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There was never a scenario where Emma Meesseman wouldn't be a good fit with the New York Liberty. She’s too good and the Liberty have too much unselfish talent around her — even amid their recent spate of injuries.
But few could have predicted the transition would be this fast and this seamless.
Meesseman had another outstanding game on Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Sparks, scoring a team-high 24 points with nine rebounds, four assists and a block in the 105-97 win.
“Our approach is a little different and we pay more attention to detail so it makes it easier for me to read more what’s happening on the court,” Meesseman said of her new surroundings. “Hopefully, game by game, it’s going to be like that. We are still adjusting.”
Natasha Cloud, who played with Meesseman on the 2019 WNBA champion Washington Mystics, gushed about Meesseman last week, and the two don’t seem to have missed a beat in terms of chemistry.
“Emma is one of the best basketball players in the entire world, and I think what separates her is her IQ, how she sees the game from a big standpoint,” she said.
That’s been a common refrain among the Liberty players and coaches. To an outsider, it appeared her transition took all of one quarter in her first game against the Connecticut Sun.
And while she may not have known immediately every action the team runs, she always seems to know where to be and how to have an impact.
“She's very smart and she understands motion principles and how to get people open,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello added before noting the chemistry that Meesseman seems to have developed with New York’s starters. “It's nice to see all those, even though they haven't played together, just the chemistry growing.”
It’s tough to argue with the results. The Liberty are 4-1 since Meesseman joined the lineup, and while detractors may point out that none of those wins has come against a current playoff team, keep in mind that New York lost to the two cellar-dwellers, the Sun and Dallas Wings, right before her arrival.
Individually, her stats speak for themselves. She has scored 73 points on 51 percent shooting with 27 rebounds, 20 assists, six blocks and five steals. No player in league history has had a start like that to begin her tenure with a team, per SI’s Geoff Magliocchetti.
Liberty’s Sabrina Ionescu's chemistry with Emma Meesseman
Part of the reason Meesseman has been able to fit so seamlessly into the Liberty lineup is that she has played with Cloud and for Brondello.
But she has not played with Sabrina Ionescu, yet those two appear to be playing as well together as any set of longtime teammates.
“The core principles of both of our games are pretty similar and that's pretty fundamental,” Ionescu explained after a recent home game. “I just feel like we both read the defenses really well, and knowing what they're doing, where to go on the floor, continuing to build that chemistry.”
Ionescu and Meesseman have built that chemistry without the benefit of a practice as the compact WNBA schedule has mostly limited their strategy sessions to in-game and in the film room.
“We kind of just like a European style [of] basketball, and that's how I grew up playing and obviously she's played her entire career, and so I think it just helps,” Ionescu continued. “I know where she's going to be, where she likes the ball. We continue to talk through certain actions. How she likes to receive her passes in ways that we can continue to just build that chemistry.”
