Lindsay Whalen Point Guard, Connecticut Sun Don't let her tough play or quiet demeanor on the court fool you. Connecticut Sun point guard Lindsay Whalen has her fair share of fun. In fact, she busts rhymes and dishes dimes. As a student-athlete at the University of Minnesota, Whalen led the Gophers to the Final Four and had one of the biggest cult followings in the sport. That fanbase has followed her all the way to the WNBA and multiplied. As a rookie, she helped lead the Sun all the way to the 2004 WNBA Finals and was voted in as the only fan selection to play for the WNBA All-Stars against the U.S. Olympic Team in the game at Radio City. She liked it so much, she brought the team back again in 2005. Whalen grew up in Minnesota, her favorite NBA player is Kevin Garnett and she is an avid golfer.

Joaquin Henson :  Nov 26 Martin comes of age Recapping NBA All-Star Weekend Thank You, Houston! Why did he put the tape by the three point line? Have you ever felt the warm breeze in Houston during mid-February when the bitter cold of the north has just gotten to be too much? Yeah, neither have I. You see, it was surprisingly cold down in Houston. Yes, cold... coming from me. And I am from tha sota'... Minnesota, don cha know it. I think the weather follows me like a polar bear follows baked hams. I was in Connecticut for a Nor Eastr' to remember. A storm that piled up on New York City as well as Boston. So I try and escape the depths of winter only to revel in the 30- and 40-degree temperatures in Houston. But I can't complain too much, you see. I got to do some pretty fun things while indoors. Shaking the hand of DJ Jazzy Jeff at the EA Sports party Thursday night was a highlight of mine of course. Other highlights included Nate Robinson and Andre Iguodala's battle to the end for the dunk contest championship. Each contestant brought one dunk for the ages and Nate puled it out in the end. Big shout out to the San Antonio team of Tony Parker, Kendra Wecker, and Steve Kerr, taking home the record for the shooting contest which will be a hard one to break. LeBron James showed us an MVP performance as did Tracy McGrady. Both should be commended for their efforts. I truly was entertained and thought it was a great game. The 4th quarter was one to remember. The brightest star for me was one that did not step on the floor, but the stage. Snoop Dogg gave a once-in-a-lifetime preformance (for me, at least) during the ESPN Deportes party on Friday night. I wasn't really expecting him to actually play and then out of no where they announced that he was there. So rushing to the stage, carefully though in my boot, I came to the room and he was right there. It was spectacular. I had a fabulous time listening to his classics. So I ask myself... how can next year's NBA All-Star Game top all of these performances? Well, let's just say it's in Las Vegas! Until next time, this is Lindsay Whalen reporting for the CT SUN... Posted by Lindsay Whalen - Feb 28 2006 4:54PM Wow, It's Been Awhile, Right...? The mid-winter update Shimmy shimmy quarter turn (Hellogoodbye) As for me, since you asked, I am doing well. Or at least, as well as can be expected for not really being able to walk for the last two weeks. So how did I get to this point, you may be wondering. It all started a few months ago, I suppose, when I was playing in the 2005 WNBA Finals. I drove baseline, trying to create something going to the basket, and stepped on a defender's foot. My ankle turned over. It was sprained. It kept me out of Game 2 of the WNBA Finals and then I played the last two games. We lost the series and, afterward, I had my knee and ankle checked out. My knee would heal over time and we thought I just had a bad ankle sprain on the inner ligament. That would have been that. Fast forward a bit and I was in Russia on two different occasions in the span of about two-and-a-half months at the end of last year. The second time I was there, it was for six weeks. After trying to play in practice, I realized my ankle was not getting any better and I had to come home and get it re-evaluated. The MRI showed that I had some torn ligaments and scar tissue. It was time for a little tune up, maybe some surgery, and now here I am. I am two weeks out of surgery and have found a greater understanding for what it means to be an NFL playoffs fan, a college basketball fan and the ultimate "Full House" junky (poor Bob Saget). I have seen every episode of "I love the 90's" on VH1 from 1990 to 1997 and a few "E! True Hollywood Stories." Mostly, though, it has been a lot of basketball watching. Last week, the Duke women played a great game and showed great depth and star power. I was excited to see the young talent of Tennessee and we all know they will get better throughout the year. And I would be remiss if I failed to give a big shout out to my Gophers who got two Big-10 road wins last week. Now the Super Bowl is almost here and I've been keeping up with all the hype around Media Week. I wanted to keep track of how many times this week someone from the Pittsburgh Steelers said, "We are still the underdog." Come on, you just beat Cincinatti, the Colts, and Denver. All road games...right? Underdogs. Ha. Also, some additional shout outs... Good luck to Ron Artest and Peja with their new teams... Thank you, Mario Lemieux, for your work on the ice over the years and your inspiration... Congrats on a great comeback, Martina Hingis. After a three year hiatus, she came back for the Aussie Open and made it all the way to the quarterfinals. Pretty sweet... And speaking of comebacks, don't worry about mine. It's only a matter of time before I'll be back on my feet. Until then, --lmwhalen Posted by Lindsay Whalen - Feb 4 2006 9:22AM

How I Spent My Summer Vacation Since I've Been Gone... In all of its glory, I have decided that it is the right time for my Blog to get off the bench and see some action here down the stretch and see if we can't make some waves in this ocean we call the internet. Many things have happened since the last Blog appearance, so let's take a little trip back. First, we had two All-Star Games. The WNBA's All-Star Game was a couple of Saturdays ago in the familiar and oh-so-friendly confines of Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. And as always, the good folks in Connecticut know how to put on a good show. It was great seeing Kesh and Taj out there with the game's best, but the East wasn't able to get off the schneid. Perhaps next year? Oh, and I'm casting my vote early that the league decides to hold the game in the great state of Minnesota? Who's with me? Start writing letters to WNBA President Donna Orender and flooding her with mail. We can do this. And then just a few days later, Major League Baseball had its own mid-summer classic. Two All-Star events featuring great talents and personalities for the fans. It doesn't get any better. The fine city of London also had a bit of rough month of July to put it mildly. Of course, as Americans, we can't help but think back to September 11, 2001. Too sad, but our thoughts and prayers can be with those dealing with this tragedy. Ok, so what else? Let's see? Venus Williams won Wimbledon in a great comeback tournament for her. Oh, and "Bragelina" was born and those hot summer romance rumors seem came to fruition like we all hoped? Random thought? As I was reading Sports Illustrated the other day on a plane ride (just one of many things I do on plane rides because there's just so much to do), I came across a Steve Rushin (that's Mr. Rebecca Lobo to the rest of us) column that discusses the fine art of speaking in the third person. Of course, Lindsay Whalen is a big fan of this in the great tradition of baseball legend Rickey Henderson, Senator Bob Dole and Kermit the Frog, and wants to be a part of this third person craze. Lindsay Whalen feels that she has the right to write this Blog in that style when Lindsay Whalen is feeling inclined. Ok, so now that this has been cleared up, let's discuss the Summer of 2005 in Film, also known as "The Summer of Re-Makes." Now I like vintage as much as the next person. I mean, I have my throwback Pete Marovich jersey, I listen to some Beatles, I own an original Nintendo (with Super Tecmo Bowl, the greatest video game of all-time, and Mike Tyson's Punch Out), but they went a little crazy with the re-makes this year: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, Bad News Bears, Herbie Fully Loaded, The Dukes of Hazzard and my personal favorite, Bewitched, which is a spoof about re-makes in and of itself ? a play within a play, if you will. Shakespeare would be proud. Now I love Will Ferrell, so I'll probably see it, but come on. We need some fresh new ideas for movies. Before you know it, they're going to run out of classics and start re-making bombs like Gigli and Glitter. So talking a little hoops before I leave you be. Only three weeks to go in the season. Crazy how fast things go. It feels like just yesterday that I was flying to New York for the Draft. Now my second season is nearly a wrap and things are going pretty well. Of all the many lessons I have learned in this league, the biggest one would be that you can't ever take a night off against any team. Every game counts towards the stretch run. Right now in the east, there are a lot of teams playing really well and we know that it will take our best to make a run here at the end. With that said, it's time to have fun and actually play those games. So until next time, this one's a wrap... chicken teriyaki style... Posted by Lindsay Whalen - Aug 7 2005 12:33PM

What is a BLOG? I'm not sure, but I'll let you know... Hello America, as well as other unions, states, commonwealths and whathaveyous! I have decided that I am going to be writing a BLOG for various news sources beginning this summer. Mainly its going to be for WNBA.com and NBA.com, but you never know... CNN might see potential. But before I could start writing a BLOG, I had to go and figure out just what a BLOG is. I mean, I had a few ideas of what a BLOG might be... could it be a rare foot fungas? Like "Oh wow, you should see the horrible BLOG on my foot." Could work, but no. Maybe it stood for something? Big Lazy Overweight Guy? Although it could happen, naw. So after a few attempts on trying to figure out what BLOG is, I went straight to Matt Wurst (no, I did not make up his last name).He is the man in charge of the WNBA.com site as well as other aspects of the WNBA. Of course he knew what it meant, and I can finally say that a BLOG is short for "Web Log." Yeah pretty exciting right! I mean they coulda come up with something a little more trendy or something, am I right? I'll move on. So I think I am going to approach this BLOG by basically keeping a journal of different things that happen during the course of the season... mostly off-the-court things: Random UFO sightings, movies seen, cities traveled, team bonding events and bloopers all could make the BLOG. So you get the drift. So here is BLOG 1: The first entry is going to be centered around a very interesting plane ride that our team experienced about a week ago. I walked onto the plane destined for Houston last Wednesday in anticipation of a nice, smooth flight filled with ginger ale, an In-Touch magazine and, who knows, maybe an in-flight movie. I didn't know if we would have time for all of that, though. But we did have time for some interesting passengers. Sitting in front of me were members of a family that had made reservations to sit together. Of course, this did not work out, so that was not a good start. Then, the woman, who was sitting on the outside seat, tried to put her carry-on bag into the overhead compartment. Well this was not happening, either, and as she struggled to put the bag above, she looked at her male counterpart in disgust. After a snide remark about him not helping or something, she proceeded to sit on the actual bag on her seat. So she was sitting a little bit higher than everyone else at this point, trying to proove a point to her traveling companion. She then gave it another shot overhead and thank goodness TJ was there to give a helping hand. The woman appreciated it. The second part of the flight got even more interesting thanks to the aforementioned woman. She obviously did not want anything to do with the food that was going to be served. I mean, I was good to go with the turkey, ham, and cheese sandwich that came oven-fresh right to my seat. It was like a chuckwagon sandwich that you get at a gas station... solid. But this woman decided that she was going to bake a chicken and throw in some potatoes into a zip-lock bag and call it a day. Like I said, I give her credit for making her own food in order to make the flight enjoyable. But things got interesting when she decided to eat her baked potato like an apple with her hands. I don't know, I just thought that was a little funny and over the edge. And I'm Irish!! To top it all off the airline lost LeCoe's bag. Thankfully they were able to find it and return it to her later that night. I am telling you, life on the road can get very interesting! Later, Lindsay- Posted by Lindsay Whalen - Jun 16 2005 11:30AM