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WNBA FINALS: MERCURY v SHOCK

September 8, 2007

Bill Laimbeer

DETROIT MICHIGAN: Game Two

BILL LAIMBEER: Those of you who follow the Detroit Shock know that we have our moments like this. And this was definitely one of those. We have been there before, done that in the Finals. It's unfortunate, it drives us crazy sometimes.
Get frustrated probably is a reasonable word. But we didn't show. For who knows whatever, we had -- agendas is the wrong word, we had attitudes and in many different camps today. Coaches coached a bad game, we had wrong combinations out there sometimes. We had probably wrong defenses sometimes. And the players put their heads down and stopped playing. That can't happen.
We have been here before. Like I said. We know that it's a five game series. We know that we are resilient. We have great heart and will power. I expect us to come out the next game and play spectacular. I guess sometimes we have to -- we don't handle prosperity very well. That's been our MO. And I can tell you today was a classic example of that.
KAREN KASE: Open it up for questions.

Q. At what point tonight did things just get away from you?
BILL LAIMBEER: Oh, I say probably midway through the second quarter. We just stopped playing for whatever reasons. We weren't -- we had people who were shaking their heads and blowing off the coaches and not executing, walking through our offense. Not running back on defense. And then we put our head down and they spurted to a big lead at the half.
Start the third quarter you hope you come out and play hard the first five minutes. We just came out and played for playing. And turnovers again made us put our head down again and it was a blow out.

Q. You said, talked about this being the team's MO, did you see this one coming? Before the game? You quite often say that you can tell early.
BILL LAIMBEER: Our focus was definitely not the same as the last game. We were concerned of getting production from the areas that we had gotten in the last game to those levels.
But what bothered us most was just the frazzle of our individual personalities. We just were all going our own individual way today, copped some attitudes, and fell apart.

Q. You said you were concerned about getting production from some players from Game 1, if it's the front court, but did Phoenix make any adjustments to maybe take away what Kara and Feenstra were able to do?
BILL LAIMBEER: I think they tried to trap a little bit more. We'll watch the tape and I'll see what they did and didn't do. But we didn't post up as strong, we didn't attack as strong, we weren't as focused. That can't happen. They will play their defense the way they play their defense. They will make a couple adjustments, but we didn't, we weren't -- we didn't have that fire about us today. And our guards stopped shooting, Katie Smith stopped shooting, missed a few shots, didn't shoot any more. Deanna was frustrated. It just, we weren't physically and mentally there enough to win the basketball game. And we got beat.

Q. Are there any positives you can take from this game today?
BILL LAIMBEER: I guess the best positive is the players know what happened. In the locker room we let them talk and they knew that we had a mental breakdown today. And we weren't there like we were supposed to be there.
That just gets us mad, some players get mad, some players, okay, I got to play better. But overall collectively-wise it actually is a positive for us. Lose by one or by 31 is the same. That we were able to rest players, maybe that's a positive. But I think that getting beat this badly will make us mad.

Q. Do you think what happened last year in the Sacramento series of getting blown out in Game 1 and rallying to win, would that be a good precedent as you head to Phoenix?
BILL LAIMBEER: I guess you could look back on something like that and say we have been there before and done it before. I'm -- you never know until you go play the game. And two more days are before the game is being played. Two days off. And the game's played.
We'll know when we hit the floor where our mental frame of mind is. I'm confident that we will be there. I think we're going to play our best game in Game 3. So let's go play the game. We would like to play tomorrow. But we'll take the rest.

Q. Couple of the players who obviously struggled tonight are players that you've talked a lot in the past about being up and down. But were you surprised that Plenette had such an off night?
BILL LAIMBEER: Plenette got frustrated for whatever reason. That was one of the, I talked about that earlier, got a little bit of an attitude out there. Her shot wasn't going in, okay. Didn't get a call, okay. But to just not continue to compete and to play team basketball, we played individual basketball today and in many many areas. And that was our down fall. Was she one of the guilty ones, yeah, but so were a lot of people. And coaches included. We have to all do better.

Q. Cheryl came out when the game was getting out of hand but as far as her knee goes, was that something she said she wanted to come out?
BILL LAIMBEER: No, we took her out. The game was out of hand. It was important that you done put a player at risk with an injury when you're down by that many.

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