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WNBA FINALS: FEVER v MERCURYOctober 1, 2009Marynell MeadorsDonna OrenderPHOENIX, ARIZONA: Game Two DONNA ORENDER: Good evening everyone, ready for another great night? You can say yes, thank you very much, was not Game 1 spectacular? It was a great night for Phoenix, for Indiana and the WNBA, we're proud of the fact that our first game ratings were up 39% year over year our viewership was up 59% increase and it speaks to the quality of basketball and tonight -- I like this time of year, it's great basketball and we get to see great individual performances. I can tell you we saw some great coaching the other night; tonight we get to pay our respect and offer our thanks to our Coach of the Year. Actually I'd like to thank all of our coaches across the WNBA who do such a great dedicated job of bringing our players to the next level, because at the end of the day great performances is a team effort and our team efforts are led my great coaching staffs. This past year as much of you know the Atlanta Dream did exceptional things. Their first year in existence they won just four games - I'm looking at you Marynell because I know you were there for that, too - but in year two, Marynell the head coach and GM led the Atlanta Dream to a 18-16 record a second place finish in the Eastern Conference and Atlanta's first playoff birth, and I can tell you what a great thing you do for that city, the electricity was real, it was vibrant and the players that you had you raised them to an entire new level. Players like Sancho Lyttle, Erika de Souza, and Angel McCoughtry who was just announced as Rookie of the Year. You did a great job assembling first-class talent and putting them together for a great performance. For those of you who might not be aware, Marynell has coaching experience for four WNBA franchises as well as Pittsburgh, Florida State and Tennessee Tech. In winning this award, she joins the likes of Van Chancellor and two-time winners Dan Hughes and Mike Thibault. On behalf of the fellow coaches and our competition staff headed by Renee Brown we are pleased to present Marynell with the 2009 WNBA Coach Of The Year Award. (Applause). DONNA ORENDER: Way to go, Marynell, here is the hard part...you have to say a few things. COACH MARYNELL MEADORS: Okay, don't drop it, it took too long to get that. I want to thank the WNBA for being the WNBA and the great organization that it is. And the opportunity that it provides for each and every player, staff member, coaching staff and all that. And for everybody that has said from day one that the WNBA would not make it, well, we're just now finishing up the 13th year and we're real happy about what we're doing. To focus on the Atlanta Dream, I have to thank Ron Terwilliger, our owner, for the opportunity that he gave me to go out and coach and assemble this team in the way that he let me put it together. He knew that I knew all the players and what we needed to do to turn into a championship caliber team. Secondly, I didn't receive this award by myself. I have to look at my coaching staff, they did an awesome job this year. I have to look at Fred Williams, Carol Ross, Sue Panek, our athletic trainer, Kim Moseley, and media relations, Tonya Alleyne who is here today, and she did a great job of promoting our players. But I have to look at our administrative staff with Bill Bolen, Danielle Donehew, Allison Fillmore, Paige Blankenship, everybody that was involved in our season this year certainly did a great job in helping us be successful. We don't like to talk about the 4-30 year that much, but we did have a pretty poor year, and I knew from the very beginning of that season that it was going to be a long time -- it's going to be a long season. When I look at that and everybody asks "Well, how did you keep the enthusiasm up?", I say "Well, I never let them lose their spirit." I always found a way to end a game or close with something positive so they would come back the next day and work really hard. In the off-season we put together some really good players, and this season was just awesome. I love coaching this team. They came in from day one and played as hard as they could play and I thought, wow, this is going to be something special. And it certainly was. Once we started winning some games, we kind of liked the taste of that and we kept winning, we went 7-1 in a crucial part of the season and secured our position into the playoffs. But I really appreciate this award and I know there are a lot of great coaches in the league that have done a tremendous job this year, and I'm looking forward to the game tonight. Those two coaches out there are very good at X's and O's and they have great relationships with their players and they get a lot out of each player. Not only them, but there are 13 coaches in this league that are terrific and have done a great job this year. This was probably the closest race, especially in the Eastern Conference, that I've ever seen -- I was out for two years, but I've been in the league for 11 seasons and this was by far the most competitive. I appreciate everything that the WNBA does for all the players, the professional players and how we promote them and we continue to have great seasons. And we have great crowds and that's one of the things that I can't forget - the people that fill the stands and fill the seats for the support they give our players. Atlanta has been a great, great city to be in. They have wanted a WNBA team every since the 1996 Olympics. We are there and now they got their wish and I tell you what, they support our players. They're knowledgeable of the game and they enjoy supporting our team. THE MODERATOR: We'll open it to questions if you would, please, raise your hand. Q. Congratulations, Coach. You know the history of this league, even though Detroit has won some championships for most of the entire history of the league, the West has been dominate over the East, it seems like that perhaps has changed in the last season, it's more even across the board. COACH MARYNELL MEADORS: Well, I really think that when we reduced our rosters to 11 players, everybody had to make sure that they had enough veterans to lead the younger players, and that's the reason that the league has gotten so good. But I go back to high school and college. The college coaches do a great job. The high school coaches are doing a great job, and the players themselves are doing a much better job of preparing themselves because they have a league to play for. So many coaches have come up to me and have thanked me for the opportunity of their players to maybe have an opportunity to go on to the WNBA and play for that and said that their practices are much harder, they play harder, they listen, they're coachable. So I think it's all starting from junior high on up. And I think that's the reason that the teams are getting better and better. Q. Coach, congratulations. You said you had a sense -- the previous season that it was going to be a long year. When was your sense that this was going to be a different year this season? COACH MARYNELL MEADORS: When you're an expansion team you're selecting players from all the other teams that probably fall around the 8, 9, 10, 11 depth on each team's depth chart. When you take those players and try to make starters out of them, they're not quite ready for that. I just thought that, you know, in defense of that 4-30 season we lost 14 games by 10 points or less. We were never, never out of a lot of the games. We fought hard we just didn't have finishers, and once we made that change and brought in 13 players the first year and had 8 new ones this past season, they just worked hard and meshed together. And you saw what they did. Q. Coach, if you were to point to three factors that you would consider most responsible for the turn-around, what would they be or who would they be? COACH MARYNELL MEADORS: I think the off-season moves that we made when we were able to receive the dispersal draft from Houston, and I'm so sorry they are not in the league any more, but we received Sancho Lyttle. She was a candidate in the league for Most Improved Player, and then we got the No. 1 pick in the lottery so we selected Angel McCoughtry who has done a fantastic job for us and was just named Rookie of the Year. And then we signed Michelle Snow, Chamique Holdsclaw, and had players that did a great job. Shalee Lehning was our point guard and we selected her at No. 25. Secondly, we had balance and depth. And I'll always say that. We didn't have any superstars, no egos involved and I just think that all of them put together made us into a really, really good team. Q. Could you talk a little bit about how Angel's growth process has gone this year, when she stepped in when Chamique got hurt and the what do you think will make her a better player in the second season of the WNBA. COACH MARYNELL MEADORS: Angel is a special player. The one reason that I think I selected Angel as the first pick was that she played both ends of the court. She played defense, she played offense, she's very tough to defend. Geno says it best, he says you have to put two or three people on her to stop her and then you don't her. The best part of Angel's game is yet to come and if she works on her consistency in the off-season, the WNBA off-season and becomes a better and better consistent player. I think she's going to be terrific. Let me back up a minute. I had a real problem because I had Angel McCoughtry and Chamique Holdsclaw in the same position and I elected to go with the veteran and Chamique did a great job with leadership and playing but when Angel came in off the bench she made a difference. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much. End of FastScripts |
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