Detroit Shock Coach Bill Laimbeer was describing the similarities in style between his WNBA team and the Detroit Pistons, where he bumped, banged and scowled for 14 seasons.
He then made comparisons between the Sparks and the Lakers teams of the 1980s, when Sparks Coach Michael Cooper made a name for himself as a feisty Lakers veteran.
"Both Coop and I are creating teams that are our own likeness in some ways," Laimbeer said, hours ahead of Tuesday's Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics. "He tries to create that flashy, Los Angeles . . . "
Said Cooper: "Showtime, Bill, it's called Showtime."
Laimbeer kept on, " . . . that hyper-Showtime garbage, and we're more blue-collared, hard-nosed, physical, defensive . . . "
Once again, Cooper couldn't bite his tongue: "That's called dirty ball. Thug ball."
And so it went as the two WNBA coaches talked basketball, a back-and-forth that was part tongue-in-cheek, but also had the smell of years-old NBA bad blood.
Detroit is in town to play the Sparks tonight at Staples Center and Laimbeer and Cooper don't mind getting together for a little one-on-one verbal exchange.
The colorful pair appeared side by side Tuesday night on the Lakers postgame show on ABC, where they got in a few more verbal jabs.
"We don't get along, we coexist because we have to," Cooper said after Laimbeer exited the speaker phone.
"It's like a love-hate relationship. I hate the guy because, on the Lakers, we were on our way to a three-peat and it was the Detroit Pistons that stopped it, then we're on our way to a three-peat in the WNBA and the Shock stopped it."
The latest streak-buster came in 2003. The Shock won the WNBA championship again in 2006. This season, the Sparks were preseason favorites to win it all, but Laimbeer sounded confident that Detroit will be knocking on the door come playoff time. After all, he expects his players to adopt his never-surrender attitude.
"I hope my teams take on my personality," Laimbeer said. "My personality is, we're going to win the basketball game no matter what. We're going to win the championship no matter what, that's all we care about . . . they go out there with the intensity and no minutes off, no seconds off."
The Shock are off to a 7-2 start, a half-game behind first-place Connecticut in the Eastern Conference. The Sparks are 4-2 and 1 1/2 games behind first-place Minnesota in the West.
