Liberty 100, Fever 89: MVP?
The Liberty kick off their longest road trip of the year with another starry showing
The New York Liberty defeated the Indiana Fever in Indianapolis 100-89. The outcome is literally yesterday’s news; its implications extend as far into the past and the future as you’re willing to squint. 2023 was always supposed to be a standout season in Liberty history, and it is, leaving them in the strange position of having been so good for so long that what they do for most of the next month won’t mean much. What they do after that will end up meaning mostly everything. It’s not fair, and yet it exists. C’est la vie.
New York is 24-6 this season, the 24 wins a new franchise record, their pace well beyond the prior top winning percentage of 68% held by the 2015 team. Sunday’s Sea Foam were a hive mind on offense, with 32 assists on their 37 baskets and a season-low nine turnovers. Even brighter than such brilliance is how it’s becoming the rule rather than the exception: New York became the first team in WNBA history with 28+ assists over three consecutive games.
One way to stack dimes and lack turnovers is for your teammates to make their shots. Breanna Stewart was in the mood.
Stewart tied a league-record with 30 points in the first half while finishing with 42 to set a new one as the first WNBAer with three games of 40+ points in a season. Last week on Twitter a bunch of WNBA people shared their top-5 lists for MVP. Most didn’t include Stewart. I don’t know if there’s some weird anti-Syracuse cabal working against her or if the same virus that led people to overthink themselves out of voting Nikola Jokić for NBA MVP has found a new host to infect or what, but there is mold in the mind of anyone whose list is sans Stewart.
She leads the league in points and win shares while ranking third in rebounds, minutes, free throws made and attempted, fifth in blocks and seventh in steals. Last year she played for Seattle and they won 61% of their games. This year without her they’ve won 30%. Last year without her New York lost most of their games, as they did the year before that, the year before that, the year before that and the year before that. This year with Stewart they’ve won 80% of the time. The question isn’t whether she belongs in the MVP conversation. It’s whether anyone else has as good a case.
14 wins in 16 games added a little breathing room to the Liberty’s lead over the Connecticut Sun. They play each other two more times this season; anything but a sweep for the Sun likely leaves them the third-seed in the playoffs, behind the Liberty and the Las Vegas Aces, who also play twice more, including tomorrow’s Commissioner’s Cup final. It’s a big game for a couple of reasons. On a practical level, the winning team’s players get $30,000 each, which is legitimate; that’d be more than a 20% bonus to Marine Johannés. The losing team’s players receive $10,000, which would be about a 27% salary bump for Epiphanny Prince. To paraphrase Max Cherry, $30,000 will always be missed.
As Jonquel Jones reminds us, the Commissioner’s Cup is also an opportunity for the Liberty to win their first trophy together. It’d also give them a second straight win over the Aces and give them reason to sweat for the first time in a long time. Should the Liberty lose tomorrow, they’ll still be a couple games ahead of the Sun and a couple games behind the Aces. They’ll still be having the best year in franchise history and still be about a month away from the next game that really means anything. Such is life for the New York Liberty, who won the offseason, have kept winning all season and yet remain in search of silverware to give physical form to their winning spirit.
