2010 phoenix mercury playoff media guide - WNBA.com

2010 PHOENIX MERCURY POSTSEASON MEDIA GUIDE
Head Coach
A 21-year veteran of fastbreak basketball on the collegiate, professional and international
levels, Corey Gaines is completing his third season as head coach of the Phoenix Mercury. Gaines
was named the club‘s seventh head coach on Nov. 7, 2007.
Gaines garnered the promotion to the head spot after serving under mentor and former
head coach Paul Westhead for two seasons as the top assistant in charge of an offense that set
WNBA records for scoring average in both 2006 (87.1) and 2007 (89.0). With Gaines on the sideline,
the Mercury has led the league in scoring in five consecutive seasons and has set WNBA scoring
records in four of the last five seasons, including 2010 (93.9 ppg).
In his first season as head coach, Gaines led the Mercury to a 16-18 record, narrowly missing
a postseason berth in the highly-competitive Western Conference. In 2009, the Mercury was the
first team to secure a playoff spot and entered the postseason as the WNBA‘s top-seeded team.
Gaines led the team to the WNBA Finals, where the Mercury defeated the Indiana Fever in five
games to hoist the 2009 championship trophy at US Airways Center on Oct. 9, 2009.
As a collegiate athlete, the Los Angeles native spent his first three seasons at UCLA alongside
Reggie Miller before transferring to Loyola Marymount in 1986 to play for former Mercury
Head Coach Paul Westhead, who coached Phoenix to its first WNBA title in 2007. Gaines learned the fastbreak offense under the
―Guru of Go‖ during the 1986-87 season while redshirting at LMU before becoming the starting point guard the following season and
helping to engineer a 26-game win streak as a teammate of Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers.
Originally selected by the Seattle Supersonics in the third round (65 th overall) of the 1988 NBA Draft, Gaines spent five seasons
with five different NBA teams, earning a trip to the 1994 NBA Finals with the New York Knicks. Gaines played 12 years internationally,
including a stint as the starting point guard with Scavalini in Italy playing against a Benetton team, which was coached at the
time by former Phoenix Suns Head Coach Mike D‘Antoni.
The well-traveled 45-year-old re-joined Westhead in the ABA with the Long Beach Jam in 2003, serving as a player and an
assistant coach before taking over as head coach and leading the team to a championship. Gaines coached a squad with six current
and former NBA players including Matt Barnes (Orlando Magic), Matt Carroll (Dallas Mavericks), Yuta Tabuse and Dennis Rodman.
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