The New York Liberty are no doubt weary of reminders that they are an original WNBA franchise that hasn't won a league title. But that heartbreaking history is part of what makes the excitement about this season so palpable for Liberty loyalists. This could be the year.
Even the oddsmakers are getting on board with the Liberty, who remain No. 1 in ESPN's WNBA Power Rankings. On Sunday, ESPN BET listed the Liberty as +155 favorites to win the title.
Last season the Aces beat the Liberty 3-1 in the WNBA Finals after defeating Connecticut 3-1 in the 2022 Finals. But New York's run this season shows no signs of letting up. The Liberty have defeated the Aces in both regular-season meetings -- 79-67 on Saturday and 90-82 on June 15, both in Las Vegas -- with one more matchup set for Sept. 8 in Brooklyn.
Just four days after New York stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu won the Olympic gold medal with Team USA, New York played its first game after the Paris Games and blew out Los Angeles 103-68 on the road Thursday. With Saturday's win, the Liberty became the first team this season to clinch a spot in the WNBA playoffs.
New York has 13 games remaining, including seven against teams currently not in playoff position.
Ionescu was asked Saturday if clinching a playoff spot with a win over the two-time champion Aces made it any more special, and she said it didn't. At this point, the Liberty aren't motivated by what any other team is doing or not doing, but only about reaching their potential -- which could be the best it has ever been.
"We're super excited to clinch a spot in the playoffs," Ionescu said. "Our goal isn't to just make it there, but it's continuing to win these games that we have coming up. And continuing to just get better as a team. We're just getting back into it [after the Olympic break], but it's nice to see we've been able to pick up where we've left off and keep grinding away."
Midway through the fourth quarter, the tables had turned.
The New York Liberty were up 67-63 after Chelsea Gray hit another 3-pointer to bring the Las Vegas Aces within four, a vantage point they were definitely not supposed to be in. It felt just like the end of the first quarter, which ended 28-24 in the Aces’ favor.
In that quarter, the home team hit their first five triples and glided through New York’s defense like a good pair of scissors. So when Sabrina Ionescu hit a couple of laughable shots to cut the deficit to two possessions...
"lemme hop in my bag real quick" - @sabrina_i20 Sa-3️⃣-na from the logo to close out the 1st pic.twitter.com/QJ6KXnyZte
...Vegas had a right to be worried. Ionescu and the Liberty had eaten their best punch pretty easily, and there were still three quarters to go.
But New York didn’t ever catch fire from the floor, and while they’d start thoroughly outplaying Vegas to build a ten-point lead, potential haymakers bounced off the side of the rim. After making a staggering 50% of their threes against Los Angeles on Thursday, they barely shot half that on Saturday afternoon, just 8-of-31 from deep. Ionescu’s 12-point first quarter was electrifying, but she too lost the touch, shooting 9-of-21 to score her team-high 23 points.
And yet, Vegas was even colder. A’ja Wilson is A’ja Wilson, so she’d post 24/11/0/3/3, but that big fat zero in the middle loomed large. Her inside-the-arc offense rarely translated into easy shots for others, and on the rare occasions it did, the supporting Aces missed ‘em. The non-Wilson Aces shot just 32% from the floor, and even worse from three. Jackie Young shot 1-of-8, startlingly invisible for much of the game, while Kelsey Plum couldn’t overcome Leonie Fiebich’s length.
Chelsea Gray, meanwhile, continued to look like a Chelsea Gray impersonator in her return from the left foot injury she suffered in the 2023 Finals, struggling to create space or blow by anybody who guarded her. So when she hit a three to cut New York’s lead to four with six minutes left to play, forcing Sandy Brondello to call a timeout, it didn’t feel safe for the Liberty. They hadn’t put the sleeping giant away.
Then, they did.
“We just went back to what we needed to do,” said Brondello. “I thought, well, we weren’t flowing into our offense. We were getting some unforced turnovers. Defensively, we were overhelping where we didn’t need to. It was just getting back to the execute the gameplan and how we wanted to play.”
Following the timeout, New York scored a dozen straight, and everybody contributed. Leonie Fiebich, who finished with 12/7/2 and what felt like two hundred winning,hustle plays, also hit the biggest three of the day, pulling up when Plum went under a ball-screen to kick off the run.
Then Ionescu got to the line, Breanna Stewart hit a couple tough shots to finish with 18 points, and Jonquel Jones drove the lane and kicked it out to Kayla Thornton for a dagger triple...
funny Jonquel Jones game where she misses a few layups and isn't touching the ball a ton but gets every single important board to end up with 10/17/7, the last of which a drive-and-kick vs A'ja to seal it pic.twitter.com/wDluXiwXX3
As the above post suggests, Jones was the main reason New York won the offensive rebounding battle 13-2, with seven of her own. it wasn’t the all-encompassing performance she had in her last face-off with Aces when she posted a career-high 34 points, but she was nails nonetheless, with a near triple-double that was anything but empty.
“I’d say sometimes that’s our best offense is knowing we can keep the floor spaced and shoot the ball with confidence, knowing JJ is down there,” said Ionescu. “If we do miss, she cleans it up almost every single time, and I think that’s sometimes why we do make sure that we’re taking those shots, because it creates second chance opportunities that usually really play in our favor.”
Once again, the Liberty went to their bigger lineup to close the game, with Courtney Vandersloot on the bench and Thornton and Fiebich manning the wings. And with Betnijah Laney-Hamilton still on the shelf, their list of options is only going to expand, barring injury.
That’s a scary thought for the Las Vegas Aces, who fell a half-game behind the fourth-place Seattle Storm with the loss. The two-time reigning champions could win a third straight this season, and it would surprise nobody. But right now, Chelsea Gray doesn’t look like herself, and when Kiah Stokes is on the floor next to A’ja Wilson, the offense is noticeably hamstrung. But outside of Alysha Clark, who can Becky Hammon rely on.
Thus, the Aces do not have any margin for error. They need A+ games from Wilson, Plum, and Young every night against the league’s other elite teams. They didn’t get that on Saturday afternoon.
But the Liberty didn’t win because their stars dominated. Sure, Stewie, Jones, and Ionescu had award-winning moments, but the biggest reason for New York’s playoff-berth-clinching win was any sportswriter cliché of your choosing. It “feels” like their year, they’re on a mission, they have championship mettle, they believe, whatever whatever.
That stuff gets tiring, especially with the spreadsheet-filling stats indicating their dominance this season, the hours of X’s and O’s execution they’ve put on film.
Saturday’s win wasn’t about either of those things, though. It was about that juice. And the New York Liberty have it.
The New York Liberty return home after two games out West, and will play the only team they haven’t faced yet this season. Twice. The first of two games against the Dallas Wings tips off at 7:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday night from the Barclays Center.
