 THE SHOCK won its third WNBA title with a 76-60 victory Sunday over the San Antonio Silver Stars in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals at EMU’s Convocation Center. Shock GM-Coach Bill Laimbeer (top right), the mastermind behind the team’s three titles, isn’t sure he’ll return. |
YPSILANTI –
In the WNBA, he is already both – a great coach and a great GM. In professional basketball, however, unless you coach and serve as the master planner behind an NBA team, well, you fall a little short in the “great” department.
It’s that simple.
Laimbeer has directed the Detroit Shock to four WNBA Finals in the last six seasons and the Shock has won three of the four – beating L.A. in 2003, Sacramento in 2006 and San Antonio this past Sunday when it finished a three-game sweep of the Silver Stars. The only loss was a deciding Game 5 disappointment to Phoenix in 2007.
Three championships and four Finals . . . that’s bordering on a dynasty. If it isn’t, it ought to be.
Still, the perception of Laimbeer and greatness is rarely mentioned in the same sentence. For one thing, the WNBA obviously pales in comparison to the NBA. Second, Laimbeer has burned some bridges – as a player with the Pistons in the 1980s and early ’90s, and even more so since becoming coach and GM of the Shock. Third, Laimbeer’s cockiness (confidence?) causes more than a few to think the worst of him, which they do.
Granted, he probably comes off as a jerk at times. But he and Rick Mahorn, now his assistant coach on the Shock, didn’t become the face of the Pistons’ “Bad Boys” teams because they were choir boys on the court.
Of course, no matter what you thought of certain individuals on the Pistons, particularly Laimbeer, when they won back-to-back titles in 1989 and ’90, you could not deny the Pistons their place in history.
It is the same now with Laimbeer and the Shock.
You want to win the league crown, you go through Detroit. You go through Detroit and you know what basketball is on the pro level – a physical sport and a thinking person’s game.
“We have a reputation around the league,” Laimbeer said. “Teams are intrigued by us, threatened by us, scared of us – pick any of the above. . . We work damn hard for everything we get and we are one damn smart basketball team.”
In Sunday’s 76-60 Game 3 victory that wrapped up the best-of-five series against San Antonio, the Shock played poorly in the first half. Detroit shot only 30 percent from the field while the Silver Stars shot 48 percent.
It was the beginning San Antonio had hoped for after falling behind early in Game 1 and Game 2 losses to Detroit – both played in San Antonio – that had many wondering if this was the same team that beat Los Angeles in the Western Conference Finals (WNBA announcers Cheryl Miller and Tina Thompson went a bit further, wondering if the Silver Stars showed up at all, questioning their heart).
For the record, it was the same San Antonio team. It was just a different opponent. For all the good and all the hard work the Silver Stars put into the first half, the Shock still only trailed by four, 34-30, at halftime.
Mentally and physically, the Shock had challenged the Stars and taken their best shot. Then the third quarter began, and slowly but surely, there was a sense of change in the air.
Although San Antonio maintained the lead through most of the quarter and held a 45-44 edge following a Sophia Young basket with 1:18 remaining in the third stanza, it was as if everyone was waiting for the big turnaround – the reversal of fortune, so to speak. It was as if everyone knew the Shock would make a move. It was as if it was . . . destiny.
Following Young’s basket, Shock rookie guard Alexis Hornbuckle drained a three-pointer and guard-forward Katie Smith followed with a driving layup to give the Shock a 49-45 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Detroit never looked back. Guard Deanna Nolan hit a jumper to start the fourth quarter and the Shock went on a 14-2 run to take a commanding 63-47 lead with 4:54 to play.
“We were able to turn it up, and we knew that, we suspected that, San Antonio couldn’t,” Laimbeer said. “I think that was the key to our success. We took our game to another level in the Finals, and I think they continued to play at the same pace they had before.”
“To be really honest, I have no idea what happened in the second half,” San Antonio center Ann Wauters said.
The Shock had a 44-27 edge in rebounding, including 20 on the offensive end; a 32-22 advantage in points in the paint; and a 27-8 margin in second-chance points.
“We have a lot of competitors and fight in this team, and it starts from the top,” Smith said. “You see it with Bill (Laimbeer); you see him on the sideline; he’s playing the game (in his head). That’s why he brought us all here and why he has us; we are here to compete. We don’t go out there just to play. We go out there to win.
“We are pretty good at grinding things out.”
Smith, who had 25 points in Game 1 and 22 points in Game 2, finished with a team-high 18 points (11 in the fourth quarter) Sunday and was named MVP of the Finals.
She deserved the award. The 34-year-old All-Star and three-time Olympic gold medalist carried the Shock against San Antonio in the WNBA Finals, just as Nolan carried Detroit against New York in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Of course, this has never been a one-man team. While it may be a team with a star-studded lineup – from Nolan and Smith to Cheryl Ford and Plenette Pierson, to Hornbuckle and Taj McWilliams-Franklin – it’s still a very unselfish team (almost to a fault).
Of course, that’s by design, too. After all, Laimbeer is the architect of the Shock and he already had the blueprint to winning from his days playing for the Pistons.
With Nolan in place (she was Detroit’s No. 1 pick in 2001), Laimbeer, who took over the Shock in 2002, drafted Ford with the team’s No. 1 pick in 2003 and the Shock won its first title. He then drafted center Kara Braxton with the Shock’s No. 1 pick in 2005 and traded for Pierson and Smith midway through the ’05 season.
The Shock won the 2006 WNBA title but lost to Phoenix in the 2007 Finals. So what did Laimbeer do? He traded popular All-Star forward Swin Cash, the face of the organization, to Seattle for the fourth overall pick in the 2008 WNBA Draft. The pick? Hornbuckle.
Today, it looks like a very, very good move. But Laimbeer’s best move, perhaps, in shaping the 2008 Shock occurred during the WNBA’s month-long break for the Beijing Olympic Games: He traded Tasha Humphrey, Detroit’s second No. 1 pick this year, to Washington for the 37-year-old McWilliams-Franklin.
At the time, Detroit was struggling. Ford was out for the year after tearing her right anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), Pierson and four other players had been suspended by the league for the infamous fight with L.A. at The Palace, and the team was in the mist of a four-game losing streak.
The move for McWilliams-Franklin? It turned out to be the final piece of the championship puzzle. Not only did she fill in for Ford, she also took up the slack for Pierson, who dislocated her right shoulder during the playoff series against New York. McWilliams-Franklin had 24 points and seven rebounds against San Antonio in Game 1 of the Finals, and 13 points and eight rebounds in Game 3.
“This is what we thought was going to happen when we started the season,” Laimbeer said. “We knew we had a good team. It was a matter of going out there and executing, staying healthy, which we couldn’t do over the year. But we knew we had players, we knew we had heart, and we knew we had a mind-set of that – we are the best team.”
There is a certain aura, a certain mystique about the Shock. It’s not the self-absorbing bravado that has consumed more than a few champions. It’s more of a quiet, confident aura
.
You know you’re good, but you still remember and understand how you got there.
The best team!
You want to win in the WNBA? You go through the Detroit Shock.
This is a dynasty.
The only question remaining is this: When will Laimbeer, who said he isn’t sure if he’ll return next season, be considered a “great” coach and general manager?
It’s a good question.
At some point, you have to believe that some NBA owner will give Laimbeer an opportunity to either coach or serve as GM – Bad Boy reputation and all.
I mean, hell, he deserves it.
Terry Cabell is the managing editor of the Michigan Chronicle who still dabbles in sports. A former sports writer at The Detroit News, he helped to cover Bill Laimbeer and the Detroit Pistons during the 1980s, including their NBA championships in 1989 and 1990.
