The Detroit Shock was a Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) team based in Auburn Hills, Michigan. They were the 2003, 2006 and 2008 WNBA champion. As of 2011, they remain the only Eastern Conference franchise (other than the 1997 Houston Comets, who moved to the Western Conference the following year) to win a WNBA Championship.

Debuting in 1998, it was one of the league's first expansion franchises. It was also the first WNBA expansion franchise to win a WNBA Championship. The team was the sister team of the Detroit Pistons and during the 2009 season was coached by Pistons legend Rick Mahorn.

On October 20, 2009, it was announced that the Shock would be moving to Tulsa, Oklahoma to play in the new downtown arena, the BOK Center. Former men's college coach Nolan Richardson was named the team's new head coach. The Shock roster and history was retained along with the Shock name, but the team colors were changed to black, red, and gold.

The Shock were one of the first WNBA expansion teams and began play in 1998. The Detroit Shock quickly brought in a blend of rookies and veterans. The Shock's first coach was hall of famer Nancy Lieberman. The Shock would start out their inaugural season 0-4, but would put together an amazing expansion season, and finish 17-13, missing out on the postseason by one game.

Detroit ( /diˈtrɔɪt/) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan, and the seat of Wayne County. It is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people, and serves as a major port on the Detroit River connecting the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It was founded on July 24, 1701, by the French explorer, adventurer, and nobleman Antoine de la Mothe, sieur de Cadillac.

In 2010, the city had a population of 713,777 and ranked as the 18th most populous city in the United States. The name Detroit sometimes refers to the Metro Detroit area with a population of 4,296,250 for the six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area, the United States' eleventh-largest, and a population of 5,218,852 for the nine-county Combined Statistical Area as of the 2010 Census. The Detroit–Windsor area, a critical commercial link straddling the Canada–U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,700,000.

Known as the world's traditional automotive center, "Detroit" is a metonym for the American automobile industry and an important source of popular music legacies celebrated by the city's two familiar nicknames, the Motor City and Motown. Other nicknames arose in the 20th century, including City of Champions beginning in the 1930s for its successes in individual and team sport,The D, D-Town, Hockeytown (a trademark owned by the city's NHL club, the Red Wings), Rock City (after the Kiss song "Detroit Rock City"), and The 313 (its telephone area code) Detroit became known as the "great arsenal of democracy" for its support of the U.S. role among the Allied powers during World War II.

Candace Nicole Parker (born April 19, 1986) is an All-American basketball player for the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks and UMMC Ekaterinburg of Russia. She is the younger sister of NBA player Anthony Parker. She attended the University of Tennessee and was drafted by the Sparks in 2008. She may be best known for being the first woman to dunk in an NCAA tournament game and the first woman to dunk twice in a college game—she set both milestones as a redshirt freshman on March 19, 2006. She also became only the second player to dunk in a WNBA game on June 22, 2008.

A versatile player, she is mainly a forward, but was listed on Tennessee's roster as a forward, center, and guard. She was a starter on the Lady Vols basketball team, winners of the 2007 and 2008 NCAA championships.

Parker won the 2009 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice award as the favorite female athlete in the sports category.

Candace Parker was born on April 19, 1986 to Natasha, who currently works for the front office of the Chicago Sky, and Larry, who is in the insurance business. She has two older brothers: Anthony Parker, who is an NBA player, and Marcus, who is a doctor.

Plenette Michelle Pierson (born August 31, 1981) is an American professional women's basketball player with the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). In the 2007 season, Pierson won the first ever Sixth Woman of the Year Award given in the WNBA.

Pierson played college basketball for the Texas Tech Red Raiders women's basketball team. She graduated in 2003.

Pierson has won two championships with the Shock, in 2006 and 2008.

Pierson was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in nearby Kingwood, Texas. She is the daughter of Paulette Pierson and has a younger brother, Cleven. She attended Kingwood High School, from which she graduated from in 1999.

Erin Victoria Phillips (born 19 May 1985) is an Australian professional women's basketball player. In the United States, she currently plays for the Indiana Fever in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) and for Adelaide Lightning in the Women's National Basketball League (WNBL).

Phillips is the daughter of Greg Phillips, a longtime Australian rules football star. She did not begin to play the game of basketball until she was 13.

Phillips attended college in Australia.

While playing for the Adelaide Lightning, Phillips was named to the WNBL All-Star Five team from 2004-2007. In 2005, Phillips scored a career-high 40 points, fourth-highest in franchise history, only a few days after dishing out 12 assists, also fourth-highest in franchise history, in a year that she averaged 5.3 per game. Phillips is the fifth-highest assist leader for the Lightning, with 423 over 127 games. In the 2007-08 Season, Phillips led the Lightning to their fifth championship in franchise history, and first in ten years, by defeating the Sydney Flames 92-82 in Wollongong. In the 2008-09 Season, Phillips would suffer a season-ending knee injury. This would be her last season as a member of the Lightning.