what we wanted on offense if we just moved the ball a little bit, and they just saw passes. I think that that leads to getting their energy going in the building. They got some lay-ups, and you dig yourself a hole right off the bat with that kind of thing. I think the turnovers hurt us, and then we made probably three or four glaring defensive mistakes in the first quarter, particularly in how we were going to play Natasha Howard. She cut behind us -- she does that to a lot of teams. That's why she's had the year we had. I just don't think we did a very good job on her. She set a tone for them, and then Jewell Loyd got going as the half went along. She had a terrific first half. I think she was 6 for 8 from the floor, and most of the year she scored 16 or 17 against us, but not like that. I mean, she had to work a lot harder to get them, and I just don't think we did a good job tonight. Q. Points in the paint were 46-28, fast breaks was 18-0. What about those errors that kind of got to you? MIKE THIBAULT: Well, if you don't get any defensive stops, you're not going to get any fast break points, and we didn't stop any of their shots. They were close to 60 percent for the game. But the points in the paint were coming from lay-ups and things like that. They weren't coming from them just coming down and putting them back in the basket and posting up, it was drives right down the lane in transition and getting back and those kind of things. Q. How do you get Elena Delle Donne going? MIKE THIBAULT: Yeah, they've done that match-up a fair amount of the time. It takes pressure off Breanna Stewart by doing that. They try to keep length on her, and Natasha is really long, and then you put Toliver do some switching on us, try to keep from getting mismatches and pick-and-roll situations. We're going to have to find other ways to create some mismatches. I mean, we'll watch the film. It's hard to say right now. They didn't do anything that we didn't anticipate. We just didn't handle it really well. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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