The New York Liberty will aim for a four-game, season-series sweep of the Golden State Valkyries when teams jockeying for position in the playoff race go head-to-head Tuesday night in San Francisco.
In a matchup of the defending WNBA champions against an expansion club, the Liberty have had their hands full in the two most recent head-to-heads after New York won a 95-67 blowout in the initial encounter at home in May.
Two days later, the Liberty needed to score the final six points — two by Breanna Stewart, the other four by Natasha Cloud — to escape with an 82-77 victory in a rematch in New York. Then, Sabrina Ionescu scored seven of the game’s last 10 points over the final 1:48 to rally the Liberty to an 81-78 triumph in San Francisco in June.
A Bay Area native, Ionescu’s game-saving finish — all of which came at the free throw line — salvaged what had been a nightmarish homecoming in which she missed 10 of her 11 shots overall and six of her seven 3-point attempts. She finished with 11 points.
After going 32-8 in each of the last two seasons, the Liberty fell to 24-16 and into fifth place in the standings when they were thumped 80-63 at Phoenix on Saturday to open a three-game trip.
The loss came without Ionescu, who sat out her second consecutive game with a toe injury on her left foot. That didn’t cost her team the game, Stewart assured reporters afterward.
“Any of the things that we’ve done (against Phoenix), and honestly, for a while, it’s not going to get us to where we want to be,” she said. “This is not championship-level basketball at this point, and everybody needs to recognize that. We need to get there.”
In the earlier wins over Golden State, the Liberty did a good job defending Veronica Burton, who averaged just 7.3 points on 7-for-28 shooting.
Burton has been the driving force as Golden State, playing without three of its top five scorers, put together its most impressive back-to-back performances of the season over the weekend, thumping the Washington Mystics 99-62 and then the Indiana Fever 75-63 in a pair of home games.
The fourth-year veteran contributed a total of 23 points, 12 rebounds and 18 assists to the wins that temporarily vaulted the Valkyries into the No. 6 playoff spot.
Burton had 13 of those assists Sunday against the Fever, but that didn’t stop Golden State coach Natalie Nakase from giving the hometown fans an assist for their patience on a night with many stoppages in play due to clock malfunctions.
“That’s just great that our crowd doesn’t just get frustrated. They don’t leave. They stay behind us,” Nakase said of the team’s 19th consecutive sellout. “Credit to our fans for just keeping it lively, keeping it entertaining. We want to entertain people, and we want to have almost like a party.”
–Field Level Media
