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WNBA FINALS: DREAM v STORM

September 16, 2010

Sue Bird

ATLANTA, GEORGIA: Game Three

STORM Â– 87
DREAM - 84

BRIAN AGLER: First of all, I've got to commend the Atlanta Dream. They are a very, very competitive group of people. The coaching staff has done a wonderful job with that team from the end of the season into the playoffs, just playing to their strength and really made it very difficult for us to have success each game.
So I want to congratulate them on their season. For ourselves, we're delighted. We competed hard. I felt tonight coming in here that we could play our best game of the series, and we were going to need to do that to have success, and we made it interesting at the end, but there have been some games in this league where a playoff ends like that. We've been behind late in games and come back and won and it's hard to hold people off so people can close in this league.
SUE BIRD: I also want to say congrats to the Atlanta Dream. That was a tough series. I know we swept, but it was not easy at any point. For our team, couldn't be more excited. There is nothing like setting a goal at the beginning of a season and actually accomplishing it. I'll never feel as fulfilled as I do right now. Winning championships is an amazing feeling, and I'm glad I feel it. I'm glad my coaches feel it, and I'm glad my teammates feel it. I'm going to be smiling for a long time.

Q. Sue, you're a seasoned veteran. Can you talk about Angel McCoughtry and what do you see in the future for her playing in the Finals?
SUE BIRD: It's evident what her future holds. She is a great player in this league. She's really hard to stop and as she gets older she'll get more experience, she'll pick and choose her spots better, and the sky is the limit for her. Her athletic ability alone gives her that. Her talent alone gives her that.
She carried them tonight, even in those last couple of minutes, even when that 3 went up. I really thought it was going to go in based on how she was playing the whole game. She is a tremendous player and she was very difficult to guard tonight.

Q. Coach, during the latter part of the third quarter you went on a 16-1 run against Atlanta. With less than 3 minutes left you had a 12-point lead. Was there any time you were fooled into thinking you had them put away?
BRIAN AGLER: I thought if we can score a couple more times and hit free-throws, we could win, but we got stagnant. It's a tough thing to do. It's tough to score and hold people off, especially a team like Atlanta. They got out in the passing lanes and put a lot of pressure on the basketball. We were fortunate to have an opportunity to win and took advantage of it and got a stop at the end.
You would think that you could hold that off, but we played at Phoenix about a week ago and we were down 12 with three minutes to go and won the game, so it happens; it happens in this league.

Q. Coach, I noticed in the first half that in order for your team to stop their fast break, your players were adding pressure at that first point of that first outlet pass. Was that something that you consciously told them to do?
BRIAN AGLER: Well, our team was -- the first two games we were in transition letting them get the ball too deep to the basket. They were scoring at 8 to 10 feet, and we talked about today to try to make those 8 and 10-foot shots into 15 and 17-foot shots, and we did a good job of extending out and getting the ball contained, tried to pick our times to choose to foul so they could take the ball out-of-bounds so we could get our defense set and those types of things.
For the most part the transition game that Atlanta is very good at didn't impact the series as much as it could. Now, they scored when we turned it over, but not off transition missed shots.

Q. Brian, obviously Angel had a marvelous end of the fourth quarter, but there was a sequence toward the end of the third and into the fourth where she didn't score. Can you talk about what you did defensively during that sequence?
BRIAN AGLER: First of all Swin and Tanisha did a great job on her when they were matched up, and we were trying to switch a lot, we were trying to keep people in front of her and a big part of her offense is getting to the free-throw line, and we didn't want to foul her. We wanted to contain her and make as tough a shot as possible, but like Sue said, Angel is a tremendous talent, she is a great player in this league, and if she gets the opportunity to keep playing like I know she will, she is going to be a marvelous star in the WNBA.

Q. Guys, talk about what this will mean for the City of Seattle. You obviously have your fans that were here, but when you get back to Seattle and what it means for the city going forward. Two championships in 30 years, I think, only two.
BRIAN AGLER: We have a great loyal fan base, and you could see out there in the arena we had probably 2 or 300 people here, and vocal, and Key Arena is like that. During the season we get 8 or 9,000, in the playoffs it's 13 or 15,000 like that. The media coverage in our city is as good as any city in the WNBA, and I think that makes a difference because of the exposure our team gets.
Probably the biggest thing that we have goin' for us is our star players, Sue, such a great person and a great player, an All-Star, Olympian. Lauren is a great person, a great player, All-Star, Olympian. They're the best at their positions, they're tremendous ambassadors for our team, and the city has adopted them, and this is their second championship. We won't talk about down the road here, because it's too early, we need to celebrate, but with them on the team we're going to be extremely competitive.

Q. Sue, since that last championship, all the stuff that's gone on, the ownership change, playoff disappointments, injuries, roster turnover, is it sweeter the second time around because of all you had to do to get back here?
SUE BIRD: Absolutely. I guess now I can be honest, right? Losing in the first round has been terrible, and having people write about it and talk about it, it's something that I took very personally, a lot of us took very personally and at times, you know, I view myself as a player -- well, I shouldn't say I "viewed," I judge myself as a player based on winning, that's how I judge myself, and to not win in five years really, really hurt.
So to be sitting here now and with the playoff disappointment and the ownership change everything that's gone on, coaching change, player change, to sit here right now, I mean, I can't even describe it. And I know this is going to last for a full year, so that's the best part, I don't have to think about this until next May.
BRIAN AGLER: I want to say one more thing, and one reason Sue is here, Sue, to me, flies under the radar from getting exposure. She does her job on the floor better than anybody. We had a gentleman come in and talk to our team right after our first playoff game, Bill Russell. And I did a lot of research on him before he came in so I could talk to our team about him, and believe it or not, it sort of reminds me of Sue.
Of the 13 years he played in the NBA, he was only First Team once or twice. He was Second Team All NBA several times, but at the end of his career, because of his impact on winning, he was known and may be known as the greatest player ever to play, and that's going to be Sue Bird, because she impacts winning and she's such a good person.

End of FastScripts

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WNBA FINALS: DREAM v STORM

September 16, 2010

Brian Agler

Sue Bird