“We’ve Got Our Identity Figured Out Now.” | Eric Thibault Shootaround Sound | 08.08.25
Uh obviously Dust has kind of settled from the trade deadline, but your former team made a couple couple big moves. Um you know, how do you expect them to kind of like look different with, you know, Sykes and Edwards uh not on the on the team anymore? You know, kind of interestingly, we played them our first game up there with no Sykes for them and no fee for us. And maybe it’ll look a little bit more like that. Um but they’ve got a young team that that plays hard. We know they present challenges, especially in the in the post with the young bigs that they have. Um they’ve played hard hard all year. Um so we know we got a battle on our hands. Kiki’s having a great rookie year over there on the verge of breaking the mystics rookie rebounding record. Just you know is what have you seen from from her uh as as a rookie in this league? She’s pretty relentless. I mean she um she’s on the glass every play. She runs the floor. Um you have her covered maybe on the first post up and then she ducks in again. Um she’s her touch around the rim’s been really good and um she’s definitely added a little variety to her game around the basket. Uh but I think the biggest thing is if you know if you’re not ready to take the challenge physically with her, you can get bulldozed. And earliest impressions of coaching DJ? It’s been great. I mean pretty um pretty quick learner by what I can tell and has picked things up quickly and obviously gave us a huge boost in Seattle. Um made plays and we had her on the court in big moments. So, um I think it helps that she’s had relationship uh with different people on our team from other stops and um she’s assimilated really quickly and it’s it’s uh she’s been, you know, soaking it up. Obviously on the other side of that, you spent a lot of time with Iman this year kind of working with her. What’s kind of your feelings on her moving to Dallas and getting a more of an opportunity there? Yeah, it’s it’s the trade-off of being on a a team like ours that’s contending is um you know it’s like it’s easy from the outside to say, “Hey, you got to develop players and all that.” And obviously we take a lot of pride in that. Me personally take a lot of pride in that, but um you know, we’re in a mode of of winning and sometimes that’s hard for a young one to to find their kind of their footing in that. So, I just wish her the best of luck in Dallas and I think she’s going to get an opportunity to help that team and hopefully continue to develop because I think everybody thinks here that she can be a good WNBA player. Despite Fee being out and despite kind of the shakeups of some of the trades, do you think the Links are playing some of their best basketball at this point in the season right now? I think um I hope not because I hope that means that’s coming in in a few weeks and and in front of us. But um I think we’ve you know we’ve kind of got our identity figured out now. Obviously they’ve this main group has been together a while and um I don’t know. I I probably don’t even think in those terms because you’re just constantly nitpicking your own team. Um I think we see the the flaws which maybe the outsiders don’t do. You know people, oh man, you’re guys are playing great and we’re like yeah but if only we could you know that and that. So I I think so. So, I mean, I think we’re playing well, but you know, a long way to go on both ends of the floor to get ready for what we know is coming down the road. I mean, DJ coming off the bench, first team all defense last year. Just how helpful is that to have that kind of, you know, KAC comes out of the game, now you have an alldefensive player coming in? Yeah, for sure. I mean, it it uh it lets us kind of be more selective about matchups that we like and that we want. um gives those guys a break at times which is helpful right now that um you know we don’t have fee we’re going to we played a little bit smaller lineup the other night and it’s good to have another wing for that um gives us flexibility to move te and court around on onto different people and give different looks and it gives us a downhill threat you know attacking the basket that really complements our other players you know not having fee for kind of a at least a couple weeks here obviously you’d rather have fee playing but is there things that you can kind of learn for the playoffs. Just different lineups, different tweaks, adjustments by her not playing. Oh, for sure. I mean, by necessity, you try stuff. Um, and you know, I think you just want to feel like you’re a better team when she comes back into the team. Um, that you’ve figured some things out that people are playing with confidence. Um, you know, I mentioned the small lineup, but um, it also is an opportunity for for people like Jess and Masha to to really make an imprint. And, um, you know, it’s we know that’s 23 points a night or whatever it is. And we got to figure out different ways to do that. It’s not on one person and um obviously you lose the defensive player of the year and there’s there’s you know ground that you got to make up on that end too. So uh the best thing is our our group’s attitude is right about it and nobody you know feels sorry for ourselves or anything like that. We just go out and battle.
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