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When Barclays Center is full, the New York Liberty have as strong a home-court advantage as exists in the WNBA. The fans are as passionate as they come — deafening in volume and relentless in spirit.
Leaving the arena after Game 1 of the 2024 WNBA Finals, however, it wasn’t the crowd that was deafening. It was the silence.
17,732 fans filtered out, heads down. In a crowded stairwell, one man in a seafoam green jersey tried to cheer everyone up.
“The Yankees won!” he yelled, pumping his fist at New York’s American League club punching its ticket to the American League Championship Series. No one reacted. Two rows off the court, behind one of the baskets, a child of maybe six years old was sobbing. To her left, two more fans sat in dejected silence, still processing what they had just seen. An usher had to politely tell them to take their moping outside the arena.
What the packed house in Brooklyn saw was a meltdown of epic proportions from the Liberty. It wasn’t that they lost, 95-93, in overtime to the Minnesota Lynx, moving them to 0-6 all-time in the first game of the Finals. It was how it happened.
The Liberty raced out to an 18-point lead, scoring 32 in the first quarter. The ball movement was crisp, the rebounding efficient and the shooting pure. Jonquel Jones, so often a barometer of the team’s success, drew three and-ones in the first half.
Slowly, it all fell apart. The offense stalled, leading to shot clock violations, other careless turnovers or just bad shots. Sabrina Ionescu, who had an MVP-level semifinal Game 4 against the Las Vegas Aces, began reverting to the old habits that led to her struggles at the end of the season. Breanna Stewart endured one of the worst shooting games she will ever have (6-21 FG).
“I thought we went away from our principles of play,” head coach Sandy Brondello said. “We had a great first quarter and [the Lynx] lifted up the energy. They outhustled us. I think we forced some of the action. We weren’t moving it good enough. We couldn’t get downhill as much.”
Still, the Liberty almost got away with it all. After the Lynx cut their deficit to four points at 68-64 with 8:32 to go, New York responded with a 13-2 run to go up by 15 with just over five minutes remaining.
Somehow, it came apart again. At first, it was just some timely threes from the Lynx paired with good defense. Then came the last 10 seconds of regulation and overtime — one of the craziest phases of a game in WNBA history. With the Liberty up three, Courtney Williams tied the game with a three with 5.1 seconds left. Ionescu fouled her and Williams sank the free throw to give the Lynx their first lead of the game.
The Liberty almost got away with it again. Inbounding the ball on their side of the court, the Liberty lost it out of bounds, though the ball appeared to go off of Napheesa Collier’s foot. Rather than review the play, the officials called a jump ball. Williams committed a jump ball violation, giving the Liberty yet another chance. Collier denied Stewart at the rim with a second to go, sending the ball out of bounds.
They almost got away with it again. Stewart caught the inbounds pass and this time drew a foul, needing to make two free throws to win the game, or one to send it to overtime. She only made one.
Then, the Liberty didn’t score for the first 3:19 of overtime.
They almost got away with it again, as the Lynx built only a four-point lead in that time. After the teams traded baskets, Ionescu hit a floater with 32 seconds left in overtime to draw within two. Jones came up with a steal one second later and scored to tie it again.
Collier, however, would not be denied, hitting a 12-footer with eight seconds to go, putting Minnesota up two.
They almost got away with it again. Stewart had a clear look at the basket as time ticked down but missed a layup as time expired. The Lynx escaped to take a 1-0 series lead.
The Liberty played not to lose vs. Lynx
It would be easy to chalk up the Liberty’s play in the middle quarters to a lack of urgency. Ionescu didn’t see it that way.
“We can’t play not to lose,” she said. “We were up a lot and I think we were looking at the clock, and it seemed that we kind of took our foot off the gas a little bit and it ended up biting us in the butt there late.”
That’s the tricky thing about playing with a lead. Bleeding the clock means the opponent has less time to come back, but it also means the winning team is no longer running the very offense that built them the lead in the first place.
And offensively, the Liberty in the second and third quarters looked nothing like the team that threw the first punch, storming out to a double-digit lead.
“We got some shot clock violations, just waiting, playing a little bit passive, and I think you were able to see — we were just playing outside the three-point line instead of getting into the paint and driving and kicking,” Ionescu added. “I think partially that had to do with just understanding time and score, but we’ve got to play to win the game.”
New York must find a way to quickly move past the loss
There’s no getting around the feeling of dejection that wafted out of the Liberty locker room after the game. It’s hard to blame them, either. Losing any WNBA Finals game is rough, let alone when you cough one up in historic fashion — the Liberty became the first team in playoff history to lose a game after leading by 15-plus in the final five minutes of regulation (previously, teams were 183-0 in such situations).
Then there’s the reality. This is a best-of-five series, meaning the Liberty aren’t dead yet. Turning around and playing a game Sunday afternoon may seem like a Herculean task, but if they want to keep their title hopes alive, that’s what they’ll have to do.
“We're fully aware of the situation and know and believe in those in that locker room and think that we still have enough,” Courtney Vandersloot said. “I mean, this series isn't over, it's not. Tonight was hard, and we'll take it, because this isn't our first time.”
Vandersloot has been in the league since 2011, making five All-Star teams and winning a championship along the way. As a leader in the locker room, she took it upon herself to address her teammates.
“I told them, ‘Listen, we can have tonight and we can feel bad about this,’” she said. “’But when you leave this building, you have to think about moving on and being able to put this behind us because we can't just dwell on this loss. we still have games ahead of us and we still have a great opportunity.’”
