The 3-point shooting was hot, and then it was very much not. But New York, on the strength of their defense and Jonquel Jones, persevered anyway to come away with the W.
The Phoenix Mercury, even on the second night of a back-to-back, even missing Rebecca Allen and Britney Griner as they were on Wednesday night, will test you. Nate Tibbets’ new-look squad shoots the most 3-pointers in the league, generated by constant motion and five players on the court than can all set screens or be screened for.
And even if you can take away the 3-point line, you still have to deal with the league’s second-leading scorer in Kahleah Copper, a mid-range and paint killer.
Sandy Brondello said she’d be able to assess how prepared her Liberty were for the challenge in the “first minute. We know what we need to be doing, to be locked in.”
Indeed, after three days off, New York came out clicking on both ends. Diana Taurasi — who else? — took Phoenix’s first 3-point shot of the game after setting a ball-screen for Natasha Cloud, then fading behind a flare screen. But her shot was blocked by the shortest Lib on the court, Courtney Vandersloot, who switched onto her then stuck like glue.
New York didn’t run into such adversity offensively; all five starters had scored by the first media timeout, as the Liberty made five of their first seven 3-pointers. The most impressive came from Sabrina Ionescu, a harbinger of the first half to come…
With Courtney Vandersloot struggling to shoot the rock (2-of-10 from the floor), Ionescu continued to assume more ball-handling responsibilities, putting up 13 points with seven assists in the first half. She had it going from three, but continued to get to her floater game in the half-court and push the pace in transition…
Yet, the Liberty’s outside-shooting cooled off, and Phoenix, coming off a dismal blowout in Connecticut the night before, didn’t wear many effects of the back-to-back. Led by Cloud, the Mercury cut it to a single possession by half-time, trailing just 47-44.
But it wasn’t a temporary down-turn for the Liberty; their struggles to score the rock would continue for the rest of the night. After that 5-of-7 start from deep, they’d finish 9-of-32, with the muscles tightening ever so slightly on each shot, as the possibility of a third straight loss became very real.
A typical possession featured New York getting the Mercury in rotation, but without really stretching them to the limit, hesitant to take it all the way to the basket and occasionally hesitant to let it fly…
The Mercury’s sustained defense and resultant decision-making bug infected everybody; even Ionescu turned it over three times in the second half to finish with a still-impressive 22/6/9 line on 7-of-17 shooting.
New York’s defense suddenly had to keep them in the game, rather than protect a lead, and it did, even when Phoenix took a five-point lead early in the fourth quarter behind back-to-back Taurasi bombs. The Liberty allowed just 34 points in the second half, and set a lively Barclays Center crowd up for an exciting finish.
The Liberty only got five points from their bench — Leonie Fiebich didn’t make a shot after her 11-point burst on Saturday, and Nyara Sabally played just eight minutes — but Brondello did bench Vandersloot for much of the fourth quarter, in favor of Kayla Thornton. With Ionescu given prime ball-handling opportunities, the move allowed the Libs to get a big bigger and tougher without sacrificing too much offense.
“She made some really big plays for us, and she has that ability to facilitate,” said Brondello of Ionescu. “That’s a luxury that we have. I mean, [Vandersloot] does a good job too, but we got the luxury of putting Sabrina at the point guard as well to get us going.”
And it did get the Liberty going, if not in the way they expected. Brondello said prior to the game, that they needed to attack their injured and fatigued opponent with “pace, physicality, and toughness,” and it was those latter two qualities Thornton brought to the court in the fourth. She was at the center of a mini-kerfuffle in the fourth quarter, where she and Sug Sutton got double-T’d…
“I think it was great,” said Ionescu of the dust-up. “I mean, sometimes it’s nice to get fired up and after that, we were able to get a foul. So, I think it was great, and obviously the fans loved it.”
But no matter what the Liberty tried, they couldn’t re-capture the offensive magic of the first quarter. It took them nine minutes to score their first 33 points, and then 25 minutes to double their score.
Finally, they stumbled upon an answer, perhaps one that should’ve been obvious the whole time: Jonquel Jones.
Plagued by an inability to get to the rim, New York’s offense stationed their 6’6” center in the paint down the stretch, toning down their 5-out spacing principles just a bit, and it paid dividends. Jones shot four free-throws and had three made layups in the final frame to finish with 20-and-7 after laying low for most of the the prior three quarters…
“I think it was just that we had a different level of intentionality when we got down there,” said Jones of her late push. “You know, them giving me time to just post up and really seal. Ultimately, I think it was just a mindset shift from both like me and my my teammates.”
Betnijah Laney-Hamilton agreed with that, citing the difference as one the whole team felt had to happen, not really verbalized so much as “just kind of felt.”
“We knew that they were smaller, and that definitely was a strength and an advantage of ours. I’m just really happy with [Jones], making her presence big down there.”
It would turn into a true team win, and a gutty one at that. With Jones and Ionescu leading the way, Breanna Stewart contributed 13 points on just ten shots, while Vandersloot, re-inserted into the final minutes of the game, came up with a huge steal and game-tying free throw to tie the score at 74.
But it was Laney-Hamilton who did the unsavory work of guarding Kahleah Copper (7-of-19, 20 points) all games, and it was also the Liberty forward who was rewarded with two heroic moments to seal the game.
After pulling up for a jumper over Taurasi to extend the late lead to four, she briefly looked around in shock for a foul call that didn’t come, amid a fourth-quarter whistle that was all over the place, before getting back on defense to lock up Copper on the biggest possession of the game…
Laney-Hamilton led a Liberty defense that truly did meet the challenge on Wednesday night, even as their offense lagged behind.
Of the team’s sustained focus level, Brondello said it was “great.”
“I know I always say this, and you might think it’s tiresome, but don’t get too high or too low. It’s like, stay calm. What can we control that moment? And we had some bad patches, we took some — probably the shot profile at one stage was just ‘okay, we’re just going to shoot threes,’ we needed to get downhill a little bit. But we stayed composed and poised and together.”
And because the Liberty did all those things, they move to 5-2 on the season, clearly in the elite tier of the WNBA but not waltzing through the league, running through teams on a game-to-game basis. The league has noticeably improved from the 2023 season, whether it’s lesser teams like the Chicago Sky capable of exiting Barclays with a win, or good-if-not-great teams like the Mercury requiring 40 full minutes of execution.
The New York Liberty certainly must improve to reach their ultimate goal, and finding a way to integrate Jones further into the offense to remove some of their reliance on 3-point shooting is at the top of the priority list.
Wednesday’s win proved that they can make such adjustments mid-game, at least on a small scale, to beat teams whose talent level requires that type of execution. It was both an urgent reminder that the Liberty have a long way to go in 2024, and a comforting piece of evidence that they’ll still win a lot of games on their path to the playoffs.
Final score: New York Liberty 81, Phoenix Mercury 78
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Joe and Clara Wu Tsai’s other team made their presence felt once again in Barclays Center, as members of the Brooklyn Nets came out to support their sister squad. Mikal Bridges and Sabrina Ionescu — noted buddies — chatted post-game, and Breanna Stewart met three members of Brooklyn’s incoming coaching staff…
So, about how the WNBA is better? The Washington Mystics are coming to town next, and after another loss on Wednesday night, they’re 0-7 to start the season. #WasteAwayForPaige
Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET on Friday night.
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