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WNBA ALL-STAR GAME

July 15, 2007

Bill Laimbeer

WASHINGTON, D.C.

COACH LAIMBEER: Well, you know, I thought this was a fun game today. There is no question that the Eastern team wanted to win this game. We talked about it before the game, yeah, we're going to have some fun, but we're going to win the game. And those players that played well throughout the game. Hopefully would have a chance to be on the court down the stretch, to make the plays. We talked maybe about someone getting a trophy. We happen to have the Most Valuable Player today. That's great.
I thought the key to the game was in the second half. We rebounded well. First half, they got way too many rebounds. Even the crowd was oohing and aahing at how many rebounds the West was getting. But I thought we played solid defense. We got the rebounds and those three balls that in the first half didn't go in. So in the second half, that was the key to the game.

Q. Can you talk about Cheryl's performance. And obviously, you sort of had a Detroit Shock contingent today, but Cheryl rebounded well, and made some big buckets underneath.
COACH LAIMBEER: Yeah, I thought the Shock represented themselves well today from Kara to Deanna Nolan, especially Ford. But Ford does that all the time. Cheryl gets a double-double almost every game she plays. She's a brute force in there when it comes to defensive rebounding, especially. You saw glimpses of her speed today when she ran the break. And she's teaching herself to be a better offensive player with the ball. Around the basket, and nobody really expected her to jack up a three ball and make it on top of that. So it was her day.
You know, we talked beforehand that I probably was only going to play her about 10 or 12 minutes unless she got off to a hot start. If she got off to a hot start and had a chance to be one of the stars of the game, we'd play her more, and she did.

Q. Can you talk a little bit about the Western Conference pulling out a full court press and trying to really increase their defense on the second half.
COACH LAIMBEER: I'm sorry? Oh, near the end of the game.

Q. Yes.
COACH LAIMBEER: They finally turned up their intensity level. I thought for the first time they kind of just thought they were the better team, and we were just going out there for shooting the ball for shooting the ball, not really compete to go win the basketball game. We didn't have that luxury. So I think when they turned their intensity up, they did show that they can play better basketball. We threw the ball away, some stupid turnovers, which was okay. It happens when you lose your focus sometimes. But when it came down to it, we made the right plays.

Q. This is a little better than the last time around when you were allowed to have a little better deck than when you played against the Olympians?
COACH LAIMBEER: I had the also-rans versus the Olympians. We got our butt kicked. So this was a little more fun today.

Q. How do you like the ambience of the crowd in DC?
COACH LAIMBEER: I thought the crowd today was great, from the girls shooting and the three ball, they were into it and kind of set the tone. I think they appreciated the play of basketball out there. And I thought it was a very good basketball game to watch. There wasn't any of the, you know, hijinx or throwing the ball all over the place. Just trying to be sweet and be flashy. I thought it was a good, competitive game today, and they appreciate it.
We made it close, I say we made it close on purpose down in the end just to get the crowd more excited, but that wasn't the case. We made some mistakes.

Q. Follow-up, you mentioned 10, 12 minutes for Cheryl. Was she hurting or you just didn't want to burn her out?
COACH LAIMBEER: A couple of things: Cheryl has a bone bruise on her knee, she missed a bunch of games recently. And she hasn't been struggling to get back, but yeah, it's been sore for her.
And you know, she knew she had an obligation. She was voted in by the fans, and she was going to come and play. But we had talked with her and I talked about, if it didn't go well, that she wouldn't play very many minutes, and she was very comfortable with that. That's actually what she wanted to do, but things didn't workout that way.
THE MODERATOR: Coach, thank you.
COACH LAIMBEER: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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