Before Becky Hammon became the face of the Aces and Cheryl Reeve built her dynasty in Minnesota, there was one man who helped build the foundation of the league: Bill Laimbeer. He completely retired from coaching in 2021, but now, a former WNBA veteran who played under Laimbeer during his final years in the league has revealed a practice incident that shows how intense he was.
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“What I love about Bill is that he was so straightforward. You’re never guessing with him. He talked so much trash,” Tamera Young said on the Road Trippin’ Show on YouTube. “He always talked trash to me.”
Well, he was the premier member of the legendary ‘Bad Boy’ Pistons after all. In his prime as a player, Laimbeer went far beyond trash talk. He did not mince words as a coach either.
“One time we were in practice doing a layup drill, and I missed a layup,” Young narrated. “He said, ‘If you don’t want to be here, just leave.’ I said, ‘Bill, if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here.’ We would go back and forth like that, and it didn’t mean anything. It was just like, ‘You are really crazy.’ I felt like Bill would take advantage of people who were intimidated by him.”
ESPN once described Bill Laimbeer as a man who, “talks about hoops as if he invented it, as if everyone views basketball the way he does: in slow motion.” He was stubborn and unapologetic about his personality. Laimbeer was often considered a ‘dirty’ player, even inducing a brawl during his playing days.
He knocked down Celtics icon Larry Bird in Game 4 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals and caused quite the ruckus. You would think that attitude softened when he became a coach in the WNBA. Spoiler alert: it did not.
“It was a thing for him. If he knew you were intimidated, he would just keep messing with you,” Young further said. “He kept messing with me because I would talk back to him. I knew he tried to be a bully, and it was like, ‘You can’t bully me.’ But I did love his craziness.”
That same uncompromising approach wasn’t universally embraced. When Laimbeer briefly joined an NBA coaching staff, it produced very different reactions. He was on Kurt Rambis’ staff at the Timberwolves, and ESPN reported that the front office did not have a good opinion of Laimbeer largely because of his demeanor.
For example, during one of the regular drills before the 2010 NBA draft, the prospects made a silly mistake. Laimbeer was apparently furious.
“By the end of the workout, we all thought there might be a fight on the court,” one GM remembers.
Then Laimbeer rejoined the WNBA, more specifically, the New York Liberty, where he fit better. From there, he made his way to the Las Vegas Aces.