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Bill Laimbeer is one of the most accomplished basketball coaches of the last 15 years. He just happens to be doing it in a league that plays second or third fiddle to the rest of the hoops world.
Tuesday night, Laimbeer triumphed again, this time taking the New York Liberty out of the opening round for the first time in five years and into the WNBA’s Eastern Conference Finals.
When the hard-nosed Laimbeer took over the Liberty in 2013, they were in need of a franchise jolt. After all, this was a team early in the WNBA’s life-cycle that used to appear in the Finals almost every year. But the glory days had not managed to reappear.
Enter Lamb. Like he did with the Detroit Shock, he started to mold the team to his style: tenacious, defensive-oriented, willing to do anything and everything to win and get better. They got plenty better.
In Laimbeer’s first season, the Liberty went 11-23. Last year, a slight improvement to 15-19. And just like clockwork, in year three for the WNBA’s Red Auerbach, the Liberty catapulted to the top of the league, posting a 23-11 mark and capturing the number one seed for the playoffs. Laimbeer also nabbed Coach of the Year honors along the way.
Back to last night. In the decider of this brief best-of-three affair, Laimbeer’s club came out very sluggish. After one quarter, despite being at home, the Liberty already faced a double-digit deficit, trailing 25-15. But after a team huddle in which Laimbeer called the squad to the carpet and demanded more intensity, the Liberty began to take the game over. They pounded the Washington Mystics to the tune of 30-12 in the second, paving the way for a dramatic series-clinching five-point win.
And if you pay close attention to the New York sideline during the game, you see just how much this means to Laimbeer. Don’t try telling this guy that the WNBA is not the big time. He is committed to the cause, living and dying with each bounce of the ball.
I watch him instead of the ball when a Liberty player lines up for a critical shot. If it goes in, there’s a huge fist pump, a scowl coming over his face reminiscent of the Bad Boys’ Laimbeer, a guy you hated to play against, but absolutely cherished when he was on your side.
It’s always been a mystery, to me at least, how one of the most revered Pistons in franchise history, and a tremendous basketball coach at that, could never get an opportunity over the last several years. The team was running through coaches at a ridiculous pace, turning them over every one or two years, sometimes even shorter than that (Mo Cheeks). I stumped passionately for him, but apparently it required more than the pleadings of a local writer to grant Laimbeer access to the job he probably deserved ten years ago.
In an odd scheduling quirk, the Liberty have to go right back to work without a day’s rest. The Pope is coming to the Big Apple, taking over Madison Square Garden later this week, so Game 1 of the East Finals gets bumped up to tonight.
But if you know Bill Laimbeer, it’s highly unlikely that he or his tenacious ladies will use that as an excuse. He already has three WNBA championships to his credit, and he’s hungry for number four. Maybe if he snags another trophy or two, the NBA will finally come calling.
For now, he’s not thinking about it. The focus is on Indiana and not letting up in tonight’s series-opener, something you can ill afford to do in another best-of-three affair (the WNBA only goes to best-of-five in the Finals).
As a fan of the Pistons and all that Laimbeer brought to the team, it’s easy to find some rooting interest in these WNBA playoffs. The New York Liberty have made the most appearances in the Finals without ever actually collecting the hardware.
With Bill Laimbeer in charge, that statistic could change very, very soon.
