Coaches usually hate the tired cliché about how teams on a winning streak need to lose a game so they could learn from it. That’s why it was strange to hear head coach Sandy Brondello bring it up, unprompted, after the New York Liberty lost 90-81 on Thursday night to the Chicago Sky.
It was the first loss of the season for the Liberty after opening with four straight wins. Their transition defense struggled in the first half, the offense struggled for long stretches from the field and the free throw line, and the Sky outscored them by 10 in the paint. Throw in what the Brooklyn crowd felt was an uneven whistle, and it’s a wonder that the Liberty were even in position to win the game in the fourth quarter.
“We were not very good and we didn't have the mindset. I said they were a tough matchup for us because of what they do,” Brondello said. “Sometimes you need a loss and a kick in the butt to face adversity to see how you respond. We're not where we need to be.”
The Sky dictated the game on both ends on Thursday. They sped the Liberty up and forced a veteran team to make rushed decisions on offense.
“To be honest, I think we were just settling,” Sabrina Ionescu said. “I think we all just came down and didn’t take our best shot. Offensively we were rushed, we were taking the first available shot instead of our best shot.”
That was a problem in previous games as well. Brondello said after the Liberty beat the Storm on Monday that Seattle was able to limit them offensively in the second quarter because they became “too individual,” looking to make the big play on their first action, even when it wasn’t there.
They couldn’t escape that mentality three days later, and it was one of the first problems Brondello called out.
“I thought we took bad shots and we didn’t execute our way,” she said. “That’s a little bit of mindset. How do we prepare for a game mentally?”
Jonquel Jones Struggles
The Liberty had much less room for error than usual. Jonquel Jones came into the game averaging almost 10 rebounds per game, but foul trouble limited her to 20 largely unproductive minutes. The Liberty were outscored 17-12 on second-chance opportunities and they gave up 46 points in the paint without the former MVP there to help limit the Sky and clean up mistakes.
Courtney Vandersloot talked about Jones’ impact on the game when she’s able to play freely, which she was not able to do on Thursday.
“I think the biggest thing was just her defensively, missing our rim protector,” she said. “Also, she has to play a little hesitant when she comes back because she doesn’t want to be in foul trouble. We missed that tonight. It accounts for a lot of their points in the paint.”
Nyara Sabally, to her credit, had her best game of the season off the bench to soften the blow. She had 8 points on 4-6 shooting and six rebounds. At +13 she was the only Liberty player with a positive +/- in the game.
On the other end, Angel Reese finished with 13 points and nine rebounds, but she had to work for her offense, shooting 3-10 from the field and 7-9 from the line.
Preaching Patience
It’s not a stretch to say the Liberty have the most lethal offense in the WNBA, led by three MVP candidates in Breanna Stewart, Ionescu, and Jones, and with a veteran point guard in Vandersloot and a sharp-shooter in Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. But even a veteran team needs to be reminded that the more the ball moves, the more successful they become.
“The coaches gave us a stat that’s like, when we get the ball from the first side to the second side to the third side, the third side is when we really convert the best,” Stewart said. “And it's hard when another team is scoring on you because you want to make something happen so quickly.”
It’s something Sabally saw and called out — the Liberty played in a way that was reactive to what a more athletic Sky team threw at them.
“We just need to settle down and play our brand of basketball, which today, I feel like we didn't,” she said. “You just need to lock in, settle down, whether it's the team captain saying something, the coaches saying something, somebody just has to say something .”
The theme so far this year for the Liberty has been quick turnarounds, and they have another one coming up. They’ll charter to Minnesota tomorrow and face the Lynx on Saturday afternoon.
“It was a bad night at the office. The sun comes up tomorrow,” Brondello said.
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