New York’s Breanna Stewart moved into the top 10 in WNBA career scoring Thursday, but her focus was elsewhere after the Liberty’s 104-99 loss at Las Vegas.
“We were playing basketball against a good team, and they made more plays than us,” Stewart said. “Sometimes that’s the way it goes.”
Stewart and the Liberty (16-13) will wrap up their three-game road trip on Saturday against the Phoenix Mercury (11-18), who have won three straight.
Stewart scored 26 points against the Aces to give her 6,588 career points, 14 more than previous No. 10 Candace Parker. She added 11 rebounds and three steals.
“She made sure I was courtside for it,” joked Parker, a commentator on the Prime network broadcast.
Stewart has averaged 20.6 points in her 320 career games, almost two points a game more than any other player in the top 10. No. 1 Diana Taurasi (10,646) averaged 18.8 in her career.
The Liberty had a three-game winning streak broken in Las Vegas during an up-and-down stretch. They are 4-5 since beating the Aces for the Commissioner’s Cup on June 30, a game that did not count in the standings.
“It’s hard to have improvement off a loss,” Stewart said, “but I want to say this is improvement because we didn’t have to dig ourselves out of a hole.”
Sheis tied for third in the league this year with a 21.5 scoring average.
“We’re pretty resilient,” Liberty coach Chris Demarco said.
Phoenix’s DeWanna Bonner is third on the career scoring list (8,088, 14.3 average), and she had 17 points and 10 rebounds in a 91-89 victory over Golden State on Wednesday.
Alyssa Thomas, who leads the league with 8.3 assists per game, has been the key to the Mercury’s winning streak.
She had her first triple-double of the season — 19 points, 11 rebounds, 15 assists — in an 86-82 victory over the Sparks in the last game before the All-Star break and followed that with a season-high 25 points in Wednesday’s win over the Valkyries.
The 6-foot-2 Thomas was used as a point guard when the Mercury went to a big lineup in the fourth quarter-and she scored 15 of the team’s 31 points as they rallied to victory. She added nine rebounds and eight assists.
“I thought she played with force all night,” Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts said. ” ‘A.T.’ was fabulous (Wednesday). She was fabulous in L.A., and we need that version of her. That’s when we’re at our best.”
“My job is to get everybody else involved, and I felt that the fourth quarter was my time to take over a little bit,” Thomas said.
Guard Kahleah Copper had 27 points, her 10th 20-point game in the last 12, before fouling out against Golden State. She leads the Mercury and is tied for sixth in the league with 20.7 points per game.
The Mercury continue their climb toward a playoff berth on Monday in Chicago in the first game of a four-game, seven-day trip.
–Field Level Media
