The New York Liberty suffered their first loss of the season Saturday but have no time to fret with the Atlanta Dream in town for a key game Tuesday in the Commissioner’s Cup series.
The Dream, Liberty and Indiana Fever are all 3-1 in the Cup standings with one game to play in the event. Atlanta and New York have sizable leads in the point differential tiebreaker over Indiana, meaning the winner Tuesday will likely be the East representative.
“Everyone wants to get to that Commissioner’s Cup championship, and we have an opportunity to get there and defeat the defending (WNBA) champs on their home court,” first-year Atlanta coach Karl Smesko said. “It will take an exceptional effort, but we have great players. I look forward to being in a big-game environment.”
Atlanta (8-3) has been one of the surprises of the WNBA season under Smesko. They’re already more than halfway to last season’s win total, when the Dream were 15-25. The franchise, which hasn’t had a winning season since 2018, is led by guard Allisha Gray, who is third in the WNBA in scoring with an average of 21.0 points per game.
Gray had a career-high 32 on Sunday in an 89-56 win over the Washington Mystics. The Dream also set a franchise record with 18 made 3-pointers.
“She is such an exceptional talent and the year she is having is extraordinary,” Smesko said. “Every game she looks more and more comfortable. Hopefully, she keeps this going and I expect she will.”
The Liberty (9-1) were the talk of the WNBA starting 9-0 but were handed their first defeat by Caitlin Clark and the Fever on Saturday, 102-88. New York was without star Jonquel Jones, sidelined with an ankle injury.
Jones, the WNBA Finals MVP in 2024, is averaging 13.9 points and 10.3 rebounds. The injury is not expected to cause her to miss an extended period of time.
The Liberty still rank No. 1 in offense (90.2 points a game) and defense (allowing 74.2) in the WNBA. Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart each average 19.5 points a game.
“We are now 10 games into the season and we have a long way to go,” Stewart said Saturday after the loss. “We have a long way to go. We had a few games early on where we squeaked out some wins, so a loss is an opportunity for everyone to look at themselves in the mirror and focus on the things we need to do to get better.”
This is the first meeting of the season between the teams. New York won three of four in the 2024 regular season and swept the first-round playoff series against the Dream.
–Field Level Media
