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The final play of the New York Liberty’s 101-99 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks on Saturday doesn’t mean much. Rikea Jackson hit a circus shot at the buzzer to win, snapping New York’s five-game winning streak.
The problem is how they got there.
Breaanna Stewart played only three minutes before leaving the game with a lower leg injury. She did not return and the Liberty didn’t have an update on her status after the game. If she’s okay and able to go on Monday against the Dallas Wings, then the loss is a blip on the radar.
If she’s out for any extending period of time, the team needs to figure out its rotations without her.
Offensively, the Liberty were fine, thanks in part to Sabrina Ionescu scoring 30 points one night after she dropped 29 on the Phoenix Mercury. Natasha Cloud also scored 22 to go with nine assists. They even made do without three-point extraordinaire Kennedy Burke, who missed most of the game with cramping.
Defensively, it was a different story. New York simply couldn’t get stops when it needed to, letting the Sparks get into the lane at will.
“Our pick-and-roll defense wasn’t great,” Marine Johannès said. “We tried to play more in the paint because in the first half we had [allowed] a lot of three-point shots, but after, they scored everything in the paint.”
At least part of that was due to Stewart and Burke not playing, forcing the Liberty to use lineups they had not before. The 6’2 Stephanie Talbot, three games into her Liberty career, played 17 minutes as head coach Sandy Brondello tried to get more size on the court to deal with Jackson.
Jackson scored 17 in the first quarter as the Sparks jumped out to a 15-point lead.
“Rickea was killing us with her size,” Brondello said. “[Leonie Fiebich] was on [her] the play before and still scored over her as well and that's one of our best defenders.”
But Brondello felt she didn’t have a choice.
“She's hardly practiced, but they had [Rae] Burrell or Jackson and the big three, and they're hitting the boards, and we went with the size,” she said. “Just having a big body to play defense.”
A player with Stewart’s length and basketball IQ can also make up for defensive lapses as she can help clog the lane with Jonquel Jones and crash the glass. If she’s not ready for Monday, the Liberty will have to fine-tune their communication and chemistry to cut down on the miscues.
The Liberty felt the effects of a back-to-back
There was another factor at play. The Liberty were coming off a game the night before, and Fiebich admitted that in the second half, the team was a step slow defensively.
“I feel like today you could see that we were almost there but not really,” she said. “And then they got an easy shot and then the dump down to the post, where normally we're there and today we're just a second too late.”
Jones agreed that the back-to-back had an effect in the second half. Unfortunately for the Liberty, the game against the Wings begins a four-game road swing where they play every other day.
As New York prepares to weather this stretch, Jones stressed the importance of treatment and recovery, knowing opponents aren’t going to “take it easy” on them.
“Teams have our games marked off on their calendars and they're ready to play against us,” she said. “So we just have to come up with that mindset and just understand that it's a next woman up mentality.”
