It was too obvious a trap to truly be a trap game. After defeating the Minnesota Lynx, finally, the New York Liberty would wrap up their brief homestand on Thursday night against the 8-26 Chicago Sky before visiting the Atlanta Dream on Saturday. With New York and Atlanta entering Thursday tied for the #2 seed, that one loomed as a huge matchup.
Sandy Brondello wasn’t trying to hear any of this, pregame: “We have to respect every other team. We can’t think, ‘Oh, this is a win…’ And we’ve shown that this year, rebounding has been an issue for us.”
Advertisement
No surprise there. Whether or not the Liberty would fall into the trap would not be determined by pregame speeches, though Brondello was aware of their biggest potential pitfall: rebounding. New York ranked 12th in the WNBA in defensive-rebound rate and dead last in offensive-rebound rate, preparing to face the massive Angel Reese + Kamilla Cardoso frontline.
Chicago wouldn’t wilt; not in Barclays Center, not with Reese playing just her second game back from a three-week injury absence. The Liberty played into their hands.
“When you give a team hope, that’s all they need. And I’d say in the first half we made things way too easy for them, and that gave them hope going into halftime, knowing that they could hang with us,” said Sabrina Ionescu, before applying a band-aid. “And I mean, Chicago is a good team. They just haven’t put it together.”
That’s very nice of her, but Chicago is not a good team. Even with Angel Reese, they ascend from terrible to pretty bad — a meaningful difference, but not quite good. Jonquel Jones would score 25 points, Kamilla Cardoso unable to guard her on the perimeter as the former banged five threes. Marine Johannès made her first three triples as well, setting herself up for, just maybe, one of those nights…
But it was not meant to be. The Liberty took a two-point lead into halftime, and their inability to pull away could have been scripted. No rebounding, no interior defense.
Advertisement
Kamilla Cardoso had a double-double by halftime, and would finish with a monstrous 22/15/5 line, pulling in six offensive boards. Angel Reese only grabbed one, but still finished with a 21/10 double-double. The Sky could not make an outside shot, and it didn’t matter. That typical Liberty run — you know, the one buoyed by transition offense and swing-swing threes — never came. The Sky had dragged them into the mud.
Head Coach Tyler Marsh called two quick timeouts early in the third, the second following a Jonquel Jones triple that pushed the lead to seven. It was his best move of the night. New York never pushed the lead past seven again.
The visiting Sky doubled up the Liberty: 52 points in the paint to the home team’s 26. Twenty second-chance points.
A chagrined Sabrina Ionescu explained after the game: “It’s tough. You know, it doesn’t fall always in the hands of the bigs. Like, I think guards have to get in there and try and help them, because obviously, like, the bigs are getting dragged out and not under the basket to just get them.”
Advertisement
As you can probably tell by now, the Liberty lost the game. Ariel Atkins banked in a three, guided in by the heavens, in the fourth quarter, and that’s all Chicago needed to seize the game. Literally, that was all they needed. That shot, a miraculously lucky banker, was the only shot they hit outside the paint in the second half. Read that again.
Tied at 85 with two minutes left, Barclays Center realized for the first time the Liberty might actually lose this game. They wouldn’t get to cheer on Angel Reese, have a good time, and watch their team win anyway. It was getting spooky; then the Liberty didn’t score for the rest of the game. Emma Meesseman, who took just four shots on the night, committed an illegal screen, a Jones three rimmed out. Natasha Cloud saw a layup fall out of her hands, only to commit a frustration foul when Reese recovered it. Compounding mistakes and a lackluster vibe that far outweighed any tactical critiques you could have about their spacing, or whatever.
There was not much to say postgame. Natasha Cloud and Jonquel Jones sat at the podium gave terse, one-sentence answers, flanking a serious Sandy Brondello, the cool fifth-grade teacher that was suddenly disciplining the class.
Jones was asked how the team can get off to better starts, how to prevent big teams like the Sky from getting comfortable early: “I think you just answered your question. I think we have to play more physical in the beginning and set the tone early.”
Advertisement
What else is there to ask, really? Hey, you guys kind of got punked tonight. Any thoughts?
“We were all pissed off, because you can’t play as well as we did against Minnesota, and then come out and not do the same against this team. And we’ve lost to teams down at the bottom of the standings. Anyone can beat anyone in this league, anyone can win this championship. It’s wide-open. But our inconsistency is mind-boggling at times.” — Sandy Brondello
Final Score: Chicago Sky 91, New York Liberty 85
Courtney Vandersloot honored
Courtney Vandersloot tore her ACL less than a month into her return to the Chicago Sky. As a result, the 2024 WNBA Finals champion wasn’t around to receive her ring the first time the Sky visited New York, just after her injury. Though she wasn’t playing on Thursday, Sloot did make the trip back to Barclays, properly honored in front of a loving crowd and affectionate former teammates…
At shootaround, she reflected on the end of her time with New York, which was both personally and professionally trying. Her mother Jan passed away mid-season, leading Sloot to miss nearly the whole month of June. By the time the Liberty embarked on their ultimately successful playoff run, Leonie Fiebich had supplanted her in the starting lineup; one of the league’s greatest guards played just three minutes in New York’s Finals-clinching win.
Advertisement
“It was difficult inside,” said Sloot. “But knowing that as a leader, as I preached my whole career, this is what it takes. That part was easy. I knew that it was my time to kind of put my money where my mouth was. It was my time to sacrifice and that’s the direction they went. As hard as that was for me, because I didn’t necessarily agree with it, I still felt like I was bought in, and that was what we preached from the moment I got here with sacrifice and all of that. So it was just my time to do that. I’m grateful for the experience. I still get a ring.”
That chapter of her career is closed, and though it may have ended with mixed emotions, it was undeniably a success. Sloot’s day-to-day is much different now, rehabbing a torn ACL: “Obviously this isn’t the year that I was expecting. Having to sit out has been really hard for me, rehabbing. I’ve never got — this is my first surgery after 15 seasons at the professional level.”
Fortunately, Sloot has a little more company at home these days: her daughter Jana, born this spring: “I was under the impression I was gonna be a really chill mom. That is just not the case. I am a worrywart. I worry about her all the time.”
But those are good worries to have. This past year has been quite the whirlwind for the former Liberty point guard, though even that feels like an understatement. She seems content, though: “I think that I’m in the right place, and especially if something like this was to happen — I’m in a really good place where they’re taking real good care of me.”
Advertisement
For Liberty fans — for any fans of Courtney Vandersloot — it’s nice to see.
Standings Watch
Yep, it’s that time of year. And suddenly, the Liberty have much to worry about.
1: Minnesota Lynx: 28-7, —
2: Atlanta Dream: 23-13, 5.5GB
3: Las Vegas Aces: 23-14, 6.0 GB
4: New York: 22-14, 6.5 GB
5: Phoenix Mercury: 21-14, 7.0 GB
Next Up
So yeah, this next game against the Atlanta Dream is huge. Atlanta currently occupies the #2 seed, but is down 2-1 in the season-series to the Liberty. And the standings are so bunched that every game is a must-win. Tip-off is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. ET in Atlanta on Saturday afternoon.
