History Means Nothing to Liberty Rookie After Heartbreaker

Leonie Fiebich placed herself among WNBA legends with her scoring output buried by New York Liberty heartbreak.

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

BROOKLYN -- Before things went kaput for the New York Liberty in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, Leonie Fiebich put up a wunderbar performance in her championship debut.

With 17 points against the Minnesota Lynx at Barclays Center, Fiebich became just the fourth WNBA rookie to reach that landmark in the opening of a championship round on Thursday night.

With her tally, Fiebich joined fellow freshman Ariel Atkins from the 2018 Finals and Houston Comets champions Cynthia Cooper and Tina Thompson, who did in the single-game showdown against the Liberty in the debut edition in 1997. Fiebich built her haul with five three-pointers, setting an overall single-game Finals rookie held by fellow New Yorker Crystal Robinson.

Alas for Fiebich, history was buried by heartbreak, as she and the Liberty were on the wrong end of an instant classic: namely one where the visiting Lynx needed just a little more than five minutes to erase a late 15-point deficit en route to a 95-93 overtime victory that afforded them a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five championship set.

Fiebich was in no mood to discuss history in the aftermath.

Brandon Todd, NY Liberty

"Honestly, it's really hard for me to talk about my personal performance tonight, because we lost, and that's just a heartbreak," Fiebich bluntly declared. "So I don't know. It doesn't matter, what you do on the floor, as long as, we just lost."

The final score was a tough end to an otherwise sterling night for Fiebich: she was called out by name by WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert during the latter's annual state of the league/pre-Finals press conference as one of the main attractions of the anticipated championship match. Fiebich continues to stand as one of this postseason's most intriguing storylines after leaping into the starting five of a healthy Liberty lineup.

Fiebich lived up to her established stateside reputation, even in the somber postgame session, expressing disappointment that the Liberty continue to make similar mistakes against a familiar opponent. After Thursday, Minnesota is responsible for four of the 11 games the Liberty have lost in this calendar year.

"It's Minnesota, right? They play really good defense," Fiebich said. "They play for each other on the defensive end. They're hustling, they're scrambling, they're helping off of other players and I just think, you know you got to move them to one side, to a second side, and then on a third side, maybe you get an advantage that you really have to use, and we just didn't execute good enough."

It's hardly a surprise to see Fiebich act like a veteran considering that she's the holder of the last two MVP awards at Spain's highest level of women's play, making her a rookie in name only. She refused to divulge any postgame comments from Barclays Center's primary locker room and acknowledged her own defensive shortcomings amidst New York surrendering 59 points over the final 25 minutes of action.

"I think it's us against us, right? I mean, they're pressuring us and they're making things hard. They're physical, but it's nothing we haven't seen all season. We just need to adjust better," Fiebich said. "I don't know what we shot from the floor, but it was not good. We were not efficient in our shots and our decision-making in the end. I mean, we went into overtime and we didn't really execute anything. We had turnovers that led to easy points for them. So that's just not how you play in overtime."

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