Sabrina Ionescu's 3-point shooting powers Liberty to stifling win over Aces in 2nd super-team meeting
NEW YORK — The sold-out lower bowl at Barclays Center didn’t wait for the ball to hit net. The fans didn’t even wait for it to leave Sabrina Ionescu’s hands. The roars were already in force, the record crowd standing to celebrate each one as the margin grew, their super-team on top.
The New York Liberty fans knew who they were getting when the franchise won the 2020 draft lottery and commissioner Cathy Engelbert, in attendance on Sunday, called her name that April. And they knew how she would flourish when the front office put the puzzle pieces together this past offseason by adding point guard Courtney Vandersloot, plus Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones, alongside her and Betnijah Laney.
Every piece of the East Coast super-team is purposeful from 1 to 11. And as everyone attested following a dominating 99-61 home victory over the reigning champion Las Vegas Aces (23-3) that tied the franchise record for margin of victory, it will take all of them to prove themselves collectively. Though some believed the three new pieces meant Ionescu would need to shoot less, her ability to hit from deep is critical to New York’s success.
And she’s heating up. Ionescu scored a game-high 31 points shooting 12-of-19, including 6-of-10 from 3-point range. Her 30-foot 3 on a Vandersloot assist early in the second quarter of a one-point game brought fans to their feet. They should have kept standing as she hit a 25-foot one from Stewart’s pass 30 seconds later. Three more splashed by quarter’s end as the Liberty (22-6) scored 24 of their 30 second-quarter points from range and cleaned up the glass (+14).
“I come out every game with the same mentality and that’s just to do my job and to do it to the best of my ability,” Ionescu said. “And so tonight, obviously understanding that we’re going up against the best team in the league and there’s no room for error. There’s no room for not being locked in and wanting to win every single possession.”
Ionescu is dangerous from almost anywhere behind the arc and has scored more than 30 points five times this season. She hasn’t scored in single digits since their 98-81 loss to Las Vegas on June 29 and notched a 12-12-12 triple-double against Seattle a few weeks ago. She averages 3.5 made 3s per game, a league-high on a third-best 8.1 attempts, and hits 43.3% of them. Her 56.9% 3-point rate is 10th in the league and she scores two-thirds of her points there.
The thing about a super-team is every starter garners attention, pulling defenses and opening someone up. Teams have to make choices. Not guarding Ionescu is a choice most coaches won’t want to make. Just like they won’t want to leave Jones, in Aces head coach Becky Hammon’s words “a handful,” alone in the paint. Nor allow Sloot to drive into it or Stewart alone basically anywhere.
“You’re coming off pick-and-rolls with players like Sabrina, who [if defenses are] not honest with her, she’s just gonna come off and score,” Jones, who added 12 points and 14 assists, said. “Playing with other great players allows you to just have opportunities.”
Even the healthy Aces fan contingent in Brooklyn knew who they were facing. It wasn’t but three weeks ago they were joining the roars in her record-setting All-Star 3-point performance at Michelob Ultra Arena. How quickly they fade to groans not only for a devastating loss, but for the reality a repeat championship isn’t guaranteed no matter how prolific the statistics.
The 11,418 in attendance, a franchise record for the Liberty at Barclays, know there’s still plenty of season and postseason to be played before a team lifts the trophy. The arena continued to open sections of the upper bowl over the past few weeks as anticipation grew for the first super-team meeting in Brooklyn. They were greeted by one of the Liberty’s most complete games as they solidify chemistry and pull farther away from a season that tipped with stars coming off injuries.
“You don’t just create chemistry,” Hammon said before the game. “It takes time and the players need timing and they need time with each other. It’s not as easy as it looks. So I’m not surprised that they’re starting to jell and look a little bit different towards the middle to the end of the season.”
New York tied its season-high of 17 made 3s set twice before in late June and late July. Laney, the most overlooked piece of the super-team, was 3-of-6 from range and had 13 points and nine boards. Stewart added four and finished with 23 points, six rebounds, five assists and three blocks. Vandersloot hit two of her three attempts and finished with 10 points, six assists and four rebounds. Kayla Thornton, their sixth player of the game who they acquired in the three-team trade that brought in Jones, had two 3-pointers.
“When [Ionescu] is making shots, it opens up a lot of things and you can say the same about Laney and JJ is a stretch five, too, and that’s just the space we want to work with,” Vandersloot said. “I said in the pregame that we don’t want to live and die by the 3. But you know we definitely lived by it tonight, and luckily, a lot were going in.”
Ionescu credited taking good shots, creating opportunities and having patience. They were 50% overall, 44.7% from 3 and 100% from the free-throw line, a slash Stewart noted postgame was “crazy” and is the fifth in franchise history of 50/40/100.
The Liberty scored their first 12 points in the paint for a 12-6 lead, forcing Hammon to take a timeout. A’ja Wilson blocked three early shots to keep the Liberty out and Las Vegas scored eight straight to take back what has become their norm of leading everyone and anyone.
Except the Liberty went back to their norm, too, and took half of their attempts from beyond the arc. They average 10 a game from 3, leading the league. And it was a focus for them to play their style, not allow the Aces to dictate them, players said.
The lead was only five points, 49-44, at halftime. Ionescu had 23, a career-high for her at half. It’s tied for most of any individual against Las Vegas this season. And New York stormed out of the tunnel to shut the door on any ideas of an Aces comeback in the exact way the Liberty felt the door slam last time out.
Except harder. The Liberty outscored the Aces, 30-9, in the third quarter. Stewart made as many buckets as the Aces combined (three). They blew the lead up to 42 points before finishing at 38, their largest of the season. Las Vegas scored 17 points in the second half, fewer than either of the two first quarters individually. The Aces were held to 16 points below their previous season-low of 77 in a loss to Connecticut. Their 32.4% field-goal percentage is a season low by 8%. They average 50% per game, 38.1% from 3 and 93.2 points per game, all ranking first in the league.
“I mean, honestly, I didn’t think that was what was gonna happen [would] happen,” Vandersloot said. “I thought that this is — [I] keep saying it’s a great team, they were gonna make a run, you know, and we were ready for it.”
Their 24-point lead in the frame was the Aces’ largest deficit in a regular season game since Aug. 5, 2019, against the Washington Mystics. The Mystics went on to win the first championship in franchise history. New York is the only original franchise without a title, and one of three (Sun, Dream) without any trophy in the case. (The Dallas franchise won as the Detroit Shock.)
A Las Vegas victory would have matched the 1998 Houston Comets for the most wins before a team’s third loss. It was New York that gave Houston its third loss that season. Those two teams didn’t meet in the 1998 Finals, but did meet in ’97, ’99 and ’00. It was the rivalry of the WNBA’s first years that stands as iconic to this day, even if the Comets won all three Finals.
The league is looking toward Las Vegas-New York to take the rivalry torch left by the inaugural duo and the ones who followed the past 27 years. Just as Stewart told fans at Barclays they set the standard for what the team expects here on out, so did the first two meetings of the anointed super-teams.
Fans tuning into the ABC Sunday showcase to check out all the hubbub don’t have long to wait. The sides face each other again in nine days on Aug. 15 for the third annual Commissioner’s Cup final with $500,000 on the line. They’ll meet four times this month alone for five total, and are lining up to potentially see each other in the Finals.
It’s currently 1-1 with each showcasing a dominating victory in front of home fans who know what they’re in for as the rivalry charges onward.
