Aces 104, Liberty 76: Picture a wave
For the first time this season, the Liberty follow one L with another & now face elimination at the hands of the champs
I took my dog out to pee shortly after Game 2 of the WNBA Finals tipped off. It was 3-0 in favor of the Las Vegas Aces when we left. When we returned, it was 14-2. “What the hell happened?” I wondered. I imagine the New York Liberty are asking themselves the same thing after they were blown out 104-76 to fall behind 2-0 in the best-of-5. The Liberty hadn’t lost two games in a row all season until last night. Now they stand on the brink of elimination. What the hell happened?.
Picture a wave. A big one, the kind that knocks you off your feet. That was the Aces in the early going – and when I say “the Aces,” I mean it like a band. They were all in tune and they were all turned up to 11. There was Kelsey Plum, the shortest Ace in the deck at 5-foot-8, scrambling after every loose ball, forcing tie-ups with Jonquel Jones and Breanna Stewart. There was A’ja Wilson, midrange maestro, hitting her first three of the playoffs to put Vegas up 30-10. There was Kiah Stokes, maker of five 3-pointers all season, draining two in the first half.
The Aces led by 19 after the first, tying a Finals record with 38 points in a quarter and setting one with 12 assists in a frame. I’m not sure these Liberty have been overwhelmed at any point this season the way they were last night. It seemed a credit to them to reach halftime down by only single digits. A lot of that was thanks to Jones, the one player Vegas (and most teams) don’t appear to have an answer for. Not only did JJ put up a double-double in the first half, she very nearly had one in the second quarter alone with 16 points and eight rebounds. New York pulled as close as six, but sometimes what feels like equilibrium is just waiting while the next wave is ramping up.
It hit in the third. Wilson and Jackie Young combined to drill nine of 10 shots while no one on New York made more than one. By the end of the quarter the Aces were up 23. Now they’re on the verge of an undefeated playoff run and a second straight title, something no WNBA team has done in over 20 years. They’re doing all this despite losing key offseason addition Candace Parker more than three months ago. It’s possible this is the greatest two-year run by any franchise in league history. It’s also possible the Liberty can come back and make it a series again.
Yesterday was New York’s fourth consecutive road playoff game, the result of closing the Connecticut Sun out in Uncasville last round and opening the Finals in las Vegas. Now they return home to their raucous crowd, in the only arena where the Aces went winless in multiple visits (they were also winless in Washington, but only played there once). The Aces made 45% of their threes to only 23% for the Liberty. The defending champs also won the rebounding battle, a big win for them because the Liberty have dominated the glass in their wins over the Aces this season; New York did once again own the offensive glass, with Jones (7) nearly singlehandedly outdoing the whole Aces team (8). Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu don’t seem likely to keep missing two-thirds of their shots. Betnijah Laney has been too good for too long to go out with a whisper.
One adjustment they may need to make concerns the Aces’ treatment of Courtney Vandersloot, specifically their willingness to live with their defensive rotations resulting in Vandersloot having open looks from deep after all the ball movement and closeouts. It’s not a revolutionary approach: Washington and Connecticut both tried it, too, with obviously limited success. But Las Vegas, you may have noticed, isn’t just another team. They have so much firepower across the board they’re really an All-Star team. The Liberty are, too. But when two All-Star teams collide, especially two so potent offensively, anything that in any way can slant things toward 4 vs. 5 is a big edge. Vandersloot is smart and unselfish; she knows she’s being left open because she has teammates the opponent is more scared of. But there are too many possessions in this high-stakes series whose promise is snuffed out by Sloot passing on an open 3-pointer. It’s not even about whether or not she makes the shot, at this point; Stokes isn’t a shooter from distance, but the chances came in the flow so she took them, and made them. If Vandersloot won’t, or can’t, Stewart, Ionescu and Laney are going to be trying to score in space as cramped as a phone booth.
Then again, at the highest level it’s all about counters. The Liberty have been pushed to the brink and made to look bad doing so by what could be the greatest WNBA team of all-time. For all the superteam talk, there’s always been one key difference between the two: one’s won it all before; the other hasn’t. That may seem reductive, but sometimes the truth is brutally simple. Some waves are so big there’s just no escape.
