WNBA Post Game Press Quotes 6/7

Covering quotes that may affect future player usage or schemes from the Aces vs Valkyries, Fever vs Sky, and the Storm vs Mercury. Coach speak is great way to try to get an edge up on the sportsbooks.

All quotes coming from their official media pages.

Las Vegas Aces

“We missed a lot of open shots. That can happen. The problem is we let missing shots affect our defensive end, which that can’t be. Your defense has to be your defense and it can’t be predicated on whether the ball’s going in or not.”

“I’ve never been a coach to pull for mistakes, but I will pull for effort.”

Valkyries’s Defensive Scheme (Packing the Paint):

“They packed the paint. We didn’t make them pay by hitting open outside shots… That’s an obvious strategy.”

“We also have rules in place called defensive 3 seconds. That wasn’t called one time tonight… When people one-man zone us, two-man zone us—and it’s a point of emphasis—it’s supposed to be a point of emphasis, and I don’t think it was called one time on either side, which is pretty unbelievable.”

“The way you disperse the paint is hit some open shots, which we did not do, so it just got sucked in and smaller and smaller.”

A’ja Wilson on Defensive Looks and Adjustments:

“Nothing out of the ordinary. For the small time that I’ve been playing in this league, I’ve kind of generated some double teams and different looks. Packing the paint because obviously they know that’s where I operate. So I don’t think they did anything out of the ordinary.”

“I think more so on us. We got to get more movement within our system to create just movement on the defensive end. That… caused a little bit of commotion with us.”

“We just got to do a better job as a team of understanding what teams want to take away from us and how we can pick that apart.”

Chelsea Gray Adjustments:

(On scoring 9 points in the third quarter): “Just being aggressive at the point of attack when I was going into actions with A’ja. If I can just give her a little bit of daylight to be able to get her shot off in a different way or, if I’m aggressive, then two maybe will come and I can kick and spray and maybe A’ja can get it on the little pocket in the roll.”

“Just trying to make the right play on that side of the basketball.”

Golden State Valkyries

On the high assist rate (24 of 34 field goals assisted):

“It’s always the same offense, it’s our flow… making the right reads. But because we were able to get easy ones and feel good ones is because our defense ignited our transition.”

On the approach to defending A’ja Wilson:

1. “She’s the best player in the world… Our game plan was to show her multiple bodies as much as we could… The overall scheme was to get her to be as disruptive as possible.”