Breanna Stewart at her best is a force of nature, a tornado on one end of the court and a blizzard on the other, and Wednesday night, Stewart hit the Minnesota Lynx from every possible direction. She scored, she protected the rim, she seemed to guard an entire team by herself. Stewart looked like she might win Game 3 for the New York Liberty by herself, and maybe she would have, but why do that when you have Sabrina Ionescu to finish it off for you?
All Ionescu did in the final minute was hit a three-pointer to give the Liberty a four-point lead, and then drop a tiebreaking, Finals-changing, cold-blooded all-time highlight of a three-point dagger on the Lynx with 2.1 seconds left.
After Minnesota missed its final shot and New York celebrated, Ionescu walked off the court and saw Minnesota Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson on her way to the locker room. She walked over, calmly shook his hand and said, “I’m a big fan of yours.” The feeling, surely, is mutual—geographical allegiances be damned.
The Liberty stunned the Lynx, 80–77, to take a 2–1 WNBA Finals lead. This wasn’t as large of a comeback as the Lynx’s in Game 1, but in the story of the series, it might turn out to be bigger.
This was the moment the Liberty envisioned and the rest of the WNBA feared when New York signed Stewart and traded for Jonquel Jones before the 2023 season.
In the most fundamental ways, the alliance has obviously been successful. The Liberty made the Finals last year and are one win away from the franchise’s first championship. Stewart was named first-team all-WNBA again Monday and Ionescu and Jones made the second team.
But even when success comes quickly, it does not necessarily come smoothly. The league is too competitive. The on-court fit is not perfect. Outsized expectations are constantly knocking on their heads, asking to come in and stay awhile.
Jones, like Stewart, is a former WNBA MVP, and at times she seems like a luxury the Liberty aren’t sure how to use. In her last year in Connecticut, Jones shot 10 two-pointers per game. This year she shot six.
Ionescu, meanwhile, arrived in the league with generational-talent expectations, and then at 25 years old, she was suddenly the third-most decorated player on her own team.
Ionescu is a terrific player. But her greatest strength is shotmaking, and her one real weakness is lateral defensive quickness. On a team with two former MVPs, there are games when shots are hard to come by, but her weakness is always there. The result can be a distorted image of Ionescu: On this team, she sometimes looks like a lesser player than she actually is.
That has happened in this series. It even happened in this game. The Lynx remain a tough matchup for the Liberty.
But the cool thing about basketball superteams is that the game forces them to find the ingredients that nobody mentioned when they came together. Toughness. Resilience. The ability to ignore the box score and just play. They either find those ingredients, or they end the season with a loss.
The Liberty found them. Ionescu cracked afterward that “that was just a great all-WNBA second-team performance. That’s it.” But that was a funny response to a specific question. She really did not play Game 3 like she was trying to prove she belonged on the first team. She didn’t force shots or overdribble.
Ionescu admitted that “obviously, I didn’t play my best tonight.” In the first 39 minutes, she scored seven points and somehow committed two fouls with her right hip. But Ionescu also didn’t seem to worry about whether she was playing her best. Ionescu did not shoot the final shot like she needed it to salvage her night. She shot it like she, and not Stewart, had already scored 30. That is a champion’s mentality.
So is this: “That shot’s nice, but that doesn’t go against what [Stewart] was able to do for us tonight, and how she was able to will us back into that game.”
Douse them all with credit. Stewart was dominant. Jones always plays hard and finds ways to have an impact. Ionescu was all sorts of clutch. And coach Sandy Brondello demonstrated the absolute perfect touch with this group in the season’s most pivotal moment: a timeout with the game tied and 16 seconds left. That tells us Brondello has built up the necessary trust along the way.
“In the timeout, Sandy was just like, ‘You’re gonna shoot this shot,’” Ionescu said. “I was able to get separation in range … kind of got the space that I needed to be able to take that shot.”
Ionescu also said, “It’s not like a Hail Mary hope this goes in. It was like, once I got it off, Yeah, this is in.” It’s what Ionescu did at Oregon, and what she can do at the highest level of basketball.
“What I love about her is she backs herself,” Brondello said. “Not everybody can take these big shots and make them. She can.”
She did. Stewart did most of the damage, but Ionescu finally knocked the house down. This was the vision two years ago: Stewie & Sabrina & Jonquel, lifting each other to the top of the league. They’re not there yet. But they can sure see it from here.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Breanna Stewart, Sabrina Ionescu Show What the Liberty Are Made of in Game 3 Comeback.
