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The past two weeks of New York Liberty basketball have played out like a frustrating broken record.
Head coach Sandy Brondello has criticized the team’s energy and players have bemoaned the slow starts. And they have kept happening. Their latest misstep was a 106-91 loss on the road to the Phoenix Mercury — their second loss to Nate Tibbetts’ group in just over a week.
“We gave up 106. We gave up 61 at halftime. I’ve never been part of a game ever that had that,” Brondello said. “We had no fight. I think we went away with what our strength is. Our strength is we’re doing things together. It’s disappointing. “
Yes, the team is without Leonie Fiebich and Jonquel Jones — two starters who will make this team look drastically different when they return. But as Brondello said, the players who are missing do not have an impact on the effort of the players on the court.
“I’m not making excuses,” she said. “I don’t care who’s not with us. I don’t care. They’re not going to save us here. What we’ve got, this is it. We’ve got to find a way to dig deeper. We just have to play tougher. If you don’t bring effort, you’re going to be exploited and this is a team that can shoot the crap out of it.”
They’re strong words from a head coach who rarely lays into her players publicly. As she was criticizing her team, she turned to point guard Natasha Cloud, seated beside her.
“I’m not speaking out of line here,” she said, as Cloud appeared to agree. “These players are disappointed and the only way we can go forward is what we do now. We can’t change this result but we gotta be better if we want to be one of the best teams.”
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Natasha Cloud hopes Liberty can find solution to slow starts
Cloud had her first double-digit scoring game in over a month, scoring 14 points with seven assists for the Liberty in the loss. But she was frustrated as well with her team, which has now lost four out of six games after a 9-0 start.
“Something we have to figure out in our locker room is how to start games better,” she said. “We put ourselves in a little bit of a hole there. We had fight in the second half but when you dig yourself that big of a hole, it’s hard to come back against a good team like this.”
The numbers don’t lie. The Mercury scored 28 points in the first quarter, and as Cloud said, when the Liberty aren’t getting stops, it doesn’t matter how effective their offense is.
“We can’t keep starting games slow because we have it in us,” she said. “If we can give it in spurts, we can give it for the totality of the game.”
The Liberty’s rocky road trip comes to an end Sunday afternoon in Atlanta against the Dream. New York overcame a 17-point deficit to beat them at home last week, but the Dream are coming off a couple losses themselves and are sure to be hungry. It’ll take a complete game to right the ship.
