Liberty vs. Aces Game 1: Three takeaways

Here are three takeaways from the Liberty’s 87-77 win over Las Vegas in Game 1 of the best-of-five WNBA semifinals Sunday at Barclays Center:

1. Breanna Stewart goes off

Breanna Stewart won the league’s 2023 MVP award for her regular-season brilliance. But regrets from the postseason? There were a few.

She really regretted passing up the last shot against the Aces in Game 4 of the Finals at Barclays. The Liberty fell, 70-69. And their shot at their first championship had evaporated again.

Stewart averaged 18.4 points across the 10 playoff games last year, down from 23 in the regular season. She shot just 35.8%, including 19.6% from beyond the arc. She went 3-for-17 overall and was limited to 10 points in the finale.

So Las Vegas is facing a very motivated player.

This 6-4 forward looked like her all-time great self in Game 1.

By halftime, Stewart was 8-for-10 from the floor and totaled 20 points. She finished with 34, having gone 12-for-19, including 2-for-4 on threes, and 8-for-9 from the line.

In an on-court postgame interview that was piped to the crowd, she spoke about having “a lot to make up for for last year.”

Later, in the interview room, Stewart said, “I think I’ve just kind of grown from it. I unfortunately had a lot of time to reflect upon it.”

2. Containing A'ja Wilson

A’ja Wilson just claimed her third MVP award. The 6-4 forward/center averaged a WNBA-record 26.9 points and grabbed 11.9 rebounds.

But the Liberty primarily put Jonquel Jones on her in Game 1 and provided help to their 6-6 center, and Wilson was “held” to 21 points and only had six rebounds, matching her season low.

“She still ended up with 21, but overall we did a good job on her,” Liberty coach Sandy Brondello said. “She had to work for all those points that she got. When you’ve got JJ and Stewie out there and we can just throw her different looks, I think that just made her a little bit uncomfortable. Let’s hope we can slow her down [Tuesday night] in Game 2 as well.”

Aces coach Becky Hammon has an idea how to fix this.

“The whole team was pretty much committed to taking away A’ja,” Hammon said. “She had two or three people on her all night. And so we’ve got to do a better job of getting her in space but also giving her outlets.”

3. Home-court advantage

The Liberty lost by 17 in Game 1 at Vegas last year. But they have the home-court advantage this time, and they feel their crowd makes a loud difference.

As Sabrina Ionescu put it, “It feels like you can almost achieve anything in this building.”