The New York Liberty Have a WNBA Finals Problem

In a game that felt more like an entire series, the Liberty watched what looked like their coronation turn into a prizefight thanks to a tough and aggressive Lynx team.

After an impressive semifinals showing against the Aces, Ionescu came up short for the Liberty in Game 1 of the Finals. / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

Next year, the WNBA will expand its Finals from best-of-five to best-of-seven, which seemed like a big deal until the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty played seven Finals games in one night. By the time Thursday’s tussle finally ended, it was a nonsensical riddle with an inexplicable answer.

Q. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if Peter Piper ate a Russian novel while crossing the International Date Line?

A. The Lynx win, 95–93, in overtime.

How this happened will be up to future generations to figure out. We simply do not understand the universe well enough yet to explain how the Liberty could dominate the first quarter, blow most of their 18-point lead, build it back up to 15 points with less than five minutes left, blow it again, give up a four-point play to fall behind with five seconds left, force overtime, fall behind by four with less than a minute left, somehow tie it again, and then—in a moment that defied every possible ounce of basketball logic—end up with their best player, future Hall of Famer Breanna Stewart, driving into a wide-open lane for a game-tying layup … 

… which she missed.

“I had a great look at the end and I didn’t make it,” Stewart said. “But this is a series. We wanted to really win, obviously, for home court. But the beauty is, we have another game on Sunday, and we’ll be ready.”

Maybe they’ll be ready when it starts. But how about when it finishes? One fact of sports life is that some losses are harder to get over than others. Sometimes you can flush the result and move on, and sometimes you have to, um, sit there for a while. 

As of, oh, 9:45 p.m. ET on Thursday night, WNBA teams were 0–183 when they trailed by at least 15 points with less than five minutes left in a playoff game.

They are now 1–183.

“Obviously,” Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve deadpanned, “we finish games better when we’re down.”

For the Liberty, Game 1 will leave a mark, and I suspect the mark will look like if you asked the tattoo artist to draw a cobra and then, when she is halfway through, change your mind and ask for Dora the Explorer. They can say this was a wild game. True. They can say some of the damage was self-inflicted. Also, true. They can say they are the best team in the league. Probably true as well.

But the Liberty have a full-fledged and undeniable Finals problem, the kind that threatens to swallow their season and alter the arcs of their careers. In last year’s Finals loss to the Aces, Sabrina Ionescu shot just 32% from the field and Stewart, fresh off an MVP award, shot 36% and was completely outplayed by Vegas star A’ja Wilson.

Surely, the thinking went, Ionescu and Stewart could not shoot that poorly against the Lynx. And they didn’t.

They were worse.

Stewart missed a go-ahead free throw at the end of regulation and a lay-up to tie the game in overtime on Thursday. / Wendell Cruz-Imagn Images

Ionescu shot 8-for-26. Stewart shot 6-for-21. In the most critical moments of the game, they played disastrously. In the final five minutes of regulation, Ionescu missed both of her shots, had two turnovers, and committed perhaps the worst foul in basketball: fouling a three-point shooter (Courtney Williams) with five seconds left in a three-point game, without impeding the shot at all. Williams drained the shot and the free throw.

Stewart, a career 84% free throw shooter, had a chance to win the game at the free throw line at the end. She made the first but missed the second. In the final 10 minutes of the game—starting when the Liberty had that 15-point lead—Stewart scored one point, committed two turnovers, and missed four shots, including that easy one at the end.

Stewart is a two-time champion and two-time Finals MVP. Ionescu is a really good player who was terrific in the semifinal against the Aces. Maybe in a week, they’ll look back at this game and laugh. Right now, they’re a long way from laughing.

The Lynx pulled this out, in part, because they were everything that the Liberty were not. Minnesota star Napheesa Collier had minimal offensive impact in the first quarter, but she kept defending, making hustle plays, and most importantly, she always looked like she was thinking about the play instead of the stakes.

Collier said when the Lynx were down, they talked about “getting three stops in a row, chipping at it a little bit at a time, not thinking about the point difference.” Reeve said: “I think it defines our team. You have to be mentally tough, resilient. You have to give each other confidence. We were that team.”

The Liberty took 90 shots. New York’s Jonquel Jones made nine of 14. The rest of her team made 25 of 76. Sandy Brondello diagnosed her team’s meltdown with what seems like coachspeak at first but is actually quite revealing:

“They took us out of what we wanted to run. They were blowing up stuff. We couldn’t get clear passes … We’re slowing our speed, [our] execution speed, and it was making it easier for them.”

In other words: The Lynx were tough and aggressive; the Liberty were rattled and tentative. After the first Lynx comeback, Brondello called timeout and had Stewart—not Ionescu—bring the ball up the floor. When that possession ended in a shot-clock violation, Brondello inserted 35-year-old Courtney Vandersloot, one of the great passers in league history, to get the offense flowing. Ionescu spent a lot of time playing off the ball, which should help her save energy and free her up to score. But Ionescu shot so poorly Thursday that she ended up hurting her team on both ends of the floor.

It was one game. Felt like seven. But it was just one. 

“We just take it on the chin, you know?” Stewart said.

For most of the first quarter Thursday, the Finals looked like a Liberty coronation. Now they feel like a prizefight. The Lynx won Round 1. Let’s see how tough that Liberty chin really is.