Candace Parker hit back at Connecticut Sun head coach Curt Miller for comments he made celebrating his team knocking the Sky star out of the playoffs.
The Connecticut Sun knocked the Chicago Sky out of the WNBA playoffs with a Game 5 victory that may have had head coach Curt Miller in too celebratory a mood.
After the game, Miller made some comments about besting the Sky in three of the last four years. He specifically mentioned his trio of Jonquel Jones, Alyssa Thomas and Bri Jones taking down Candace Parker specifically in three of the last four years.
Parker heard those comments and had a scathing reply:
“We won a championship last year, we don’t hang conference banners.”
Chicago Sky star Candace Parker put Sun coach Curt Miller back in his place
There is some context to Miller’s quotes that make it more clear what he was trying to accomplish by bringing up the Sun’s record against the Sky and Parker.
Here are his full comments:
“Yeah, again, DB’s never going to take credit but what she’s done in the locker room the last few days has really, really galvanized those players and understanding they’re not afraid to talk about our championship window. Windows close and windows open and we’ve had a window open and we’ve been so damn consistent but we haven’t been able to, you know, lift that trophy. So they know about these windows and so they’re like, “What do we have to lose? This is our window. Let’s go out and play free,” but DeWanna in our locker room over the last half a week has been so
important. So important.It’s interesting, right? We’ve now played three years in a row. We’ve knocked out Chicago twice and they knocked us out and they’ll take their championship for sure. It won’t mean anything if we can’t find a way to finish that. But all three series the lower seed won. An interesting dynamic three years around and I do want to get on the record for this: We’ve knocked Candace Parker out of the playoffs three out of the last four years. She is an incredible, all-time great in this league but I hope someone writes the combination of [Jonquel Jones], [Alyssa Thomas] and Bri Jones have knocked her out three out of the last four years. I hope that post group gets credit for what they do night in and night out for us. I really hope our post game gets the credit they deserve.”
If you take the full comments Miller is really just trying to give credit to his players for being consistently competitive.
The problem is making these kinds of comments before the Sun have won anything. Parker was well within her rights to smack him down a tad by pointing to her ring and his lack of finals success.
Beating Parker and the Sky only matters if you go on to win the whole thing. The Sun haven’t done that, so maybe Miller should keep his thoughts to himself.