"I'm not going to go out and suddenly score 30. ... Everyone is going to have to raise their game a little bit," says Storm point guard Sue Bird of playing without Lauren Jackson. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images

"I guess I can smile for once. It's been a long time since I could smile coming back here. I thought tonight would carry over from the way we played last night. I don't know if anyone paid attention but we played Indiana down to about a minute and thirty seconds. They got a couple of Olympians on their team and they made a couple extra plays at the end so we came up short, but we were very positive about what we were going to do tonight."
- Chicago Sky head coach Steven Key on his team bouncing back Sunday against Atlanta after a tough loss the day before

"People talk a lot about Silk (Candace Parker), who is a rookie in this league, that she's done great things, but she's still trying to figure this out. She's a rookie and she's making rookie mistakes. She has to learn how to play against a player like Lauren Jackson. Sometimes you have to show her pump fake or something different. Two times early in the first half she went with the same move and got it blocked. … This is not college. You can't make the same move on a person. … That's how Lauren Jackson is and the rest of the players around the league. She has to come with something a little different. And she will because she's that smart of a player."
- Sparks coach Michael Cooper on the play of Candace Parker in L.A.'s 70-52 loss to the Storm on Saturday

"(Lauren's) a pretty good player. But we're ready. We've won some games to give ourselves a cushion. It's going to be hard, because the (upcoming) games are on the road, and that's been our 'problem,' or 'issue,' this year. But it's not just about me. I'm not going to go out and suddenly score 30. That's not happening. Sorry to break it to you guys. Everyone is going to have to raise their game a little bit."
- Storm point guard Sue Bird on reigning MVP Lauren Jackson leaving the team and missing the next several WNBA games to train with her native Australian Olympic team

"They are going to be that dirty type of team and push you around, throw some elbows and try to be the bully. Every time we play them, we always seem to stand up. We come out shaky in the beginning, but we always seem to stand up when we need to."
- Liberty point guard Loree Moore on playing against the always physical Shock after the Liberty's come-from-behind win Saturday night, to the Detroit Free Press

"We're really anticipating this game. However we're trying to decide what type of sunglasses we're going to wear, what type of sunscreen we're going to wear and what type of clothing."
- Fever coach Lin Dunn on her team's preparation for next weekend's inaugural Liberty Outdoor Classic at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York

"I wanted Peyton Manning to send us some of that stuff they use for football games, but we didn't quite get it in time. We're going to see if we can get that ready for the trip."
- Fever forward Ebony Hoffman said, jokingly, of the eye black used by football players after her team practiced outdoors Thursday to prepare for next weekend's Liberty Outdoor Classic, to the Indianapolis Star

"They have Ann Wauters now who's giving them 15-20 points a game. Erin Buescher is healthy. She was out with a knee injury. Becky Hammon is always going to work her hardest out there to get them the win. We showed them we can play with them in the first and fourth quarters but unfortunately we don't play that consistently the entire game."
- Sky All-Star Candice Dupree after a loss to the much-improved, league-leading San Antonio Silver Stars

"They played well; we played badly."
- Mercury coach Corey Gaines summing up Thursday's 89-78 loss to the Storm

"To represent your country, it's something I've dreamed about. It's the highest level of basketball. The Olympics encompass way more than just sports."
- Indiana's Tamika Catchings on being selected for her second straight U.S. Olympic team, to the Dallas Morning News

"This season is not over. We can still make a run. The last couple of days, we've been feeling sorry for ourselves. But you can see what we can do."
- Monarch Nicole Powell after scoring a game-high 24 points in her team's 87-69 win over the then-first place Sparks on Thursday, to the Sacramento Bee

"It's a cool little record, but there's someone sitting across the way that's probably going to get it even quicker than I did."
- Diana Taurasi after becoming the fastest player in WNBA history to score 3,000 career points, referring to teammate Cappie Pondexter, to the Arizona Republic

"Pretty much, we're sick of losing. We lost enough games for a lifetime, I think... We're a resilient team. We haven't won those games in the past, but we've been down by some big margins and we're resilient and keep fighting and we come back. We make scrappy plays and somehow find baskets. I think that's been a character of our team the whole season, it's just now we're finding out ways to pull off those W's."
- Atlanta forward Jennifer Lacy on the Dream's reversal of fortunes after Wednesday's victory over Minnesota

"If I knew the answer to (missed free throws), I wouldn't be coaching. I would bottle it up and sell it to everybody. We work on free throws every day. … You have to knock them down in crunch time, and unfortunately tonight we didn't."
- Minnesota coach Don Zierden after Wednesday's loss to Atlanta

"We're hoping that it won't come back to the tiebreaker, but this way, if it does come down to it, we've got it. That could be huge."
- Detroit coach Bill Laimbeer after beating Connecticut on Tuesday to win the season series and any potential playoff tiebreaker, to the Associated Press

"When people asked me before, I said I never knew. But I see it, for the first time in my career, that yeah, there's an afterlife, so to speak. So, yes, this will be my last Olympics, that's official."
- Lisa Leslie on her future with the U.S. national team, to the Los Angeles Times

"I told them, 'Dude, if I knew you guys were going to play like this, I would have stubbed a toe or something like that a long time ago.' "
- Comets star Tina Thompson on her teammates stepping up their games while she missed time with a broken finger, to the Norwich Bulletin