The Liberty Too-Smalled The Lynx

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — I chuckled when I saw the words printed on the giveaway T-shirts at Finals Game 2 in New York on Sunday afternoon: “NOT DONE YET.” A kinder reading goes that all contenders think like this, no matter their situation. In the shadow of a Game 1 win, those words might have projected a noble kind of focus. We won’t rest on our regular-season laurels. Job’s not finished. Eyes on the prize. Giveaway shirt production lead times are probably not such that the Liberty ordered thousands of these to cope, anyway. But the shirts took on a slightly grimmer, funnier meaning in light of what actually happened in Game 1: an awful New York collapse. Now, methought the shirt doth protest too much. The “Our Season Is Definitely Not Over” T-shirt had people asking a lot of questions already answered by the shirt.

In a technical sense, it was true, though. The Liberty were not done yet. They still had a split to salvage in New York. And their home crowd, if volume was any sign, loved them no less for their choking. Fans might have felt a sense of déjà vu as the Liberty went up 17 points early, gutted through the second and third quarters, and then let the Lynx make it a one-possession game late in the fourth. But Breanna Stewart, she said afterward, was determined not to let “history repeat itself.” A determined Stewart is an awesome sight, and her arms made possible an alternate ending. Minnesota tried running back the small lineup that had worked for them in Game 1, but Stewart reminded them why it had always been a risky idea. She timed jumps like a defensive back to grab Minnesota lobs out of the air; she hung low to wreck entry passes and dribbles. After Courtney Williams skated past Jonquel Jones to make it a 68-66 game with 3:40 left to play, the Liberty ended the game on a 12-0 run. Stewart would finish with eight rebounds and a Finals-record seven steals, three of them in the fourth quarter.

Watching Stewart play can be an uncanny experience. (I remember cracking up a few years ago at a TV ad that showed her simply walking down the street, dribbling a basketball, her arms basically down to the sidewalk.) In this game, she seemed to be reasserting her team’s advantages: The Liberty are bigger, longer, and stronger, and this gives them several paths to victory unavailable to the Lynx. Before Game 2, Minnesota head coach Cheryl Reeve said there was plenty she wanted her team to clean up, but she admitted the rebounding margin—the Liberty out-rebounded the Lynx 44-32 and 20-5 on the offensive glass in Game 1—wasn't the most pressing concern for a team built like hers. “When you get to the postseason, you can’t suddenly change who you are. You are who you are,” she said.

The Liberty are also deeper, and if you set aside the trauma of Game 1, you could make a reasonable case that despite everything going wrong for their key offensive players, they had still only lost a two-point game in overtime. If any one tiny thing went their way, it might be enough to swing the game. On Sunday afternoon, the difference was Betnijah Laney-Hamilton. In Game 1, the Liberty wing played the fewest minutes of any starter, and she was conspicuously absent from the go-ahead Lynx sequence at the end. (Courtney Williams got a second look from three because Alanna Smith grabbed the rebound over Courtney Vandersloot, who isn't usually in New York's must-stop closing lineups.)

Liberty head coach Sandy Brondello said after practice on Saturday that Laney-Hamilton hadn't been feeling her best. Since undergoing knee surgery over the Olympic break, Laney-Hamilton has looked a touch slower than usual. “I think everyone sees that she’s trying. It’s not the same B that we’ve seen all season long,” Brondello said. But Laney-Hamilton had been feeling a little bit better every day, and Sunday, she did it all, even on one knee. Laney-Hamilton muscled through contact, beating smaller defenders to get to her spots, and finished with four threes and 20 points. Suddenly, the Liberty were the Liberty as they should be to any opponent: just too much.