The New York Liberty hosted the Connecticut Sun on Monday night, winning 81-79. Breanna Stewart returned from the knee injury that caused a month-long absence from the court. She led the winners in scoring with 19 points despite playing on a minutes restriction.
It was a potentially season-summarizing game for the WNBA’s defending champions. Even if the ride was bumpy, unsettling, and suspenseful, the Liberty won. Their record improved to 23-15, keeping them as the fifth seed in the rapidly approaching postseason.
Perhaps most importantly, they continued some potentially pivotal trends. New York advanced to a dominant 10-0 in games that Sabrina Ionescu, Jonquel Jones, and Stewart all closed. They also advanced to 33-0 in games where Jones gave them a double-double.
The Sun arrived in Brooklyn with a 9-27 record, tied with the Chicago Sky for the second-worst in the league. New York trounced Connecticut in the first quarter, but seemingly ran out of ammunition after their opening salvo.
The Liberty shot 2-13 in the second quarter, scoring 10 points. The final basket of the first half was an Aneesah Morrow layup that came after four offensive rebounds for Connecticut. Are 5th chance buckets tracked?
The game remained tense through its end. The Liberty got out to a nine-point lead with 90 seconds left, but the Sun shined enough in crunch time to come within two with just seconds to go.
Connecticut gambled by not fouling, instead forcing the Liberty to turn the ball over during their final possession. The house usually wins that bet; the home team in Brooklyn did not on Monday. Stewart picked up her dribble with eight seconds left and passed the ball directly to Leïla Lacan, the game's leading scorer.
Both Ionescu and Kennedy Burke met the 21-year-old Lacan at the other end of the court. The two simultaneously blocked the game-winning layup. Ionescu was credited with the play, leaving Burke to tell reporters postgame that her teammate might owe her “a bag of hot fries or some ice cream.”
The Liberty remain undefeated when Ionescu, Stewart, Jones close
Ionescu, Stewart, and Jones spent last October winning the championship. Especially with Stewart back in the lineup, time is dwindling to gear up for another postseason run.
Just before Stewart missed 13 games, a sprained ankle held Jones out for a month. Ionescu joked with reporters postgame on Monday that her teammates have “been leaving her” all season, putting a lighter spin on troubles that have consistently interrupted New York's chances to build momentum.
Jones recorded her 101st career double-double in the win, finishing with 18 points and 11 rebounds. She has the eighth most double-doubles in WNBA history; Alyssa Thomas is ahead of her by just one. Jones kept it cool postgame when asked about the statistical support of her impact.
“Obviously, our team- we win when I have a double-double,” Jones said. “Just watching some of the other games, I think, it's just a point of emphasis to be a little bit more aggressive getting to the rebounds, just taking advantage of the fact that when shots are going up, teams are turning their heads.”
Jones didn't seem willing to rest her laurels on the wins in the books, though, with her focus being on how the team can improve in future outings.
“We got to a better job of being able to get offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, close possessions out,” the forward remarked.
Jones' double-doubles and the success they bring was not all, however, as the Liberty advanced to 10-0 in games that all three franchise cornerstones closed out. That is certainly something to build on. It does not guarantee a similar winning percentage in the playoffs. It does give credence to the now-cliché wisdom that how teams finish is more important than how they start.
For the Liberty, that adage has become a maxim of sorts. Their chances at repeating as champions hinge on finishing as a different team than who they've been thus far. Those changes can come in the form of various improvements, with the rotation's health serving as one.
Between the baselines, however, games like this narrow two-point victory are rough. They reinforce concerns that key changes may not arrive quickly enough. The defending champs cannot forget that the Sun bet in crunch-time that they were more likely to fail to get a shot up than to miss free throws. It should fuel them.
The Liberty have shown that they have what it takes to hunker down and go all the way in October. Every team that couldn't stop them last season, or teams that didn't yet exist, will relish the chance to end their bid at a repeat. New York needs to relish their chance to crush dreams.
