Landon Buford
Maya Moore Takes Home Her Second Consecutive All-Star MVP Trophy
On Saturday afternoon the city of Seattle hosted its very first WNBA- All Star Game, which put the spotlight on the Seattle Storms two All-Stars Sue Bird and Breanna Stewart. During the game 10 time, All-Star and Future First Ballot Famer Sue Bird set the record for assists in an All-Star game with 11. She would add eight points and five rebounds. As for Breanna Stewart, she contributed nine points, six rebounds, and six assists.
After their 130- 121 victory over the Eastern Conference, Sue Bird, and Diana Taurasi addressed the media. Diana was asked what did you play for today? “I think everyone in that locker room played for the fans today. I think everyone was really
excited to go out there and play in front of the Seattle fans because we know how hard and difficult it is to come here and try to win a game when they’re on top of you and they’re getting into you. I think everyone was anticipating this vibe in there, and during the introductions, you felt that vibe, especially when Sue came down and they gave her a standing ovation for five minutes. You felt that energy. I think we played for the fans tonight, and to put on a
good show.” Sue Bird would follow that by pointing at herself. ” Yeah, and I played for Sue, too. I mean, when you’re 40 and you can run around like that, that’s something to play for, I guess.”
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Western Conference Forward Maya Moore secures her second consecutive All- Star Most Valuable Player Award by leading the way with 23 points. While adding three rebounds and three assists. Prior to the game on Saturday Maya, fielded numerous questions from the eight first time All-Stars from the Eastern conference on how hard they should play in Saturday’s game. The veteran from the Minnesota Lynx responded by saying “somewhere in between shoot-around and regular season like that’s the lane.”
Maya would say after the game “That was the wisdom that I dropped,” she would also talk about how the experience. “It was fun. I thought it was a great pace. You never want anybody to get hurt, but you also want to play with a certain intensity and show off your athleticism, so I thought we did that.”
Breanna Stewart was asked about all of her contributions to the Seattle Community and especially with all of the events during All-Star Weekend. “Well, I think when you have an All-Star in your city, you have to be a good host. You know, it was cool to be able to go to all the different events just because whether it was going to the top of the Space Needle or going to the Jr. NBA clinic, everybody was so excited to like see us there, to have us there, to welcome us to their thing in Seattle. That’s what made this weekend really fun is the fact that the whole community came together to put this on. It was loud. There was a lot of people there, and they were excited to see the best of the best play.”
Both Maya and Breanna ended their post game interview fielding a question about the legacy of the University of Connecticut considering that it was 15th Season Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi 14th all the way down to both Maya and Breanna. “Well, Coach Auriemma texted us this morning, the seven of us in a group, just saying congrats, have fun, that type of thing. You know, it is a big deal for seven of us to be here, and like you said, it’s over a long period of time, whether it’s Sue’s 15th, 16th season or my second season in the league. You know, it just goes to show that at UConn obviously, we want to have long careers, and this is what we would.We love to play basketball, and we want to do it as long as we can, and we want to do it at the highest level for as long as we can.”
Seattle's finest turned out for @Verizon #WNBAAllStar 2017!
Watch us work the rest of the season » https://t.co/O9vOAU7AYt pic.twitter.com/SCCesA53MO
— WNBA (@WNBA) July 23, 2017
There was a lot of star power at Key Arena which included Hall of Famers Bill Russell and Lenny Wilkens, former Seattle Sonics Fred Brown and Gus Williams, Seattle Seahawks Cornerback Richard Sherman, Boston Celtics’ Guard Isaiah Thomas and U.S. women’s soccer star Megan Rapinoe.
West All-Star Coach Cheryl Reeve, talked about how the role of the hometown crowd behind Sue played a factor in the game plan. “Yeah, and we knew that Seattle would be this way. For it to be their first All-Star Game is something that they’ve earned. This fan base here, like you said, the environment that you get to play in, I can’t imagine being Sue Bird and feeling that energy and passion from her fans. Cheryl would continue to say “You know, for it to be her tenth All-Star Game, she’s closer to the end than to the beginning, and to be able to experience such adulation, I just can’t imagine what that would feel like, so that was special to experience.”
