"Don't give up"

Betty Lennox just gave a post-game interview (for the Dream's second ever win) and said something interesting:

Coach told us not to give up and that's what we didn't do.

I think "... and that's what we did" would be more usual, but with the "and" and the focusing, this is perfectly clear. Yet, I think maybe it doesn't mean what she meant it to mean - or what anybody would, with pragmatics and context making their giant contributions, understand she meant.

Lennox clearly meant "Coach said don't X and that (= X) is what we didn't do."

But the sentence might (also?) parse out to: "Coach said, "Don't X", and that (= what coach said) is what we didn't do."

(Boy, punctuation does help, doesn't it?)

I don't know. It just sounded simultaneously completely clear and very, very odd. Maybe it's the cleft structure? What is the "that" here? I can easily interpret this exact structure as meaning the opposite. If Atlanta had lost, Lennox might have said, "Coach said not to let Anosike take her shots, and that's what we didn't do," meaning they let Anosike shoot at will, and that would be clear, too.

Hmmm. The more I think about this, the odder it gets. "Coach said not to give up and that's what we did" is just as unclear if you divorce context: it could be said by a winning or losing player.

"Coach said to give up, and that's what we didn't do" is clear (if unlikely). "Coach said not to give up, but that's what we did," is clear - thanks to the "but". So's "Coach said not give up, so we didn't."

Wow.

I'm going to post this in case anyone has some insights. I'll probably revisit it after some thinking, once I get back from dinner and a movie...