Liberty Get Honest With Season's 4th Quarter Looming
The New York Liberty know that if moral victories counted, another parade through Lower Manhattan would already be on the calendar.
With its injury report frequently resembling a starting lineup for a postseason contender and the longest WNBA season packed into the confines of late summer, excuses have flown in front of the Liberty like the plethora of arms and towels that sway during the famed "Ellie Waves" at Barclays Center. Engaged in what has been a rollercoaster of a WNBA title defense, the seafoam savants have refused to take them.
“The effort point is a mindset. You have to come out with the right mindset and compete," head coach Sandy Brondello said. "No one feels sorry for us. We just got to hang in there. We got to hang in there. we still have enough that we can win games…we have to play to the best of our ability, and if we don't, we can lose to anyone and we've shown that.”
The Liberty's latest endeavor was a narrow, yet avoidable 83-77 defeat to the Las Vegas Aces on Wednesday night. Combined with events from abroad, namely the streaking Atlanta Dream's win in Seattle, the Liberty fellow to third place on the active WNBA leaderboard, one paced by the Minnesota Lynx, their victim in last year's victorious Finals run.
New York also continues to flirt with .500 during the latter stages of the season, as it has gone 12-12 since a 9-0 start. On paper, it's quick to blame the dwindling reserves: missing local franchise face Breanna Stewart speaks for itself but the team has also gone without depth stars Isabelle Harrison and Nyara Sabally. Another depth star, Kennedy Burke, returned after an eight-game absence on Wednesday in Vegas.
But the defeat in Sin City, coming less than 24 hours after a productive, historic evening in Los Angeles wrapped up, allowed the Liberty to once again deny the notion that injuries are the sole cause for their recent issues.
"It's just the discipline, attention to detail," newcomer Emma Meesseman said after a recent defeat. "No matter who we have on the court, no matter what level, players, [or] what league, it’s all about hustle. I don’t think you can practice that. So we just have to go out there and fight.”
To that point, the Liberty lamented a chance to make a statement against the Aces at Michelob Ultra Arena, one where they could've taken down a recurring rival despite their depleted state. New York led for a good bit of the game basking in the continued prowess of Meesseman, who has looked like a tenured seafoam veteran despite nary an official practice to her name.
Meesseman's 24-point, 10-rebound double-double, however, went by the wayside thanks to controllable factors that slipped through the Liberty's grip. New York allowed Vegas to sink only four of 16 tries from the field over the final 10 minutes but A'ja Wilson once again fulfilling the middle initial in MVP flipped the script.
Wilson pulled in five offensive boards in the period alone, erasing Liberty possessions while extending their own by getting to the foul line. The Aces tried 18 singles thanks to nine Liberty fouls, ones that New York took repsonsibility for rather than transferring the burden to officials.
What could've been a moral victory, one where the Aces needed a Wilson masterclass to survive a shorthanded, exhausted Liberty group, was instead a chance at self-reflection.
"We know we have all we need. That's something we can't control, who's in, who's out. That's never going to be kind of the excuse that we use," point guard Sabrina Ionescu said. "There's really no excuse for kind of being able to think like, oh, if we had, this player, it wouldn't have looked like that. It's more, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot, and it comes back and bites you."
"I think that's something we have to understand as a team, just how valuable all these games are. I am proud of the way that we fought off a back to back and didn't make any excuses. [But] this one sucks because it was something that we could we could have controlled."
No one in New York has hung their head, as the group is enthused not only by the returns of familiar faces, but the fact there's plenty of basketball left on the trail. Their next opportunity lands on Saturday afternoon when they face the Lynx in another WNBA Finals rematch (2 p.m. ET, CBS).
Even with the WNBA engaged in the longest season of its history (playing a record 44 games this year), catching the Lynx (27-5) for the regular season title may be a metropolitan pipe dream at the season presses.
The extended schedule, meant to be a sign of the success that the champion Liberty and their contemporaries like Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark, and Angel Reese have build, has played with the team's resolve: fourteen games were pakced into August's first 30 days.
Funnily enough, that schedule could prove to be the Liberty's ultimate salvation: a longer schedule, particularly one rife with high-profile competition, provides perhaps the finest brand of research and development.
Meesseman's transition has been seamless and fellow in-season import Stephanie Talbot has also had a role to play with all the post injuries. But the addition of friendly faces will also require some time to fully make things right: time will tell when Harrison and Sabally, both of whom have had their share of recent medical woes, are ready to make to make it back but Stewart set a "non-negotiable" goal of returning by her 31st birthday on Aug. 27.
It's a challenge that the Liberty are once again more than willing to take on, and one they believe they're fully armed for, no matter who's on the available ledger.
"It gives everyone, certainly an understanding that they're going to go in and need to make an impact," Ionescu said of the expanded schedule. "I'd say a lot of players have probably gotten a lot more of an opportunity with the injuries that we've had this year to come out and play big minutes and contribute in helping us accomplish what it is we want to accomplish. That's important on a championship team, to understand every single role, [to know] every single person is valuable."
"We want to continue to kind of pour in and empower everyone that steps foot out there and understanding their piece of the puzzle," Ionescu continued. "There is this hope of, little by little, we're going to continue to add the pieces that make this team whole, and hopefully just peak at the right time."
Geoff Magliocchetti is a veteran sportswriter who contributes to a variety of sites on the "On SI" network. In addition to the Yankees/Mets, Geoff also covers the New York Knicks, New York Liberty, and New York Giants and has previously written about the New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Staten Island Yankees, and NASCAR.