Top Five Bill Laimbeer Trades, Plenette Pierson

WNBA Draft 2019 presented by State Farm is less than three weeks away, and questions continue to swirl around what the Aces will do with the number one pick. Will they draft a big? Will they draft a guard? Will they trade the pick before the draft? What about after the draft?

We don’t know.

Well, maybe we do, but we’ve been sworn to secrecy.

In the meantime, we thought it would be interesting to take a look back at the top five trades in Bill Laimbeer’s storied WNBA career. He has been in the middle of quite a few of them, earning the nickname “Trader Bill” from the WNBA diehards who post on the rebkell message boards.

Today we take a look at Detroit’s June 29, 2005 acquisition of Plenette Pierson.

Previous Top-Five Trade Acquisitions (Elaine Powell, Kedra Holland-Corn)

June 29, 2005
Detroit Shock acquires Plenette Pierson

The Detroit Shock famously went from worst to first during Laimbeer’s first full season as head coach, winning the 2003 WNBA Championship over the Los Angeles Sparks. However the next two seasons weren’t as kind to the “Bad Girls.”

In 2004, the Shock managed just a 17-17 record, and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Despite winning the first four games of the 2005 season, Detroit found itself with a 6-5 record on June 26. That’s when Trader Bill pulled the trigger on a deal that brought forward Plenette Pierson to the D from the Phoenix Mercury in exchange for Andrea Stinson and Detroit’s second round pick in 2006.

The Mercury selected Pierson with the fourth overall pick of the 2003 WNBA Draft, and she had a pair of solid seasons out of the gate. In her third year, though, her shooting percentage dropped off considerably, and a change in scenery seemed to be in order.

Pierson scored 22 points in her first game with the Shock, and she regained her shooting touch, but Detroit was eliminated from the playoffs in the first round once again.

In 2006, Pierson continued her role as a key reserve for the Shock, and the team went on to win its second WNBA Championship. The fourth-year pro boasted career highs in field goal percentage (.456) and free throw percentage (.700), and helped Detroit finished second in the league in defensive efficiency.

The following season, she won the league’s inaugural Sixth Woman of the Year Award, nearly doubling her scoring average from the previous year (11.6), averaging a career-high 5.6 rebounds per game, and connecting on a career-high 47.8 percent of her shots. The Shock returned to the finals, but fell to the Mercury in five games.

In 2008, Pierson again served as Detroit’s super-sub, averaging 11.9 points per game in 28 games off the bench. The Shock swept San Antonio in the WNBA Finals for the team’s second championship in three years.

Pierson went on to play another nine years in the WNBA, making her first All-Star Team at the age of 33, and winning her third championship in 2017 as a member of the Minnesota Lynx.