Liberty Forward Activated From Injury List
KB will be available for the New York Liberty in LA.
Dealing with a packed injury report, the Liberty upgraded Kennedy Burke (calf) to available for Tuesday night's game against the Los Angeles Sparks (10 p.m. ET, My9/NBA TV).
Burke was one of four New Yorkers originally ruled out but her participation gives the Liberty nine available women for the first stanza of a three-game road trip. Isabelle Harrison (concussion), Nyara Sabally (knee), and Breanna Stewart (knee) all remain sidelined in what's also the first portion of a back-to-back which immediately goes to Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Burke has not played since the first half of the prior interconference tilt with the Sparks on July 26, the same game that saw them lose Stewart to a bone bruise in the opening period.
Working through her second season in Brooklyn after coming over from overseas work, Burke was averaging a career-best 8.4 points prior to her medically-induced departure and was the WNBA's official leader in three-point success rate at 47.5 percent. The Liberty is 8-2 when Burke reaches at least 10 points and a perfect 6-0 when she successfully sinks at least three triples.
It probably wouldn't be wise to envision Burke getting her usual workload at Cyrpto.com Arena on Tuesday night, though they'll at least be able to work with at least something resembling their usual contingent. Fielding a full lineup has been a challenge for the defending champion Liberty: only Marine Johannes has played all 31 games for the Liberty this season, as all others have missed at least one showing due to injury.
The contributing triumvirate of Burke, Sabally, and Stewart has missed of the last seven games, with New York amassing a 3-4 record in that span, the latest addition being an 83-71 defeat to the Minnesota Lynx on Sunday afternoon. Harrison, who played minimally in the second half of Sunday's loss despite a strong nine-point, five-rebound showing off the bench, was an addition on the pregame report released on Monday.
New York (20-11) nonetheless still sits in the runner-up spot on the current WNBA leaderboard, albeit 6.5 games behind the league-leading Lynx. The road trip wraps up with a high-profile matinee in Minneapolis on Saturday afternoon.
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.