Liberty get what they wanted with rematch against defending champion Aces
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu reacts with Breanna Stewart during the first half of a first-round WNBA basketball playoff game against the Atlanta Dream, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
This is it.
This is the moment the Liberty have been waiting for since the end of last season. This is their chance for payback, their chance to forget the sting of last year’s massive disappointment, their chance to move beyond the painful memory of seeing their archrivals celebrate winning a championship on the Liberty’s home floor.
The Liberty are going to meet the Las Vegas Aces in the playoffs again, albeit a round earlier than last year. With both teams having secured first-round sweeps Tuesday night, the top-seeded Liberty are preparing to host the fourth-seeded Aces Sunday in Game 1 of the best-of-five semifinals.
“We have some unfinished business,” Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu told the crowd at Barclays Center after scoring a franchise playoff record 36 points in the series-clinching win over the Atlanta Dream.
Yes, they do. And there’s no doubt they are going to have to play their best basketball to get past the two-time defending champions.
Despite an otherworldly season from A’ja Wilson, the Aces didn’t look like much of a contender at the beginning of the season as they dealt with injuries and other drama. The team hit a low point in June after a loss in Vegas dropped them to 6-6, equaling the number of losses they had the entire season the year before. Wilson promised that the team would get better and they did, winning nine of their final 10 games.
The Liberty, by contrast, were at the top of the league for a good chunk of the season but were not at their best down the stretch. Ionescu, in particular, struggled to knock down shots consistently after the Olympic break.
You wouldn’t have known that, however, from the performance she had Tuesday against the Dream. Ionescu’s 36 points were one short of her career high. Ionescu, who was 5-for-6 for 11 points in the third quarter, was so on fire during the period that when she took the ball out of bounds Spike Lee leapt up from his courtside seat and gave her a high-five.
“I felt like New York was just injected into my veins at that moment,” Ionescu said after the game. “I was like ‘We’re winning this.’ ”
Ionescu needs to take that kind of confidence into this series. Last year, the Aces guards attacked her relentlessly on both offense and defense. Ionescu, who made 44.8% of her threes and set a single-season league record with 128 makes from downtown last season, was held to 9.8 points on 31.6% shooting from beyond the arc in four playoff games against the Aces.
What’s more, the Aces guards seemed to take great delight in stealing the show and pointing out the Liberty’s deficiencies. After the win that clinched the title, Vegas guard Kelsey Plum said the Liberty had some great players but “they’re not a team.”
After having to play two strong fourth quarters to get out of the first round this year, Plum acknowledged that the Liberty are a much better team this season.
"New York is a lot better team than they were last year," Plum said. "They're bigger, they shoot the ball at a better clip. So credit to them . . . They kicked our butt all three times [this year]. This is a fresh start. But there's no secret they've taken care of business and they've done what they needed to do, and that's why they have the one seed. So it's an uphill battle."
Uphill battle? More like clash of equals. This is the star-studded matchup of two superteams that everyone wanted. The Aces have the best player in the league in Wilson, who was a unanimous Associated Press MVP selection this week. The Liberty have both two-time MVP Breanna Stewart and 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones.
They also have a history that goes way back as Aces coach Becky Hammon was once a star with the Liberty.
Hammon’s Liberty teams never won a title. Including last season, the Liberty have been to the finals five times but never won it all. This year, they have a very good chance of finally bringing a championship back to New York. But, before playing for one, they have to get through Las Vegas and put some ghosts to rest.
It’s the moment they have been waiting for all season.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.