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As the New York Liberty chase the franchise's first WNBA Championship in 2024, head coach Sandy Brondello continues to make history of her own. With Wednesday's win in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals against the Minnesota Lynx, Brondello moved into second place on the WNBA's all-time playoff wins list.
Ironically, the only coach that Brondello is still chasing on the list is the opposing coach in these finals, Cheryl Reeve. Reeve still has a healthy lead over the Liberty coach with 48 wins, so she's safe until at least the end of the 2025 postseason.
Brondello got the last laugh over Reeve in dramatic fashion on Wednesday, as Sabrina Ionescu's game-winner from way downtown completed a 15-point New York comeback to give the Liberty a 2-1 series lead. They will have two chances to bring home the first title in franchise history, starting with Game 4 on Friday night in Minnesota.
Brondello knows a thing or two about winning a championship as a head coach. She led the Phoenix Mercury to the mountaintop in 2014, and went back to the finals last season with the Liberty before losing in four games to the Las Vegas Aces. Reeve has plenty of championship pedigree of her own, winning four WNBA Championships with the Lynx from 2011-17, so this finals pits two of the game's legendary coaches against each other.
Where Liberty must thrive in order to close out Lynx
The Liberty have been in a dogfight night in and night out with the Lynx in these WNBA Finals, and they have had to find advantages in the margins to pull off a pair of scrappy wins in games 2 and 3. To get one more in either Game 4 or Game 5, New York must continue to be disciplined and execute at a high level.
The main key for the Liberty is for their stars to be patient on offense and not force the issue. Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu have fluctuated in and out of controlled decision making and pressing throughout this series as the elite Minnesota defense has made things challenging for them. Stewart is spending almost all of her time being guarded by WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Napheesa Collier, and Ionescu is facing heavy ball pressure from the Minnesota guards whenever she has the ball.
When they have forced things, such as at the end of Game 1 or for stretches in the first half of Game 3, the results have been ugly. However, as the series has gone along, the Liberty stars are getting more comfortable picking their spots in the flow of the offense, and the unit has been successful as a result.
Defensively, the Liberty have done a good job making Collier work for her buckets, and they need to keep that up. New York has the bodies to make it tough on the Lynx superstar, and while they haven't been able to shut her down, Collier has scored 59 points in three games, which is slightly below her regular season average. You're never going to completely stop someone as good as Collier is, but if the Liberty can keep her in that 20-point range and prevent her from dominating, then they have a great chance of closing things out.
