Augustus talks about how much Lynx have overcome, traffic stop flap

Seimone Augustus said the Lynx have overcome a lot this season, including injuries and the break for the Summer Olympics.

She said the team did not know how it would come back for the second half.

Lindsay Whalen returned from London with a gold medal and a broken finger and, just as the ring finger on her left hand had healed, she suffered a bone bruise on the left wrist.

"If we pull [another WNBA title] off, it will probably be one of the biggest accomplishments of all of our careers," Augustus said.

The Lynx start the WNBA Finals on Sunday, but still don't know who they will player. Indiana is at Connecticut on Thursday in deciding Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Augustus said it is not hard to practice without knowing the opponent. "At this point, whoever the opponent is, they are going to be tough," she said. "It is mainly focusing on what we need to do. And defensively, we want to be the No. 1 defensive team. We were.

"And we want to continue to hold that throne as far as being the No. 1 defensive team. We want to clean some stuff up on offense and [Wednesaday] gave us an opportunity to do that, just focus on us today."

The Roseville chief of police, Rick Mathwig, contacted the Lynx to reach Seimone Augustus about her traffic stop on Monday.

She described the Monday incident in detail on Twitter, telling her 25,000-plus followers how upset she was.

Augustus appreciated Mathwig's call.

. "We talked about the incident, and some of the scenarios, and some of the things that happened," Augustus said. "I was kind of unsure. I understood about the air freshener and obstruction of view and all this kind of stuff. But it was the extra stuff . Like the extra dialogue about whatever else [happened [in this case, thefts] at the mall. And the aggressive attitude. It was a little bit unnecessary. But we addressed it.

"[I'm] good about how it finished up. To have an opportunity to talk to the chief of police. Kind of go over their protocol, their procedure. I said this, and why he said that. And he said this and why I said that. And da, da, da."

She said she got a lot of responses, both ways: "Some people are like, 'Well, if you didn't get a ticket, it doesn't matter.' And I am like, it is all your opinion or whatever."

Augustus said this incident has not changed her opinion of the statel. "Life in Minnesota has been great," she said. "Just because of one incident, it is not going to put a damper on the way I think about Minnesota."

This is Augustus' seventh season as a member of the Lynx. The team took her with the No. 1 pick in the 2006 draft out of Louisiana State.

"This happens to everybody," Augustus said. "This could have happened to you. It is just something that happens, and I so happened to be the recipient. ... I hope that as far as the aggressive attitude, the extra stuff, that ceases. But as far as the air freshener goes I want everybody to take their air fresheners off their rear-view mirrors, and place it on your signal light or your steering [column]. I put my on my signal light switch on the car."

She said that others have called her traffic stop racial profiling, but she is not making that charge.

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Early Wednesday evening, Reeve issued a formal statement on Augustus's "bad day":