S: I’ve got a couple of questions about some college stuff. It seems like a lot of our players and really players in general in the WNBA are coming from just a few schools – Stanford, Tennessee, some schools in the Midwest. Is that because those are just the best programs? Is it because you know, for the players on the Storm, that those systems they are coming from are similar to your offensive philosophy for coaching? Why is it that so many people are coming from the same schools?

C: Well, I think first of all there’s several schools that have produced a lot of national championships and I think whenever you have had the opportunity to pick up a college player from a team that’s been a national champion, you’re picking up a winner. When I bring in players that competed and played at Stanford when they won a national championship or Tennessee, or any program that’s produced winners, you already know you are getting a player that knows how to win. They understand the commitment, the time, everything that’s involved in being successful. So, I don’t think that it’s accidental that people want winners, want people that have been successful, people that have you know been to the top and know what it takes to be the best. So, I think when you get players from those type of programs, you know what you are getting.

S: Angie and I are planning on going to some of the Husky games this season. We haven’t really paid that much attention to the college game before, but, we are a heck of a lot more interested in it now than we were a couple of years ago. Who are you going to be looking at? Which players? And when we are watching games, what kind of things should we be noticing that you look for when you’re watching players play?

C: Well, gosh you’ve asked me three questions there. Well, first of all, you have to understand that when I’m out scouting, I’m scouting first and foremost from the perspective of what to we need for the Seattle Storm to go to the next level. You know, what type of player do we need to bring into our franchise for this next season that’s going to make us better. And in our particular situation, we need a multi-dimensional scorer, just an all around player that can play the small forward. We’re looking for someone at least 6 feet tall. This particular person has got to guard Sheryl Swoopes, she’s got to guard Mwadi Mabika, and Katie Smith and all the top small forwards in this league. So it’s a priority for us to get us a very talented multi-dimensional small forward that can score, she can hit the three, she can put the ball on the floor, she can defend, she can rebound. You know, she sounds like Super Woman, doesn’t she?

S: Yes she does.

C: But that’s what we need for this team to go to the next level. Now, will we get her in the draft or will we get her via trade? Those are the two possible ways that we could pick her up. There is also the possibility of picking someone out of the free agencies but most of those players have been picked over. You know, there’s whole lot of great players left in the pool of players that aren’t in the league. So we have to secure a player like that either through the draft, one of the top college players, or through a trade. And that’s a priority for us and then I think the second thing we are looking for is a post player, a young post player. Well, it could a post player that’s on another team that we’d pickup from a trade that’s more of what I’d call a garbage player. She loves to rebound. She loves to defend. She loves to screen. And night in and night out we could get 10 rebounds out of her. And we could develop her. Those are the two things that we are looking for. When I say a wide body, that we’ve got some post player on our team that are tall and they can run but they are all more the…

S: So you’re looking for a Rhonda Mapp, a Latasha Byears…

C: Right. You know tell you who caught my attention this year was Tammy Sutton-Brown from Charlotte. She is a young wide body that took up a lot of room and that could rebound and is Rhonda Mapp type of big. Not tall, not so much tall as big. So we’re looking for those two types of players and we either going to secure them, as I said, from the draft or through a trade. And then I think we’ll be a much better team.

S: One of the things that many of us have noticed that several of the current Storm players were also on the last Portland Power team that you coached in the ABL. You helped that team go from last place in their division and league to contending for a championship. How is the Storm’s current situation similar and how is it different from that team and that time?

C: Well, one of the reasons that I thought it was good for us to have some former players that I had coached in Portland was because I knew about their work ethic. And I think when you are building a team, in particular when you are building a team from scratch, you need to have a foundation there of people that are committed to hard work, that give you a 110% effort all the time, that are professional. And that’s one of the very, very, very positives about Sonja Henning and Katy Steding and then even Michelle Marciniak as I brought her in because I had coached those three before and I knew what I was getting. You know I knew their work ethic and their professionalism would set the tone as we built this team. So that’s one of the reasons why I was interested in having those players as part as our franchise as we built this team. I think there is some difference in where we are with the Portland team that I coached in the ABL and the Seattle team. When I took over the Portland team they had a team. They had 11 players. They had brought in some very talented players who I thought were All-Stars in the American Basketball League. And so it was like a puzzle – it was a matter of putting those players in the right place – putting the puzzle together. In our situation in Seattle, we didn’t have any players at all. So we’ve built from scratch and we certainly weren’t given players in the beginning like the other expansion teams were. You know we weren’t allotted a Natalie Williams or a Yolanda Griffith or a Katie Smith. So we’ve been in a little bit different situation as we build the team. We are building the team similar to the way we built it with Portland, but emphasizing defense first and understanding that defense will always give us an opportunity to win. And then as we grow this team we’ve got to increase our offensive abilities but everything begins with our defense.

S: What do you think are some of the main differences between how the ABL worked and how the WNBA works?

C: Well, the biggest difference is of course the different times of the year that we play. Of course in the American Basketball League, we played in the traditional winter season and with the WNBA we play the shortened summer season. I think with the American Basketball League, those players considered that their full time job whereas a lot of our players see the WNBA with its short season as maybe a part time job. So, those would be two of the differences I see and then I feel like with the WNBA they have the resources and the experience of the NBA behind them and that’s an enormous plus I think for the WNBA.

S: Looking back at this season, could give us a quick recap on where we were and where we are and how things ended up.

C: Well, I thought we showed great progress from our first season to the end of our second season. We were better. We continued to be a very good defensive team. We scored more points. We had some firsts in our franchise history that were very impressive. The first time we’d ever beaten Houston. The first time we’d ever beaten Phoenix. The first time we’d ever beaten Utah. The first time we’d ever beaten teams that were in the playoffs. First time we ever had an opportunity, even though it was a short window, of actually competing for a playoff berth. We won some games against playoff teams in their facility. We won at Phoenix, we won at Utah. So, for us to be able to do that in our second year was definitely a sign of progress. We were very competitive in all of our games. There were several games this year, I would say, I don’t have the percentage, but I know from the first year to the second year we were much more competitive in all of our games. We brought in two very young talented players in Randal and Jackson and I think we see the tremendous potential for them in the future and that they are only going to get better as they develop and as they grow with their experience with the WNBA. We see great progress. We see a great core of young players here that we can build around for the future.

S: While the defense seemed to be working almost nightly, sometimes the offense had problems scoring points. Why do you think that happened when a lot of our players have had offensive success individually in college or other leagues?

C: Well, when you look at the statistics you see that when we were able to shoot 42% from the field we almost always won. When we dropped down and only shot what, 37%, 38% even though we stayed close with our defense, we usually lost those ball games. I think the thing that was very frustrating for us as a team is that we weren’t able to hit some of those open shots. It’s one thing to miss a shot when you’ve got two and three people hanging on you, but when you miss a wide open pull-up 15 footer or a wide open three, it’s frustrating. But I do think we are very young. I think when you look at Jamie Redd and Semeka Randall, who are two of our key players on the perimeter, they have very little WNBA experience. We also had Sonja Henning who has never been a scoring point guard and I think that was the biggest thing that we adjusted to towards the end is we just made a change because we needed points. By inserting Michelle Marciniak into the lineup towards the end of the season we basically said look we’ve got to have points. If you can’t step up and hit your open shots, then we wanted to put someone in the lineup that can. And I think that was unfortunate for Sonja, but it was something that I felt like we needed to do. So, if as Michelle gets more comfortable and as Jamie and Semeka get more comfortable with scoring I think that that’s how you are going to see this team get better.

S: When you made the decision to start Michelle Marciniak, a lot of people had a lot to say, given that Sonja started on one of the championship Houston teams and she pretty much started every game she’s played in. If you feel comfortable talking about it, did you have a discussion with her beforehand and what kind of things did the two of you talk about? How did she take being put on the bench?

C: Well, first of all, Sonja was the point guard on a Houston team that was very offensively oriented in all other four positions. I think when you’ve got Swoops and Cooper and Arcain and Thompson and Tammy Jackson and all of their other players that are very adept at scoring, she was a perfect fit for that team as far as distributing the basketball. In our particular situation we didn’t have near as many offensive weapons as Houston had. I think the unfortunate thing for Sonja is as the season went along and players quit guarding her, literally quit guarding her, and then started doubling up on Lauren Jackson or jamming up the middle and causing us problems, then the opportunity was presented to her to step up and hit wide open shots. And I think looking back, if you look at some our tapes, probably the most frustrating thing that happened was that she was not able to step up and hit those wide open shots. And had she hit them, it’s very possible we could have won several more ball games. But she didn’t. We talked about it, we worked on her shooting, we spent extra time with it, we gave her the opportunity, continued to give her the opportunities to step up and hit those open shots and when she didn’t, I felt it was in the best interest of the team to make that change. I sat down and discussed that with Sonja. I certainly would not have made that change without having that conversation with her and having a conversation with Michelle. And Sonja was, as everybody would probably believe, tremendously professional, very supportive, very understanding. I couldn’t have asked for anybody to have been more professional. I think that the thing for her was that she was very disappointed that she wasn’t able to step up and hit those open shots. But I felt it was important because of her leadership, because of her work ethic, because of how much she’s invested in helping us grow this team that I give her those opportunities before I made a change and that’s exactly what I did. It wasn’t like okay one game Sonja didn’t hit her shot, let’s jerk her out of the lineup. It was like, Sonja you know you’ve got to step up and hit those open shots if they are not going to guard you. And they weren’t guarding her and that was creating problems for our other players. But after several games, I realized it’s just not happening so I’ve got to make a decision and I’ve got to make a change. And unfortunately, we made the change, well, fortunately, unfortunately. I don’t know how you want to say it. We made the change and I thought Michelle was really having an impact on our offensive and then Lauren and Kamila got hurt. So we really weren’t able to see how we could have benefited over the long haul with that change. And hopefully next year I think in the off season that’s going to be one of our challenges – what is the direction we are going to go at the point position?

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