[This is the first year the Finals will be a best-of-five rather than a three-game series, and Sun coach Mike Thibault is preparing not to have Whalen, who he says is the team's MVP, for Game 1.] It's more likely she will play in Game 2, ... but if she pulls a Willis Reed on me (tonight), I'll be happy. |
A great win, ... That's as good a first half as you can play, maybe, to open a playoff series. Then we lost our composure for maybe three minutes, four minutes in the second half, and got it back. I just thought we played terrifically poised. |
A lot of our drives came because we played good defense and got run-outs too. We got the floor spread out, they were backpedaling, which allowed Lindsay to attack them. She obviously had a terrific game, and I thought she did a good defensive job on (Sting guard Helen) Darling too. |
And she changes speeds as well as anybody in the league. She's not the fastest, but she changes from one gear to the next in a hurry. That surprises defenders. |
Basically he said if you don't like what you have, then you need to blow it up and have it be the style that you need it to be. |
Every day is a little better. I don't know what her timetable is. I'll have a little better idea in a week or so. |
Every part of her game is physically better [than last year]. Her maturity is better. Her body is better. Her defense is better. Her recognition of things. She has a willingness to take over a big game if need be. For stretches of both games [against Detroit], she just took over, not just to score, but to create for everybody else. |
Everyday she's late, it hurts her. It hurts us. |
From that standpoint, it kind of makes for a very competitive training camp. |
Her defense on Yo (Griffith) was very, very good tonight. |
I didn't think it was that bad but the swelling never went down. Her knee was fine, but her ankle, she tripped (Wednesday) early in the second half trying to get over a pick-and-roll and it swelled up a little bit after the game. Then today, it was worse. We'll keep getting treatment. It's not a high ankle sprain so hopefully by Sunday, she can play. |
I don't care what people think, ... All I care about is what [the Sun] think. My players laugh at that stuff. We've already talked about it. It doesn't matter. We've been doing this for three years, proving people wrong. |
I don't know if you can duplicate the record that we had last year, but I think we're already a better team because of our experience. Our young players will make our bench better. The ones that were here already know what they have to do. The ones that we brought in that new are pretty skilled players. |
I don't think it means much because we took three out of four from them the year before. The two teams through the course of the last two years are usually separated by a couple of baskets each game. It comes down to who executes. |
I guess I'm not a very good prognosticator, because I thought we would play our best game of the series (Sunday) and we played our worst, |