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You didn’t have to watch last year’s WNBA Playoffs to know the New York Liberty had unfinished business with A’ja Wilson and the Las Vegas Aces.
It was apparent from the start in Game 1 of their semifinals series, which the Liberty won, 87-77, at Barclays Center to take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series.
Breanna Stewart was on a mission, scoring 20 in the first half and approaching the game with a laser-focus. Sabrina Ionescu picked it up in the second half and scored 21 total, eclipsing the 20-point mark in consecutive playoff games for the first time in her career.
Throughout, however, the Liberty played one of their best defensive games of the season. In doing so, they showed how dominant they can be.
“We’re playing to our scouting report really well,” Stewart said after the game. “Knowing where A’ja is, because the talent that she is, and making sure when we send two to the ball, we have help on the backside. If they’re going to take a three, it’s going to be a contested one. Everything we want to be contested. And one shot and out.”
That’s what happened. Wilson still had 21 points — she’s the 2024 MVP, after all — but matched a season low with six rebounds. The Aces shot 43% as a team but had just two offensive rebounds all game.
“I thought we did a good job on her,” head coach Sandy Brondello said. “She had to work for all those points and when you’ve got [Jonquel Jones] and Stewie out there, you just throw a few different looks at her and make her uncomfortable.”
And as Stewart said, the Liberty were able to do that without sacrificing their defense on the perimeter. New York frustrated the Aces in the half-court, forcing them to work the shot clock down and often take a bad or contested shot.
While Stewart and Jones handled Wilson, Ionescu took on Jackie Young. Young, like Wilson, still got her buckets, finishing with 17, but it came on 6-16 shooting.
“I felt really solid defensively, understanding ways I can get in passing lanes, and like Stewie said, just continuing to play to our scout,” Ionescu said. “I’m going to continue to do what I can to try and slow Jackie down, obviously she’s a great player for them.”
The Liberty lived up to the old cliché of defense translating into offense. They outscored the Aces 16-6 on fast-break points, which frustrated Aces coach Becky Hammon.
“We lost all the hustle points. You can’t suck on the offensive boards and not get back in transition defense,” she said. “You either get on the offensive glass or you get back in transition and we didn’t do either.”
The Liberty wore the Aces down on both ends
Hammon’s frustration went beyond getting back on defense. She thought the Liberty were able to dictate the tempo entirely, getting into their offense quickly while forcing the Aces to play offense 24 seconds at a time.
“They picked us up full-court the whole game. That gets to be exhausting,” Hammon said. “There's a wear-down factor there, and I thought they did that.”
Ultimately, New York’s length frustrated Las Vegas more than anything.
“Their length bothered us. The ball stuck a little too much for me and then the whole team was pretty much committed to taking away A’ja,” Hammon said. “She had two or three people on her all night, and so we have to do a better job of getting her in space.”
Length has been the Liberty’s hallmark since the start of the playoffs when Brondello made the lineup switch, putting Leonie Fiebich in the starting five and letting Courtney Vandersloot come off the bench.
Fiebich was a knock-down three-point shooter for the Liberty in the second half of the season, but she has also become a nightmare on defense. Vandersloot recalled after the game the first time she saw Fiebich in practice having to switch from the guard she was defending onto a center.
“I was like, ‘oh, that’s not really a mismatch,’” Vandersloot said. “What a luxury that is to have her be able to guard the smallest girl on the floor, with speed, and then switch out on somebody.”
Solving the Liberty’s length, Hammon said, comes with spreading them out in the half-court.
“The ball has to move,” she emphasized. “If the ball doesn’t move and you grab it and you analyze, then their length becomes an issue again because everybody recovers.”
But while the Aces want to keep the ball moving on offense, they want to force the Liberty to slow it down. Hammon noted that the Liberty get into their offense faster than any team in the league and even delaying them by two or three seconds could make a difference.
She specifically called out Ionescu as particularly tough to defend.
“I think [Young] was just worn out,” Hammon said. “We put [Tiffany Hayes] on her for a while, threw [Kelsey Plum] on her, just giving her different looks to where she’s just working all the time.”
Hammon called it “exhausting” to defend Ionescu, and if the Aces are going to win this series, they’ll have to do it at least three more times. They’ll have about 48 hours to rest, with Game 2 set for Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. ET in Brooklyn.
