都沒有po呀~~~ 恭喜女王隊成功的擊退太陽隊 看griffith打球真的很感動~~實在是很拼 冠軍跟mvp也是應得的 貼個文 http://www.wnba.com/playoffs2005/griffith_mvp.html Veteran earns elusive first WNBA Championship Griffith Delivers By Brad Friedman, WNBA.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 20 -- After a Game 1 Finals road win in which Sacramento Monarchs center Yolanda Griffith posted 25 points and nine rebounds, Monarchs coach John Whisenant compared the seven-year WNBA veteran to former Jazz and Lakers forward Karl Malone. Tuesday night Griffith separated herself from Malone, doing what her NBA counterpart never could. Win a championship. The Monarchs defeated the Connecticut Sun 62-59 in Game 4 to take the 2005 WNBA title. Griffith, who led the team in scoring in every postseason contest, carried the Monarchs on her back throughout series, earning her Finals MVP honors. "Yolanda deservingly received the MVP," said Whisenant about the franchise cornerstone, who averaged 18.5 points and 9.8 rebounds in the series. Griffith helped the Monarchs climb out of a 31-25 halftime disadvantage in Game 4, scoring 10 of her 14 points after intermission. Competing in her first Finals ever, Griffith wasn't about to let a chance at a title slip away. "I knew in the first half we were not playing Sacramento basketball," said Griffith, who lost three times in the West Finals before this year. "I knew I was struggling, I was forcing too many things. I just kept my composure and like I said, my teammates are always going to have my back." Added shooting guard Chelsea Newton: "We knew to go to her (in the second half) because that's where our money is. Yolanda's our heart." She certainly has plenty of it, too. It's been a long-winded journey for the 35-year-old Griffith, yet she's always seemed to push ahead. The circuitous route Griffith's taken began with a much-ballyhooed career at George Washington Carver High School in Chicago, a program responsible for producing future NBAers Tim Hardaway and Terry Cummings. Griffith stole the show at the 2005 WNBA Finals. Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images/NBAE Griffith soon after hit her first bump in the road when she was unable to play at the school she committed to, the University of Iowa, landing her at tiny Palm Beach (Fla.) Junior College. Eventually Griffith transferred to Florida Atlantic University, where she garnered Division II All-American honors in her lone season there. Griffith wouldn't play organized basketball again in the United States until 1997, when Chicago held a franchise in the now-defunct American Basketball League (ABL). She earned ABL Defensive Player of the Year honors her initial season there, but the franchise folded midway through the next campaign. With Griffith no longer under contract, the Monarchs selected her with the second overall pick in the 1999 WNBA Draft. The move paid immediate dividends as the 6-4 center won MVP honors after posting 18.8 and 11.3 rebounds per game as a newcomer to the league. Since then, she's constructed a prolific career in a Sacramanto career that's included six WNBA All-Star Game appearances and five stops on WNBA First and Second teams, but never a WNBA title -- until now. "It feels great to feel what all the other champions have felt," Griffith said. "Feeling the pain I felt so many years in Sacramento not being able to get over the hump." Ironically, when Whisenant dramatically shook up the team's roster this past offseason, breaking up a core of players whom had played together six years, Griffith wasn't so sure she wanted to be a Monarch anymore. "In the beginning of the season I didn't want to be here because I didn't think that this would be possible," she said. Added Whisenant: "Yolanda's only thing when I started making all the changes was she requested that I trade her because she thought that I was rebuilding. I told her, 'I'm not going to trade you. You're too good and I can't replace you, and I'm not rebuilding, we're just reloading.'" As soon as Griffith came to training camp this season she felt right away extending her stay was the right path. That intuition proved prophetic Tuesday night. And, after the buzzer sounded, one of the first things Griffith did was run to the baseline and give two of her biggest supporters hugs. "This is a culmination and the crowning glory of all the hard work," sister Kathy Johnson said. "She never lost focus." Added sister Cynthia Merritt: "She's always had that drive to be the best, even as a child." Now that Griffith's won just about the only honor she hadn't previously earned in her career, what's there left for her to do? "Oh, my God, I'm going to party tonight," she said as confetti rained down at the trophy presentation. --

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