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Good teams will often fall back on the cliché of finding a way to win when things get tough. The New York Liberty had no choice but to figure it out on Thursday night against the Golden State Valkyries.
Two nights after New York blew out the expansion club by 28 points, neither team led by more than six the entire way as the Liberty held on, 82-77. Turnovers plagued the Liberty in the first half and the bench contributed little on a night in which New York was missing two key rotation players.
Nyara Sabally missed her third game in a row with a right knee injury and Jonquel Jones joined her on the sideline Thursday with a hamstring ailment. That left New York without its two main post threats.
On offense, that meant three things. For one, the Liberty had to shoot and make a lot of threes to survive.
Sabrina Ionescu and Kennedy Burke took care of that first part. Ionescu matched a career high for made threes in a half by making five in the first 20 minutes.
“[It’s] understanding ways that I'm going to get open,” Ionescu said. “Most of the time it’s trying to shoot them in transition when defenses aren't set, coming off screens and just continuing to find ways to get open.”
Burke, meanwhile, came off the bench to make three of her four attempts. She is now 10-15 on the season.
“I'm a shooter because I've been practicing my whole life,” said Burke, who came into the season a 31 percent career three-point shooter. “The fact that I'm able to improve that — hopefully it stays consistent throughout the season — but knowing that my teammates are looking for me when I'm open and just me shooting with confidence.”
The Liberty’s shortened roster also meant they had to rely on Breanna Stewart even more. On Thursday, that manifested itself in an absurd 16 fouls drawn and 15-19 shooting from the line in 36 minutes.
“She took it on herself, really,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “She must be really gassed.”
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Third, it meant New York couldn’t do quite as much in the pick-and-roll. As Brondello said, that prevented the Liberty from getting into the paint “at all” until Stewart got going in the second half. The former MVP took 16 of her 19 free throws in the last two quarters.
The Liberty are still looking for answers to their rebounding woes
There was never a scenario where the Liberty would make great gains on the glass in a game without their two main post players. But the Valkyries out-rebounded New York 41-36, dropping the reigning champs to a tie with the Connecticut Sun for the worst rebound percentage in the WNBA. They also rank last in offensive and defensive rebounding percentages.
“We're gonna have to find a solution for our rebounding woes,” Brondello said bluntly. “It wasn’t good and they were outmuscling us.”
Ionescu added that on Thursday specifically, the Liberty weren’t scoring — it was the first game of the season that they failed to reach 90 points. That meant Golden State was often in better position on the other end.
“We weren't scoring so they're able to set their offense, kind of come down and just pick us apart,” she explained.
The Liberty are in the midst of a brutal four-game stretch over six days. They’ll visit the Washington Mystics on Friday night. Washington is 3-3 but ranks as the third-best rebounding team in the WNBA.
