WNBA FAN
Years ago
Answers a few questions why Erin didn't make Opals
Article in IndyStar
MINNEAPOLIS - After seven years on the Australian national basketball team, Erin Phillips was told she wasn't good enough. Not good enough to be the point guard, not good enough to be a shooting guard.
The Indiana Fever player traveled from Australia to the United States immediately afterward, thinking about nothing else during a 10-hour flight. She was "devastated," she said.
She was motivated.
“During the Olympics, it was tough to watch my team,” Phillips said. “After the Olympics, to make this all better was to win a championship with the Indiana Fever.”
The 27-year-old guard has helped the Fever move closer to that. Her 13 points – many in clutch situations – helped the Fever beat the Minnesota Lynx 76-70 in Sunday’s Game 1 of the WNBA Finals.
Game 2 is Wednesday at Minnesota in the best-of-five series.
Phillips said she could have taken the snub to arbitration but declined to do so. She decided to redirect her energies to helping the Fever win a WNBA title for veterans like Tamika Catchings and Katie Douglas, both 33, and Tammy Sutton-Brown, 34.
“That’s probably been more of a motivator – to win it for them – than my disappointment,” Phillips said.
One irony of her exclusion is that a supposed weakness was outside shooting.
During the regular season, her 3-point percentage (.438) led the Fever and was fourth in the league among those with 10 or more 3s. During the past nine games, including seven in the playoffs, she has shot .534 (15-of-28) from the arc and averaged 11.1 points.
She thought she was headed to the Seattle Storm before a trade sent her to the Fever in April 2011. She had played three seasons at Connecticut but was out of the WNBA in 2010 because of obligations to the Australian team.
Former Fever guard Tully Bevilaqua, who was on Aussie teams with Phillips that won a world championship in 2006 and Olympic silver medal in 2008, was a role model. Bevilaqua always told Phillips how much she loved Indianapolis and the Fever.
Now, Phillips feels the same.
“We have such great camaraderie on this team,” she said. “It’s very special because it’s rare. Sometimes you go play on many teams that have great players, but they never have that camadaerie, that 'X’ factor, that you’d do anything for them.
“And we definitely have that here. I think it definitely shines through when there’s 14,000 Minnesota fans screaming. We all come together. I feel like I’ve been here for years with this team.”
